Paying the city in bitcoin and USDT
From the first online payments to all invoices
In its first phase the payment element of Plan ₿ was limited to certain online transactions with the city. The decisive step came on 5 December 2023, when the City of Lugano announced that from that day every invoice it issued could be paid in bitcoin or USDT.1 The press release listed the taxes of natural persons and of companies as well as all other municipal fees and charges and extended the option to invoices issued before that date that were still unpaid. It stated that there were no exceptions and no limits on the amount and presented Lugano as a pioneer in the "unlimited acceptance" of Kryptowerte und Digital Assets for all its transactions.2 The public broadcaster RSI reported the change under the headline that in Lugano "everything" could now be paid in bitcoin and Tether, and recalled in the same report that the bitcoin cash machines installed in earlier years were rarely used.3
The technical process was designed for the ordinary taxpayer. The citizen opens the city's payment portal, scans the Swiss QR code printed on every municipal invoice with a webcam or smartphone, chooses the currency and sends the amount from a personal wallet. No account with the city or with the intermediary is needed.4 Industry media described the process as automated, with QR-bills scanned through mobile wallets and the conversion carried out by Bitcoin Suisse, which they called an institutional-grade Swiss platform.5 For the taxpayer the experience is therefore close to that of an ordinary e-banking payment. The difference lies in what happens between the wallet and the city's bank account.
The conditions of payment
The conditions published by the city show how carefully the arrangement has been designed to keep all risk away from the municipality.6 They can be summarized as follows:
● Accepted currencies are bitcoin on the main network, bitcoin through the Lightning Network and USDT issued on the Ethereum blockchain.
● Bitcoin Suisse AG collects and converts the payments on behalf of the city.
● A fee of 1 per cent of the amount paid in Swiss francs is charged by the intermediary and built into the exchange rate. The city charges nothing.
● Payments become effective on the day after submission (T+1).
● Only the full amount of an invoice may be paid, and each transaction covers one invoice.
● Payments above CHF 1,500,000 require prior contact with the service to manage the exchange-rate risk.
● Refunds are made exclusively in Swiss francs to the bank account of the holder of the invoice. Each of these conditions has a legal function. The fee is borne by the payer, so that the city receives the full amount due in francs. The effective date of T+1 marks the moment at which the city's claim is discharged, which matters for default interest and for enforcement under the Federal Act on Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy. The prohibition of partial payments avoids disputes about the allocation of amounts that arrive short because of exchange-rate movements. The rule on refunds ensures that the city never has to acquire or transfer Kryptowerte und Digital Assets itself, even where it owes money back to a taxpayer. The limit for large payments reflects the intermediary's need to hedge positions of that size.
The choice of USDT on Ethereum deserves a remark. A large part of USDT in circulation is issued on the Tron network, where transaction fees are lower. The city's conditions admit only the Ethereum version.7 The reason is not stated. It may reflect the intermediary's technical and compliance infrastructure, which is built around the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks, and the greater attention that regulators and analytics firms have paid to illicit flows on other networks. For the taxpayer it means that USDT held on another network must first be bridged or exchanged, at additional cost.
Notes
- Città di Lugano, Comunicazione e relazioni istituzionali, press release "Pagamenti in criptovalute delle fatture", 5 December 2023, https://www.lugano.ch/dam/jcr:4ee9230e-d978-42d8-8f8b-28717a175912/20231205-cs-pagamenti-criptovalute-fatture-lugano.pdf; "A Lugano si paga tutto in Bitcoin e Tether", RSI, 5 December 2023 (updated 11 December 2023), https://www.rsi.ch/info/consumi/A-Lugano-si-paga-tutto-in-Bitcoin-e-Tether--2008942.html (earlier limitation to online transactions). ↩
- City of Lugano, press release of 5 December 2023 (above). ↩
- RSI, "A Lugano si paga tutto in Bitcoin e Tether" (above). ↩
- City of Lugano, press release of 5 December 2023 (above); City of Lugano, "Pay with crypto", https://www.lugano.ch/en/temi-servizi/lavoro-e-impresa/fatture/cripto/. ↩
- Cointelegraph, report of 5 December 2023 (above). ↩
- City of Lugano, "Pay with crypto" (above), for all conditions listed. ↩
- Ibid. (USDT on Ethereum). Share of USDT issued on Tron: Tether, transparency page, https://tether.to/en/transparency/. ↩
For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.