Bitcoin Re-Occuring Subscritption Payments Solution?

[Sage]

Is there any solution anywhere that will allow me to setup free trials + re-occuring payments on a website?

[1714036982]

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[1714036982]

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[1714036982]

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[CIYAM]

Not quite sure exactly what you are asking about (free trials of what?) but the very nature of Bitcoin means that unlike credit cards (which are a pull system) the wallet owner has to make each an every payment themselves (which is a push system).

So until the standard (or some other) client comes with a "periodic payment" sub-system you could really only send a payment reminder to your customers.

You might be interested to take a look at Open Transactions though as I think it could be suitable for creating contracts with recurring payments.

[Stephen Gornick]

Is there any solution anywhere that will allow me to setup free trials + re-occuring payments on a website?

This will probably come from a wallet provider.  Like CoinBase for instance.   Also BitPay.com was describing how they might be able to do it.

[Mike Hearn]

The software people use doesn't support it at the moment, but it's an easy modification to make.

On mobile wallets, it's easy to get the OS to wake the app up at pre-determined times and make a payment in the background. As long as you keep your phone on all the time, you're done at this point. For desktop wallets, you can do something similar.

One question is how best to do it if you don't want to have a wallet app running/runnable all the time, eg you close the lid on your laptop then go on vacation for a few weeks. Firstly you need a payment protocol and an app that makes working with multiple wallets easy, like MultiBit does, and we need to re-activate tx replacement. Now do this:

Put some money into your "subscription to foo" wallet. Your app can then break up the funds such that there is an output for each recurring payment up to the amount of money placed into the wallet. Then it creates transactions with nLockTimes set such that each transaction is a recurring payment and submits all of them in a batch to the provider. They can only claim the money once each billing period has passed. If the user wishes to unsubscribe, they just move the money out of that separate wallet they created using transactions that have a higher version number. The service provider can be automatically notified that the timelocked transactions they have got double-spent away and thus that the service should be cancelled.

[oldschool]

Also BitPay.com was describing how they might be able to do it.

I'd be interested in reading about that, care to explain further or link to where they discussed it?

Thanks!

[Kris]

I think WalletBit got what you are looking for.

https://walletbit.com/docs/subscriptions

[oldschool]

I think WalletBit got what you are looking for.

https://walletbit.com/docs/subscriptions

A little off-topic, but what was the outcome of the DDOS and ransom Kris?

[Stephen Gornick]

I'd be interested in reading about that, care to explain further or link to where they discussed it?

I'm remembering something more specific on it but don't remember the source.  They are aware of the demand and the issues:

Subscriptions are a big source of charge backs and can sometimes completely negate any benefits.  Still, there's nothing that says you can't make a wallet that would support a subscription billing model.

[maaku]

Open-Transactions.

[Kris]

I think WalletBit got what you are looking for.

https://walletbit.com/docs/subscriptions

A little off-topic, but what was the outcome of the DDOS and ransom Kris?

Nothing much, I managed to prevent it rather good, and they have giving up now. But back on topic, WalletBit subscription do required that the person fund their account, we have no way of sending them invoices for missing amount. So you need to make sure you account for this when you receive status = 0 from the IPN.