The trifluoroacetyl moiety has been used as a new protecting group for guanidine functionality. The protecting group is easily cleaved under mild basic conditions and is complementary to the Boc, Cbz, and Ddpe protecting groups. The protecting group can be applied to peptide synthesis in solution as well as on a solid phase as it is orthogonal to a Boc and Cbz strategy and semiorthogonal to an Fmoc strategy.