# River

> Fiat ↔ BTC (US) plus Lightning payments via the RLS API

A US Bitcoin-only financial-services company — buy, sell, hold, with Lightning send/receive on supported products and the RLS Lightning-payments API.

- Category: fiat-ramp
- Payment methods: lightning, onchain, fiat
- KYC: required
- Custody: custodial
- Automatability: api-kyc — API after KYC onboarding — automatable once a human completes identity verification
- Auth: API key — KYC onboarding required
- Quickstart: Complete KYC onboarding, then use the RLS API for Lightning send/receive — a payments API, not buy/sell trading (docs.rls.dev).
- Site: https://river.com
- Docs/API: https://docs.rls.dev
- Full card (verified detail, gotchas): https://bitcoineconomy.ai/exchanges/river
- Provenance: curated (last verified 2026-06-06)

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Part of [The Marketplace directory](https://marketplace.bitcoineconomy.ai/) · registry JSON: https://marketplace.bitcoineconomy.ai/directory.json · full thesis: https://bitcoineconomy.ai/case