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Before accepting any payments, make sure you back up your store’s wallet.
  1. Write down the recovery phrase: This is enough to recover the wallet’s balance in the event of a system failure. Recovery from the phrase alone requires the Ark server’s cooperation, and it doesn’t restore the payment history or the state of any in-progress exits.
  2. Set up continuous backups (optional): A backup that you fully control, with the entire payment history included.
The Backups page explains the mechanics behind both in more depth.

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Write down the recovery phrase

1

Open the Bark settings

Go to Bark > Settings.
2

Reveal the phrase

Select View Recovery Phrase in the Backup section.
3

Write down the 12 words

Copy them in order, somewhere safe and offline. The phrase never changes, so this is a one-time step. Select Done to return to Settings.

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Set up continuous backups

Each store’s wallet lives in BTCPay Server’s data directory, under bark/stores/<store ID>, with its recovery phrase alongside. The Backup section of Bark > Settings shows the exact path, with a copy button. On a standard Docker deployment, that directory sits inside the BTCPay data volume on your server’s disk.
Your backups contain the wallet’s keys. The recovery phrase is stored in plain text. Anyone who can read the wallet directory or its backups can spend the wallet’s bitcoin, so restrict access to both.
Second doesn’t have a mature continuous backup solution for the Bark plugin yet. If you’re comfortable experimenting, consider these options:
  • bark-backupd: Second’s experimental backup daemon. It watches a wallet directory and snapshots the database on every change. It encrypts each snapshot with a key derived from the recovery phrase, then ships it to a cloud drive or any S3-compatible target. Test bark-backupd restore before you rely on it.
  • Litestream: A streaming replicator that keeps a live, off-machine copy of the wallet database. The wallet database isn’t formally tested in the WAL journal mode Litestream requires, so treat the approach as experimental.
Regular BTCPay backups are a baseline whole-server backup, but they typically aren’t frequent enough for a reliable Bark wallet backup.
If a backup misses your latest wallet changes, recovering the whole balance will require restoring from the recovery phrase, which relies on the Ark server’s cooperation.

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Restore a wallet from its recovery phrase

To bring a wallet back on a store that has no Bark wallet yet, select Import existing wallet on the Set up Bark screen and enter the 12 words in the Seed phrase field. Set up a Bark wallet for your store walks through that screen. The plugin rebuilds the wallet with the Ark server’s help, and the balance appears once the wallet has synced.
Screenshot of the Set up Bark screen with Import existing wallet selected and the 12 numbered word fields under Seed phrase

Import existing wallet turns the Set up Bark screen into a 12-word entry form