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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: gigabytecoin on April 19, 2011, 09:47:12 AM



Title: Suggestion: Subscription payment cronjob-like area for the Bitcoin GUI?
Post by: gigabytecoin on April 19, 2011, 09:47:12 AM
One of PayPal's and the Banks' most popular products is "repeat billing" or "subscription payments".

Customers love it for it's ease of use and businesses love it for the constant income.

I should be able to enter a bitcoin address into my bitcoin client and pay it the exact same amount of bitcoins however often I so choose.

Imagine having all of your subscription payments easily accessible from a single program on your desktop?

Right now I have to make sure I top up my cell phone every month with my credit card through their website. I have an automatic payment setup to withdraw money from my bank account for a dedicated server I rent. I have care insurance payments that can only be dealt with via fax+phone being charged to by checking account. And I have some forum subscription payments that go through PayPal. It's a nightmare to change any of them. If I could just click "cancel subscription" or uncheck a box on my desktop to cancel a subscription I would be thrilled!!!


Title: Re: Suggestion: Subscription payment cronjob-like area for the Bitcoin GUI?
Post by: kristofferR on April 19, 2011, 10:54:24 PM
Yeah, I've suggested this too. It's absolutely necessary for BitCoin to succeed in making PayPal users switch.

The protocol should not be changed. The default client should just get a tab called Recurring/Regular or something like that where the chosen amount of BTC are sent to a Bitcoin address every day/month/year. The payments should be cancelable with a click of a button.  The recurring money sendings could be sent to any bitcoin address. If you want to donate 10BTC to the faucet/EFF/grandma/other thing every week automatically you could do that. You could use it to pay for hosting, services, rent, donations, funds, savings - basically anything you want. It would be great and make BitCoins even more useful and easy to use.


Title: Re: Suggestion: Subscription payment cronjob-like area for the Bitcoin GUI?
Post by: tomcollins on April 19, 2011, 11:12:50 PM
One of PayPal's and the Banks' most popular products is "repeat billing" or "subscription payments".

Customers love it for it's ease of use and businesses love it for the constant income.

I should be able to enter a bitcoin address into my bitcoin client and pay it the exact same amount of bitcoins whenever I so choose.

Imagine having all of your subscription payments easily accessible from a single program on your desktop?

Right now I have to make sure I top up my cell phone every month with my credit card through their website. I have an automatic payment setup to withdraw money from my bank account for a dedicated server I rent. I have care insurance payments that can only be dealt with via fax+phone being charged to by checking account. And I have some forum subscription payments that go through PayPal. It's a nightmare to change any of them. If I could just click "cancel subscription" or uncheck a box on my desktop to cancel a subscription I would be thrilled!!!

It's a good idea, but probably not a deal breaker right now.  There are lower hanging fruit to go after.  At least in my opinion.


Title: Re: Suggestion: Subscription payment cronjob-like area for the Bitcoin GUI?
Post by: marcus_of_augustus on April 20, 2011, 01:58:55 AM

I like it ... worth working on imo.

Submit a patch when you get it together.


Title: Re: Suggestion: Subscription payment cronjob-like area for the Bitcoin GUI?
Post by: gigabytecoin on April 20, 2011, 07:11:39 AM
One of PayPal's and the Banks' most popular products is "repeat billing" or "subscription payments".

Customers love it for it's ease of use and businesses love it for the constant income.

I should be able to enter a bitcoin address into my bitcoin client and pay it the exact same amount of bitcoins whenever I so choose.

Imagine having all of your subscription payments easily accessible from a single program on your desktop?

Right now I have to make sure I top up my cell phone every month with my credit card through their website. I have an automatic payment setup to withdraw money from my bank account for a dedicated server I rent. I have care insurance payments that can only be dealt with via fax+phone being charged to by checking account. And I have some forum subscription payments that go through PayPal. It's a nightmare to change any of them. If I could just click "cancel subscription" or uncheck a box on my desktop to cancel a subscription I would be thrilled!!!

It's a good idea, but probably not a deal breaker right now.  There are lower hanging fruit to go after.  At least in my opinion.

Sure, not a deal breaker. But it's a pretty simple implementation (windows already has scheduled tasks, and linux cronjobs) for a major improvement in the client imho.