The creator of the first ever commercial fuel pump to accept bitcoin has revealed a plan to add Lightning Network functionality to his design.
The original machine, designed and built by Andy Schroder in 2014, allows users to scan a QR code and send bitcoin instead of more traditional means of payment. Schroder now wants to adapt his design to incorporate the Lightning's off-chain payments, he announced on the Lightning-dev mailing list yesterday.
However, Schroder pointed out some issues he has with Lightning – which he hopes will provide "real-time micropayments" – including that its invoice protocol BOLT 11 does not appear to accommodate refunds. Refunds are a necessity for the bitcoin fuel dispenser, because it runs on a fixed prepayment, and immediately returns any unused credit at the end of sale, he said.
Schroder is currently using bitcoin improvement protocol (BIP) 70, a user-friendly payment protocol that creates a receipt for the customer, as well as automatically providing a refund address to the seller.
He stated in the mailing list:
"I don't really see an option for a refund address like is present in BIP 70. Is this intentional? If so, why do you not see that people would possibly want to receive a refund?"
He also speculated about a possible fix for this problem that would involve fitting cars with an onboard digital wallet, though he conceded this is not a short-term solution.
No I am not agreeing with that because many of the people still do not understand what blockchain is and how to use it. And in my country almost 70 present people do not use internet, because of their life slandered.
It is other thing that in the future it may be the need of everyday life but not in this era. It will be but when the bitcoin will take place of all the regular currencies of the world.
