David Parkinson is advancing a clear and conviction-led vision for the future of commerce, though global payments infrastructure remains constrained by legacy systems designed for a pre-digital economy. As Founder and CEO of Musqet, he is building a platform that positions Bitcoin not as a peripheral innovation, but as a practical and increasingly essential component of everyday transactions.
Musqet’s proposition is both strategically elegant and commercially grounded: a fully integrated payments stack that unifies global card networks, mobile wallets and Bitcoin within a single, frictionless system. By addressing long-standing inefficiencies, ranging from opaque pricing to operational fragmentation, the company enables merchants to reduce costs, streamline processes and access new forms of financial utility, all while remaining aligned with evolving consumer expectations.
In this interview with TechBullion, Parkinson outlines why the convergence of traditional and decentralised payment systems is no longer theoretical but inevitable, how Musqet is lowering the barriers to Bitcoin adoption at scale, and what it will take for digital currency to transition from a niche asset class to a mainstream medium of exchange across the global economy.
Can you give us the elevator pitch for Musqet — what problem are you solving for merchants today?
Merchants are typically overcharged and underserved by legacy payment processors that were built for a pre-digital world. Musqet solves that by rebuilding the entire payment process from the ground up — with merchants and customers at its heart. We offer card payments across Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Apple Pay and Google Pay alongside Bitcoin, all through a single terminal and online gateway. Our fees are often significantly lower than the industry norm, our infrastructure is more robust, and we give merchants something no one else does: a genuine path into the Bitcoin economy. Every merchant we onboard isn’t just getting better payments, they’re getting a front-row seat to the future of money as it unfolds in real time.
Musqet offers card payments, mobile wallets, and Bitcoin all through a single terminal and online gateway. Why is that full-stack integration important, and why hasn’t anyone else done it?
Most payment companies see Bitcoin as a bolt-on, something to tick a box. We see it as a foundational component of trade and business. Musqet was, I believe, the first company in the world to offer fully integrated card payments and self-custodial Bitcoin Lightning payments all in a single physical device and online gateway. The reason nobody else has done it is simple: existing payment and financial services businesses don’t understand Bitcoin, it’s also very, very hard to engineer! The vast majority of payment companies treat Bitcoin as just another payment method rather than a system that fundamentally changes commerce. Having access to the best form of money the world has ever seen and which can be sent instantly, globally at a fraction of the cost of a traditional transfer is truly game changing. Not only that, it can also be used as a valuable collateral asset for additional capex and opex financing, loyalty and reward products and a key source of differentiation for a business. We built our infrastructure from scratch so that a merchant doesn’t need two systems, two dashboards, two accounting processes, two reporting suites and two reconciliation processes. It’s one seamless experience – cards and Bitcoin side by side – and that’s what makes adoption frictionless for real businesses.
You’ve built Musqet’s Bitcoin infrastructure on the Lightning Network with non-custodial nodes for each merchant. Can you explain what that means in plain terms and why it matters for a business owner?
In plain terms, every Musqet merchant gets their own Bitcoin Lightning node – think of it as their own vault. “Non-custodial” means we never hold your Bitcoin. You hold it. Your keys, your coins. The Lightning Network is a layer built on top of Bitcoin that makes transactions instant and virtually free – so when a customer pays in Bitcoin, it settles instantly, not in minutes, days or even weeks later. For a business owner, this means you’re getting the speed of a card payment (which is really only an authorisation to claim the funds) with the finality of cash. There are no chargebacks, no intermediaries sitting on your funds. We handle all the technical setup – the node creation, wallet configuration and channel management so the merchant just sees a payment come in, fast and secure.
Traditional processors like Stripe and Square charge merchants 1.4–1.9% per transaction. How does Musqet’s fee structure compare, and where do those savings come from?
The payments landscape is opaque, with widely varying fees depending on risk. Some merchants, particularly in high-risk or deferred delivery sectors, can pay 3–5%+ in total processing costs. Under Visa and Mastercard scheme rules, cardholders can initiate chargebacks for non-delivery, and while liability is first assigned to the merchant, the acquirer ultimately bears the risk if the merchant becomes insolvent. As a result, businesses with deferred fulfilment (e.g. subscriptions, ticketing, furniture) are considered higher risk and priced accordingly.
So every acquirer also has a different risk profile regarding the types of company they will process payments for. We are bound by the same risks in this regard but our objective is always to deliver a total cost of ownership model that includes a lower rate of a % of the transaction value and a separate processing fee per transaction. Physical stores also use securely encrypted handheld terminals for card payment processing and the hardware often comes with a monthly charge alongside a host of other payments extras and additional account management charges. So getting to a lower cost of processing whilst adding value and being much more transparent with customers is always our objective. We don’t carry the overheads of the legacy players, and we pass those efficiencies directly to merchants. No hidden charges, no minimum spends, transparent pricing. For a hospitality or retail business running tight margins, that difference goes straight to the bottom line. The world we want to see is one in which Bitcoin is widely used as currency, so to achieve this, we will do whatever it takes to provide the best payments services to businesses.
You’ve announced partnerships with Vodafone and Verifone. What do those relationships mean for Musqet’s growth trajectory in 2026?
Vodafone provides our IoT connectivity, giving our terminals secure network coverage in over 180 countries. That’s critical because it means a Musqet terminal works reliably anywhere – not just in the UK but across Europe and beyond, which supports our expansion plans. Verifone is our hardware partner, giving merchants access to world-class, trusted payment devices. We’re also working with Google’s ChromeOS team on a stable, globally scalable and reliable ePOS solution. These aren’t vanity partnerships – they’re infrastructure foundations. In 2026, we’re focused on pushing the boundaries of our engineering capabilities while these relationships give us the distribution and credibility to scale. When we ramp up our brand outreach, we’ll be doing so with genuinely best-in-class partners behind us.
Many merchants are curious about Bitcoin but worry about volatility. How does Musqet address that concern — can a pub in London accept Bitcoin and still pay its suppliers in pounds?
Absolutely – a pub in London can accept Bitcoin and still pay its suppliers in pounds. Musqet settles in Bitcoin, stablecoins (later this year) or local currency, as the merchant chooses. If they want zero exposure to price movement, Bitcoin gets converted to sterling instantly. But here’s what I’d say to the publican who’s nervous: volatility is a feature of an emerging asset class, not a flaw. Over any meaningful time horizon, Bitcoin has outperformed every other asset. We give merchants the option to hold some or all of their Bitcoin receipts as a savings mechanism – building a micro-treasury on their balance sheet. But the choice is entirely theirs. Our job is to remove the friction and the fear, and let the merchant decide what works best for their business.
You’re launching a Bitcoin Incentive and Compensation Scheme (BICS) that lets employers pay staff in Bitcoin. What’s the thinking behind that, and who is it designed for?
BICS is launching in 2026, and it’s the other side of our merchant equation. If merchants can accept Bitcoin, why can’t employers pay staff with it? We’re upgrading corporate payroll infrastructure to give employers the ability to allocate a portion of compensation in Bitcoin – whether that’s bonuses, incentives, or a percentage of salary. It’s designed for forward-thinking businesses who want to attract and retain talent, particularly in tech, hospitality, and anywhere with a younger, digitally native workforce. The thinking is straightforward: if your employees could have received even a small portion of their pay in Bitcoin over the past five years, they’d be significantly wealthier. BICS makes that possible in a compliant, easy-to-manage way.
Musqet has talked about helping merchants build a Bitcoin micro-treasury on their balance sheet. Why should a restaurant or e-commerce business hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset?
I wrote about this for CoinDesk — the traditional corporate playbook of holding cash reserves is a slow bleed. Inflation erodes purchasing power year after year. A restaurant sitting on £50,000 in cash reserves is losing real value every single day. Bitcoin’s compounding annual growth rate over recent years has been extraordinary. We’re not saying put your entire float into Bitcoin. We’re saying allocate a small percentage of your reserves into an asset that has consistently outpaced inflation, that’s borderless, liquid, and scarce. Musqet makes this operationally simple – merchants accumulate Bitcoin through their day-to-day transactions and can hold it as a balance sheet asset. It’s a savings strategy, not speculation, and it’s something every business owner should be considering.
The UK’s regulatory environment for digital assets is still evolving. How do you navigate that, and what would you like to see from regulators to help companies like Musqet scale faster?
We navigate it carefully and proactively. Musqet operates as an Independent Sales Organisation in partnership with Shift4 and Rapyd, which are authorised as an Electronic Money Institutions by the FCA. On the Bitcoin side, we’re closely tracking the new FSMA-based crypto regime — the FCA’s authorisation gateway opens in September 2026, with the full regime expected by October 2027. What I’d like to see from regulators is clarity and proportionality. The UK has an opportunity to be the global leader in digital asset regulation, and the direction of travel is broadly encouraging. But the rules need to work for businesses like ours that are building real infrastructure, not just exchanges. Faster, clearer guidance on payment-focused Bitcoin businesses would help us – and the whole ecosystem – scale with confidence.
Looking out 3–5 years, what does success look like for Musqet — and what would it take for Bitcoin payments to move from niche to mainstream at the point of sale?
Success for Musqet looks like Bitcoin being as unremarkable as contactless at the point of sale. You tap your card, you scan a QR code – the merchant doesn’t care, the customer doesn’t think twice. We want to be the infrastructure that makes that normality possible, processing millions of transactions across the UK and Europe. For Bitcoin payments to go mainstream, three things need to happen: merchants need a single, simple system that handles everything – which we’ve built. Consumers need wallets that are as intuitive as Apple Pay – which is happening rapidly. And the narrative needs to shift from Bitcoin as speculation to Bitcoin as money – which is our mission every single day. The role Musqet plays is building the destinations and endpoints for people to spend Bitcoin on everyday goods and services. That’s how it becomes a truly global medium of exchange.
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David Parkinson, Founder & CEO
David Parkinson is the Founder & CEO of Musqet, a leading borderless payments infrastructure provider for businesses. As a a next-generation merchant acquiring and Bitcoin payment services business revolutionizing card-present, ePOS, and online payments with cost-optimized payment routing, Musqet empowers merchants & e-commerce platforms to securely accept payments in store or online and receive Bitcoin from anywhere in the world in a way that is instant, borderless, and unstoppable.
