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Bitcoin payment processing fees could drop from 5% to 0.29%, and the infrastructure making that possible is already live. Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, talks with Jesse Shrader, co-founder of Amboss Technologies, about how Lightning Network yield, stablecoin interoperability, and automated compliance are reshaping how money moves. Jesse built Amboss after working in environmental engineering and handling calls for class action lawsuits against banks, where he watched overdraft fees drain accounts that were already empty. Now his company runs four products tackling liquidity, compliance, self-custody yield, and network discovery for Lightning. With over 2,600 people on the Rails waitlist, Square offering zero-fee Bitcoin payments to retailers, and the Genius Act flooding the market with new stablecoins, the timing on this one is hard to ignore. Jesse also shares founder lessons on fundraising, board strategy, and why AI agents will soon need their own payment rails.

Bitcoin Lightning payments, self-custody yield, and the real cost of slow money are all on the table as Amboss Technologies breaks down what it takes to build payment infrastructure that actually scales.

The race to accumulate Bitcoin is accelerating, but most treasury strategies still require handing over custody to a third party, and that creates a problem the market has only started to address.

Tedd Huff, CEO of fintech advisory firm Voalyre and founder of Fintech Confidential, sits down with Jesse Shrader, co-founder of Amboss Technologies. Jesse came to Bitcoin infrastructure through an unusual path: environmental engineering and a call center job handling class action lawsuits against banks. That combination of building physical systems and watching consumers get hit with predatory overdraft fees gave him a specific view on where traditional financial plumbing fails. The conversation covers how Amboss built a full product suite for the Lightning Network, why Bitcoin-denominated yield tied to payment volume is picking up serious demand, and what the stablecoin explosion means for interoperability across blockchains.

The core tension is straightforward. Bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy and MetaPlanet are focused on accumulation. They want more Bitcoin. But most of the yield options available today sit on different parts of the risk spectrum and require trusting a third party with custody. That trust requirement runs directly against one of Bitcoin's core principles. For treasury managers and CFOs evaluating Bitcoin positions, the question is whether yield can be generated without giving up control of the asset. That question is no longer theoretical.

The numbers from the episode make the case concrete. Amboss launched Rails, a self-custodial Bitcoin yield product, at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas. Within a short window, over 2,600 people joined the waitlist. Payment processing through Lightning comes in at roughly 0.29%, compared to the 2% to 5% that card networks charge today. That is more than a 10x reduction. Square recently announced Bitcoin payments for all of its retailers with zero processing fees for the first year. Bitcoin's base layer can only handle seven transactions per second, and El Salvador's 2021 legal tender announcement caused panic when transaction fees climbed above $3, a cost that simply does not work for most of the population there. Lightning solves the speed and cost problem: instant settlement, low fees, global reach, no chargebacks.

A fair skepticism here is complexity. Bitcoin may be secure, but Lightning involves routing, liquidity management, and channel coordination. These are not simple systems, and asking a treasury team or a merchant to run a Lightning node is a tall order. Jesse acknowledges this directly. Amboss built Rails specifically to automate the hard parts. The user deposits Bitcoin into their own wallet, and Rails handles node setup, fulfillment, and payment routing in the background with limited permissions. The user never gives up custody. The yield comes from small fees captured when payments route through the infrastructure, similar to earning a toll on a financial highway that the user helped build. That automation layer is what separates this from earlier Lightning tooling that required command line expertise.

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For compliance teams, the borderless nature of Lightning raises obvious questions. Money is regulated. Sanctions exist. Amboss built Reflex, a compliance automation engine that translates existing fiat regulations into a decentralized context. Jesse points to a real incident where a company unknowingly paid North Korean nation-state actors, thinking they were an IT services provider. That kind of exposure is exactly what Reflex is designed to flag before it becomes a crisis.

The stablecoin picture adds another layer. The Genius Act has opened the floodgates for stablecoin issuance, but these assets live on different blockchains that do not communicate with each other. Tether on Tron, the most popular stablecoin pairing, runs on a centralized chain and costs $3 to $6 per transaction. Jesse argues that Lightning, through a recent capability called Taproot Assets, can unify these fragmented assets by enabling cross-asset payments and in-flight currency exchange over a single network. For merchants who have resisted Bitcoin payments because of price volatility, receiving stablecoins over Lightning infrastructure answers their biggest objection while keeping fees low.

The founder lessons in this conversation carry weight for anyone building or funding a fintech company. Jesse is candid about imposter syndrome, the difficulty of running a marketplace with two distinct customer types (supply side and demand side), and the reality that an average IPO timeline is 14 to 15 years. His top advice: build your board strategically. Investors who become board members should be the smartest people a founder has ever met, fully invested in the company's success. If they are not, they do not belong there. Tedd expands on this by recommending that even non-founders maintain a personal advisory board and reach out to those advisors regularly, not just when something is broken.

Looking ahead, Jesse predicts an explosion of AI systems paying each other. As robots like Optimus move into homes and businesses, the question becomes what kind of money you hand a machine and what guardrails you put around its spending. Lightning's speed, low cost, and programmability position it as infrastructure built for that kind of automated, machine-to-machine economy. Amboss also announced a partnership with Voltage at Bitcoin Amsterdam to offer a payments API that lets businesses accept both Bitcoin and stablecoins over Lightning with minimal setup.

Treasury managers, CFOs, and fintech operators watching the Bitcoin accumulation trend should pay close attention to how yield, compliance, and payment processing are converging on Lightning infrastructure. The conversation lays out specific numbers, real product mechanics, and practical founder guidance that goes well beyond surface-level commentary. Whether evaluating self-custody yield for a corporate Bitcoin position or exploring lower-cost payment acceptance, the details here are worth the time.

Square announced Bitcoin payment processing at zero cost for its entire retailer network for the next year, signaling that the traditional 4% card processing model may be reaching its expiration date. This move puts pressure on every payment processor still charging merchants percentage-based fees for basic transaction settlement.

Bitcoin's base layer is capped at seven transactions per second, a limitation that became painfully visible when El Salvador declared it legal tender in 2021 and transaction fees spiked above $3. That bottleneck is exactly why second-layer infrastructure like Lightning exists, and why the companies building on it are attracting serious capital.

Overdraft fees were not just expensive; banks were reportedly reorganizing the sequence of customer transactions to trigger additional overdraft events and extract more fees from people who already had no money. That practice, described as highway robbery, was one of the catalysts that pushed an environmental engineer into building decentralized payment infrastructure.

Standard ACH runs at roughly 25 cents per transaction, but same-day settlement jumps to around $10, despite the primary difference being little more than a flag change on a file. That pricing gap reveals how much the traditional financial system charges for speed that internet-based money can deliver at a fraction of the cost.

Staking uses deposited funds to vote on how a blockchain processes transactions, while Lightning yield comes from supplying Bitcoin as payment routing infrastructure and earning fees when payments pass through. Bitcoin does not use staking at all; it runs on proof of work, which relies on energy and computing power rather than token deposits.

Early Lightning node operators had to use command line tools with no visual interface, which locked out anyone who was not a developer. Thunder Hub became the first node management software with an actual user interface, and that shift from terminal to clickable buttons is what brought the co-founders of Amboss together.

Before Amboss Space existed, Lightning node operators had no easy way to discover who else was on the network or how to connect to them. Building a directory, essentially a phone book for the Lightning Network, solved the coordination problem that comes before any marketplace or economy can form.

Running a marketplace means serving two completely different customer types, supply side and demand side, each requiring separate messaging, separate channels, and separate value propositions. That complexity is why service businesses are simpler to scale and why founders considering marketplace models should understand the operational burden before committing.

A recent Bitcoin payment took 17 to 20 minutes to arrive at a standard wallet address, with repeated manual refreshes before it finally appeared. That real-time experience with base layer settlement speed demonstrated exactly why Lightning's instant confirmation matters for anyone expecting Bitcoin to function as a payment method.

The next generation will grow up with 24/7 access to decentralized financial systems and will have no concept of three-to-five business day settlement windows or restricted banking hours. The shift from manual check-based processing to always-on internet money represents a generational break in how people expect money to move.

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Lightning payment processing runs at 0.29%. Card networks charge 2% to 5%. Square just announced zero Bitcoin processing fees for its entire retailer network for the next year. If your business is still eating 4% on every transaction or passing surcharges to customers, you are funding someone else's infrastructure instead of building your own. Run the math on what Lightning saves you annually and start testing it.

Over 2,600 people joined the Rails waitlist shortly after launch because it answered a question most Bitcoin yield products ignore: why should you hand over your asset to earn on it? Deposit into your own wallet, let automated systems route payments through your node, and capture fees without a third party ever touching your Bitcoin. If your treasury strategy requires trusting a custodian, you are adding risk that does not need to exist.

The average IPO takes 14 to 15 years. That is a long time to solve hard problems alone. Every investor who earns a board seat should be someone who brings expertise your team lacks and a network you cannot access on your own. If a board member is not fully invested in your success, replace them. And even if you are not a founder, build a personal advisory board you call regularly, not just when something breaks.

One company thought it was paying an IT services provider and discovered it was sending money to North Korean nation-state actors. That is the kind of compliance failure that ends careers and triggers federal investigations. If you are operating in a permissionless payment environment, map your existing fiat regulatory obligations into that context now. Do not wait for a sanctions violation to force the conversation.

AI systems are going to start paying each other within the next three to five years. Robots in homes, autonomous agents running errands, automated procurement, all of it needs payment infrastructure that settles instantly and costs almost nothing. Start thinking now about what guardrails you would set for an AI agent with spending authority and what kind of money you would trust it with. The companies that build for machine-to-machine payments early will own the rails everyone else has to rent.

Website: https://defitax.us/

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shraderjesse/ 

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ambosstech 

Company Website: https://amboss.tech/

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Jesse Shrader | Co-Founder of Amboss

Jesse Shrader is the CEO and co-founder of Amboss Technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resources Engineering from Humboldt State University. Before entering the Bitcoin space, Jesse worked as an engineer at the Oregon Department of Transportation and the City of Portland, where he focused on highway asset management and infrastructure planning. He also worked as a project coordinator at Epiq, handling calls tied to class action lawsuits against banks. That combination of building physical infrastructure and witnessing predatory banking practices like overdraft fee manipulation pushed him toward decentralized payment systems. In 2021, Jesse co-founded Amboss to build coordination and infrastructure tools for Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Under his leadership, the company raised $4M in seed funding led by Stillmark, launched Magma (the largest Lightning liquidity marketplace), Rails (a self-custodial Bitcoin yield service), and Reflex (a compliance automation engine). Amboss operates as a distributed team spanning 10 countries and 7 time zones. Jesse is a frequent speaker at Bitcoin conferences and a published researcher, with work appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Algorithms.

Amboss Technologies is a payment infrastructure and data analytics company built on Bitcoin's Lightning Network. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Amboss provides a suite of products designed to make Lightning payments scalable, compliant, and accessible for businesses and individuals worldwide. Its core products include Magma, the largest Lightning liquidity marketplace; Rails, a self-custodial Bitcoin yield service that lets users earn fees from payment routing without giving up custody; Reflex, a compliance automation engine that applies fiat regulatory frameworks to decentralized payment environments; and Amboss Space, a Lightning Network explorer and directory used by over 3,400 claimed nodes. The company raised $4M in seed funding led by Stillmark, with backing from Draper Associates. Amboss uses machine learning, including graph neural networks, to optimize payment routing and liquidity management across the Lightning Network. The company recently announced a partnership with Voltage to offer a payments API that enables businesses to accept both Bitcoin and stablecoins over Lightning with minimal setup.

Tedd Huff is CEO of Voalyre, a fintech advisory firm, and founder of Fintech Confidential. Over the past 25+ years, he has contributed to fintech startups as an Advisory Board Member, Co-Founder, and Chief Experience Officer, providing strategic and tactical direction for global companies. His expertise focuses on growth while delivering process improvements and user experience-driven value to simplify the complexity of payments. As host and executive producer of Fintech Confidential, Tedd brings entertaining and informative content focused on fintech industry insights, market trends, and stories from fintech leaders, thinkers, and doers. He is a recognized thought leader and U.S. Army veteran known for making complex financial technology approachable and engaging through his conversational storytelling style and deep understanding of global payments, cross-border transactions, and payment localization.

Fintech Confidential is a production of DD3 Media. Bringing you the people, tech, and companies that change how you pay and get paid. Fintech Confidential goes beyond surface-level sound bites to deliver real conversations with the builders, founders, and operators shaping the future of financial services. New episodes are available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen. Sign up at fintechconfidential.com to go deeper into what the team is tracking behind the scenes. Share this episode with someone serious about where fintech is heading.