Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,
I just wanted to let you know that I recently realized that there is no option for recurring transactions in the Bitcoin client. This could be very useful very example for people who wish to do one of the following:

- donate a certain amount of Bitcoins to charity every month
- pay their (electricity, water, whatever) bills in Bitcoins
- support someone (maybe a family member) over and over again
- etc...

At the moment this may seem a bit overkill but I'm pretty sure it will become very crucial once Bitcoin becomes a bigger player and companies start to accept it as a valid payment option.
What do you guys think? Any plans to change the official client to implement this feature?

It's a notible omission. the only solution I've managed to come up with is online wallets...

I wonder if someone very smart could come up with a decentralised solution that worked without wallets needing to be 'online' 100% of the time

It doesn't belong in the main client. Write a simple script or have someone do it for you. The last thing we need is 100 threads like "Zomg, I just donated 50 bitcents to EFF even though they don't want it anymore and since the value went to $29000/BTC I could have bought a car instead"

OT supports these.  They're called "payment plans".

It's actually a contract between two parties, must be signed by both of them, and it describes the initial payment, as well as the regular payments, with delays, amounts, account IDs, etc.

Transfers occur regularly according to the terms in the contract, and receipts are automatically delivered into both parties' inboxes after each payment.

-FT

Yes, I'm starting to think more and more that BTC need OT fronting it, or something similar. In fact I'm certain it will.

@FreeMoney: Well, the value of Bitcoin could go done as well. I think a recurring transaction would only really make sense if the value of Bitcoin is pretty stable but in my opinion that's no excuse to ignore this issue while the value is still volatile.
@fellowtraveler: What is OT?   ???

This is really simple to do with a script that talks to bitcoin to send a payment. Can probably even use cron or if you're on Windows the task scheduler for this.

Another possible option that is possible with the bitcoin protocol: if you want to pay someone every month for a year, you can send out 12 transactions, each with an increasing locktime that contains the time you want that transaction to confirm and the receiver to be able to receive those coins.
For this to work, you need to have the bitcoins up front, but it can be handy for instance if you want to pay for services from someone and don't want to give that person all the bitcoins at once out of fear of him/her running away with them.

Waldschrat: OT is open-transactions. I'm not exactly sure what it is yet as I haven't spent enough time reading up on it, but this post (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20425) by fellowtraveler may be interesting to you.

OT = Open Transactions

Personally, I think its the future of bitcoin. Big call I know.

Wow, lot of stuff to read there. That will keep me busy for a while. Thanks for the link. :)

I agree but I also think that the Bitcoin client should be as newbie-friendly as possible to gain further acceptance. Probably most non-geek people don't like to play with cron jobs or task schedulers to create a recurring transaction.
If this would be a direct feature in the main client they wouldn't have to bother.