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Restoring your store’s Bark wallet takes two things: the recovery phrase, and the wallet data that tracks its bitcoin. You write the phrase down once. For the wallet data, a default backup exists on the Ark server, and you can add a trustless one of your own. Your native BTCPay on-chain wallet keeps its own separate backup.

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Where your wallet keys live

The recovery phrase and the wallet database are stored together in BTCPay Server’s data directory, under bark/stores/<store ID>. On a standard docker deployment, that directory sits inside the BTCPay data volume on your server’s disk. Each store has its own directory, holding the keys of its own wallet.

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Write down the recovery phrase

To see the phrase, go to Bark > Settings and select View Seed in the Backup section. Write the words down in order and store them offline. The phrase restores the wallet’s keys, and it unlocks the wallet’s default backup on the Ark server.

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The default backup: a mailbox on the server

Your wallet keeps a record of its VTXOs in a mailbox on the Ark server that only your recovery phrase can unlock. Restoring a wallet from the phrase pulls that record back and checks every VTXO before accepting it, rebuilding the off-chain balance.
This backup depends on the Ark server: it works only while the server cooperates, and it restores the balance, not payment history or exit state.

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The trustless backup: the wallet directory

Back up the wallet directory continuously, along with the rest of your server: the wallet database changes with every payment. Assuming your backup is up-to-date, restoring the backup restores the wallet in full, without depending on the Ark server. For more information on backing up Bark wallets, see the Backups page.
Regular BTCPay backups are a baseline whole-server backup, but they do not provide sufficiently frequent backups for a Bark wallet. You should explore alternative backup solutions to ensure your wallet is recoverable.
Your backups contain the wallet’s keys: the recovery phrase (“mnemonic”) is stored in plain text, and anyone who can read the directory can spend the wallet’s bitcoin. Restrict access to the directory and its backups.