I come from a world of direct-to-consumer monthly subscription services and realize that a huge hurdle for widespread adoption of digital currency payments, especially online, is the lack of automated re-billing. Here's an idea:
SOLUTION?What do you guys think about a wallet software (either online or PC-based) that merchants could directly interface with to schedule timed payments be released to the merchant. The walletholder must agree to the payments and as long as enough BTC exists in the wallet, the wallet will push the scheduled payment to the merchant's address. PayPal does something similar. What I like about this idea is that, unlike simple credit card subscriptions where you'll only know you're being charged if you look at your monthly bill, and if you want to unsubscribe you must contact the merchant and/or go through a whole cancellation process, you can see and cancel from any subscription.
Services like Netflix's original DVD-by-mail model require easy access to a customer's credit card because the nonprofitable folks who rented DVDs everyday were offset by the folks who underutilized the service with only a rental or two per month. And some members haven't rented in quite a few months while still being billed monthly! Like it or not, it's a revenue model that businesses have come to rely on.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS?Someone mentioned WalletBit offers this service (see
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179227.msg1869819#msg1869819), but I don't see any mention of this at WalletBit's website.
A problem I see is that a person could either run out of BTC or purposely pull their BTC to prevent services from being able to receive next month's funds. Sure, you could say anyone could max out a credit card today or claim a card as lost which would prevent a biller from receiving the next payment, but it's a lot more work for a deadbeat to close or max out a card than just pulling funds from this wallet and going dark.
This hurts merchants in scenarios where the customer is holding rented inventory that the merchant will never be able to recoup, whereas they could simply have charged the customer's credit card for an unreturned item.
Any ideas on solving this? I'd love to hear your thoughts that can protect the merchant while still being fair for the customer.
