Congratulations on your inspiring work! I would like to ask you a question about how to integrate Ark into my solutions in Spain in the near future.
I have a number of clients ( bricks & mortar cafes, restaurants, stores) interested in accepting bitcoin. For the moment, many would prefer to change these payments to euros as quickly as possible. I am currently looking at ways to set them up via BTCPayserver where I can manage various aspects for them. Crucially, the system, including conversions to EUR, must compete with regular Mastercard/Visa on total costs or it is a non starter.
The issue with using the LN as far as I can tell is that it will require me to register as a CASP under MICAR, at a cost of at least Eur18k, which I would prefer to avoid. I think Ark may provide a solution to this, as I could potentially point them to an ASP hosted by me, avoiding the LN altogether. My understanding is an ASP doesn’t hold funds unlike a Lightning node, thereby avoiding CASP/MICAR.
My question is whether Ark/Second solutions (existing or forthcoming) will allow me to set up a process whereby bitcoin holders can pay in a relatively simple manner at a physical POS, merchants can accept BTC and transfer to Eur immediately (or perhaps to EurT and then do batch transfers to Eur to lower costs) and merchants can receive transparent data for accounts and tax returns (perhaps by switching off coinjoin?)
Thanks for any insights