$49.3M pushed through open-source BTCPay rails in a year. A Salvadoran school canteen improvising NFC cards so kids can tap to pay in sats. New merchants in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Bitcoin payments, proving themselves at every scale — this week's brief.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-29

A payment app demanded a Lightning sender's real name — or your money back. A sharp reminder of why self-custody matters.

This week's brief also covers Bitcoin at the travel counter, a Salvadoran coast with 170+ merchants, and townships running their own payment networks.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-28

We just shipped the biggest release in Blink's history: non-custodial accounts, live on iOS and Android. Your keys, your bitcoin, same app.

This week's brief also covers tap-to-pay counters, wages paid in sats, and 517 real transactions in one Kenyan economy.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/weekly-brief-2026-27

✅ 21-second onboarding
✅ Your keys, your coins

We hope more people fall in love with holding their own keys 🔑

What stays the same in Blink: your Lightning address, your QR codes, instant payments, your Dollar Balance.

What changes: you get a 12-word recovery phrase. You hold the keys. We can't touch your funds. Unilateral exit to on-chain bitcoin.

More sovereignty, more responsibility. Update and try it.

Blink Wallet now has non-custodial accounts. Live on iOS and Android today.

Your keys. Your bitcoin. Same app.

We built Blink in 2020 so bitcoin could be everyday money. Back then, custodial Lightning was the only way to get the UX right. New L2 possibilities changed that — we can finally do self-custody without making it harder to use.

Six years in the making.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/non-custodial-accounts-in-blink-wallet