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Introduction

Introduction

Welcome to the Strike API documentation.

The Strike API lets you make programmatic bitcoin and cash transactions using the Bitcoin and Lightning Networks. This includes sending, receiving, exchanging, directing, making cash payouts to bank accounts, and using OAuth for 3rd party integrations.

It’s a payments API that uses Bitcoin as global payments infrastructure, giving you access to:

  • Asset flexibility: You can transact with cash or bitcoin, whichever money best suits your needs
  • Network interoperability: You can send and receive via the Bitcoin (aka blockchain) or the Lightning Network, and then cash-out to external bank accounts via legacy cash networks
  • Payment finality: Once a Bitcoin payment is delivered, there are no chargebacks, reversals, or extended settlement times
  • Borderless payments: It’s just as easy to accept payments from across the street as across the world
  • Speed: Lightning payments are settled instantly, while large payments via Bitcoin’s blockchain are settled in ~10 - 60 minutes
  • Scalability: You can send $100M on a holiday Sunday, or receive sub-penny micropayments second-by-second from global customers

Learn more about what the Strike API can do for you here.

The Strike API is an HTTP-based API and follows general REST principles; it has predictable resource-oriented URLs, accepts JSON-encoded request bodies, returns JSON-encoded responses, and uses standard HTTP response codes, authentication, and verbs.

Getting started

If you’re new to Bitcoin, we recommend familiarizing yourself with some content:

You can also read through these docs for detailed information. The Walkthroughs section provides step-by-step instructions on how to build payment solutions, while the Example apps showcase existing applications that use the Strike API, including links to code repositories. To begin, proceed to the Account creation section to start using the Strike API today.

If you need help verifying if our solution matches your business needs, contact partners@strike.me.

API reference

You can view all the details for how to interact with the Strike API by visiting the API reference page. This page contains all the necessary specifics for API key permissions, supported endpoints, query parameters, error codes, expected responses, and formatting considerations. Using the endpoints within the API reference will allow you to make borderless payments, query data, trade bitcoin programmatically, retrieve records, plus much more.

API explorer

The API explorer, located on the right side of the API reference page, allows you to make API requests directly from your web browser.

The explorer lets you to view code examples in cURL, Go, Python, and Node.js and send HTTP requests to any of the Strike API endpoints without implementing code or updating environment configurations.

The API Explorer acts upon your Strike account, so use caution when trying methods that send payments from your account balance. To use the explorer, you must first Click the “Authorize” button, and add your API key bearer token.