Are Bitcoin LN POS terminals the future of bitcoin payments?

[Synchronice]

I was just watching videos about Lighting Network and then this idea came to my mind, to integrate Bitcoin Lighting Network into POS terminal, then googled it and this nice video came out as a result, watch this: FREE Bitcoin POS (BTC Lightning Network Accepted Here).

We have an open-source payment processor called BTCPay Server which is a great help to get rid of 3rd parties and accept bitcoin payments in a modern way on your websites. I think it's possible to have an open-source payment processor for real-life payments. Just imagine, you have a hot hardware wallet that looks & functions like a contactless card and uses NFC technology to be able to pay with your hot wallet/card on Bitcoin POS terminal. And it's done though Lighting Network channel. Doesn't it sound cool?

[NotATether]

There are some intricacies of Lightning channels that make the client-side of payments (that is, sending payments) difficult. First, assuming you manage to successfully make a connection, or use some custodial channel, the maximum amount of money you can send is the amount you opened the channel with. I am not sure if you can refill the sending capacity with more HLTCs - it might be possible.

Second, these things work great for mobile wallets. As for desktop wallets, you might as well just run a Lightning node.

[DaveF]

As block / others start deploying LN to their terminals it's probably going to be a done deal by just the amount of them that are out there.
Merchants are lazy, they just want to get paid they don't care how people pay.
So, if all they have to do is click 'I Agree' on the screen that pops up on their back end to and they can take LN, or any other form of payment they will probably do it.

Now, will they get crypto or just fiat transferred to them is a different story. And how much will said services charge. And so on.
Those going to be the main sticking points of adoption happening.

-Dave

[Flexystar]

It could be good idea but after solving all the above stated intricacies one still need to achieve the marketing of these PoS machines. Plus who would be the authority to run these servers when these PoS machines are enforced in every shops and malls? Will there be a centralised authority who will provide the service for this.  If yes, then how we can call it as decentralised way of paying things.

Idk, but let’s say PoS is being manufactured by one party, then all the set up and handling should be given in the hands of machine holder. Just like ASIC manufacturer in case of mining where miners is looking after all the set up and running.

 Is this correct?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Depends on whether the lightning network is the future of Bitcoin payments. I genuinely doubt. It's pretty limited unfortunately. Sure, it helps as fuck at the moment (especially at the moment), but technically and economically speaking, it isn't worth it for the vast majority of merchants which can be paid alternatively in cash or credit / debit POS. Visa might cost a lot, but it's questionably more than the maintenance of a lightning node.

We need more work on second layers.

[Ambatman]

According to @ETFBitcoin a contactless card already exist the Bolt card by coincorner and the audience is pretty low
I still can't see how its better than using Mobile wallet since losing the card would allow any body make use of the card without been traced
If it occurs who would the person report to?
I still find having POS terminal for Bitcoin similar to traditional method of using third parties
This is like centralized exchanges acting like banks and issuing ATM's

The question should be are second layer network the future of Bitcoin payment? Lightning network won't be the only second layer network by then and besides by then the transactions made would be freaking high, can lightning network alone solve the scalability issue?

[joniboini]

I still can't see how its better than using Mobile wallet since losing the card would allow any body make use of the card without been traced
If it occurs who would the person report to?

For the product mentioned above, it seems like you can disable the card if you lose it. You can also set a spending limit for each card[1], so somebody else won't be able to drain your money. If this becomes popular, I'm pretty sure other products will have more or less the same feature. The only upside of using cards like this is basically convenience. The target market is definitely the average joe instead of those who want more control over their money.

I still find having POS terminal for Bitcoin similar to traditional method of using third parties

Doesn't it depend on what payment gateway the merchant use? If they use a self-hosted and open-source payment gateway, I don't think you can say it is the same as a traditional fiat gateway. CMIIW.

[1] https://support.coincorner.com/hc/en-us/articles/5749465410972-What-if-I-lose-my-Bolt-Card-

[Yamane_Keto]

Just imagine, you have a hot hardware wallet that looks & functions like a contactless card and uses NFC technology to be able to pay with your hot wallet/card on Bitcoin POS terminal. And it's done though Lighting Network channel. Doesn't it sound cool?

Using the word hot hardware wallet is not correct, the idea of hardware wallet is that your seed is not connected to the internet, and the word hot wallet comes from the fact that the wallet is connected to the internet and is used over and over again.
Then hardware wallets are designed to be kept in a safe place, but you can use the lightning network on your phone and pay using the lightning network for your daily payments.

BTCPay Server works well as a Bitcoin POS terminal and all you need is a wallet in your phone that supports the Lightning Network and a QR code scan.


For Lightning NFC, this project is good because you can receive payments with a NFC tag and a Lightning Wallet https://github.com/theDavidCoen/LightningNFC/blob/main/README.md#send-payments-with-a-nfc-tag-and-a-btcpay-server-pos

NFC tag can be a card or a ring.

[DaveF]

Obviously no. Anyone who research LN extensively or already use it would know LN limitation such as it's not really suitable if you rarely make/receive payment.

Isn't that with any method of payment. Like I said above.

Eliminating everything else, if you don't see a need for something or doing think it's going to improve your business, you are not going to do it. That really is where all these places like Square that process payments for credit cards come into play. If all a merchant has to do it click 'I Agree' a few times on the portal they already go to daily to check credit card processing things and be able to take BTC / LN / Crypto whatever then they are more likely to do it then jump though a bunch of hoops.
Bring it back to credit cards. Most legitimate places CAN get better rates then these terminal in a box services. But it's a lot of time and effort and paperwork and so on. Or you can pay the extra percentage and just get a terminal shipped to you. It dies, they ship another one, no jumping though hoops. Have a different issue, no having to deal with the CC processor, the bank, whoever else. It's 1 point of contact and done. So yes LN is going to benefit as these services start to put it in their terminals and let more merchants accept it with no other work needed.

-Dave

[Synchronice]

I'm not exactly sure what mean, but The Bolt Card[2] roughly match what you described.

Bolt card is used in this video.

Depends on whether the lightning network is the future of Bitcoin payments. I genuinely doubt. It's pretty limited unfortunately. Sure, it helps as fuck at the moment (especially at the moment), but technically and economically speaking, it isn't worth it for the vast majority of merchants which can be paid alternatively in cash or credit / debit POS. Visa might cost a lot, but it's questionably more than the maintenance of a lightning node.

We need more work on second layers.

As far as I understand, Lighting Network only helps you if you and 2nd person send coins often between each-other, otherwise, if it's only for one-time payment, you can't really save on fees because you have to close channel and that's the moment when you are pushed to pay fees.

Just imagine, you have a hot hardware wallet that looks & functions like a contactless card and uses NFC technology to be able to pay with your hot wallet/card on Bitcoin POS terminal. And it's done though Lighting Network channel. Doesn't it sound cool?

Using the word hot hardware wallet is not correct, the idea of hardware wallet is that your seed is not connected to the internet, and the word hot wallet comes from the fact that the wallet is connected to the internet and is used over and over again.
Then hardware wallets are designed to be kept in a safe place, but you can use the lightning network on your phone and pay using the lightning network for your daily payments.

I think, hot hardware wallet, this term describes the mixture of hot wallet and hardware wallet. You can't call an NFC bitcoin card a hardware wallet because it's not as secure as hardware wallet but you can keep it in hardware that looks like a card. Google coolwallet and you'll understand what I mean.


I really want to summon @o_e_l_e_o here, his opinion will be very interesting for everyone. I feel a little bit sad that you ignored this thread.

[nullama]

They are actually the present in some parts of the world, like Germany.

Here you can see a Bitcoin LN POS terminal with a built-in thermal printer for the receipt, basically the same as fiat POS terminals.



source: https://twitter.com/SatoshiStoreio/status/1655855726928052224

As others have mentioned, the Bolt Cards are great for this. You don't need to have an account with the company, you can just buy them and they ship worldwide: https://www.coincorner.com/TheBoltCard

And you can setup your own Bolt Card Server since it's open source: https://github.com/boltcard/boltcard

Once you have the card (or similar device) and you setup your own server, you are ready to tap with lightning anywhere they have a compatible POS such as BTCPayServer, which supports NFC payments.

I wrote about this in the forum a while back: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5411251

[Yamane_Keto]

I think, hot hardware wallet, this term describes the mixture of hot wallet and hardware wallet. You can't call an NFC bitcoin card a hardware wallet because it's not as secure as hardware wallet but you can keep it in hardware that looks like a card. Google coolwallet and you'll understand what I mean.

For this reason, I believe that such services scam users, they give new descriptions of services that are not real, I searched for https://www.coolwallet.io and the least that can be described is garbage, it is a closed source wallet, there is no real explanation of what they are trying to provide Just collect as many terms as possible and name them with a new name, and the price is $149.

There is a hot wallet and a cold storage. Any service that mixes these two terms is scam unless proven otherwise.

Below I find a claim that charlie lee described as a good wallet and I can't find any corroboration of that claim, and a quote from changelly's CEO, changelly is scam enough to be an unreliable company, who is citing their statement?

[Wind_FURY]

Depends on whether the lightning network is the future of Bitcoin payments. I genuinely doubt. It's pretty limited unfortunately. Sure, it helps as fuck at the moment (especially at the moment), but technically and economically speaking, it isn't worth it for the vast majority of merchants which can be paid alternatively in cash or credit / debit POS. Visa might cost a lot, but it's questionably more than the maintenance of a lightning node.

We need more work on second layers.

Shower thought. What the developers of the Lightning Network should do - make all participants of the network emit less data to make everyone and their transactions more anonymous. If it's not going to be the "future of Bitcoin payments", make it function more privately and be a kind of privacy layer built on top of Bitcoin. I believe that would be more in-demand than faster transactions. Most of the users don't really mind the 10 minute confirm times in onchain transactions.

[BlackHatCoiner]

If it's not going to be the "future of Bitcoin payments", make it function more privately and be a kind of privacy layer built on top of Bitcoin.

And how do you propose this will happen more effectively? It is already functioning quite privately. More privacy can emerge with BOLT12 and of course with greater liquidity.

Most of the users don't really mind the 10 minute confirm times in onchain transactions.

Confirmation doesn't take 10 minutes, unless you're having the highest priority. Hundreds of thousands of transactions don't have that, especially recently with the rise of Ordinals we had to wait for like hours --if not days-- to have our transactions confirmed.

There is no future where merchants accept it as point-of-sale based payment method without going off-chain.

[Yamane_Keto]

There is no future where merchants accept it as point-of-sale based payment method without going off-chain.

It depends on the definition of the point of sale. Some contracts can wait for (average) 10 minutes, such as paying for a new car, real estate, bicycle, smart phone, or other services whose average is more than a thousand dollars, and then the fees are not considered a problem, and the delay can be acceptable because these contracts It takes an average of half an hour in total.

Payment for supermarkets, restaurants, and daily needs is the problem, and I see that the lightning network is doing it well as long as the payment is done online and not offline, and the fees in general are better and faster than cash, as most of us use the phone to make these payments.

make it function more privately and be a kind of privacy layer built on top of Bitcoin. I believe that would be more in-demand than faster transactions.

TumbleBit's off-blockchain payments is an example of a way to enhance privacy outside of the Bitcoin network. They have a good idea here, but I haven't heard of an actual implementation of this protocol.

https://github.com/BUSEC/TumbleBit

[BlackHatCoiner]

Payment for supermarkets, restaurants, and daily needs is the problem, and I see that the lightning network is doing it well as long as the payment is done online and not offline, and the fees in general are better and faster than cash, as most of us use the phone to make these payments.

I'm talking about these. Obviously, you won't (and shouldn't) ever buy a car via lightning. The problem comes with transactions we make once a day, once a week etc., like buying groceries, renewing your Spotify subscription, and the like. You can't expect millions of people to wait days for these, and it's exactly what will happen if we all paid them on-chain.

[DaveF]

Payment for supermarkets, restaurants, and daily needs is the problem, and I see that the lightning network is doing it well as long as the payment is done online and not offline, and the fees in general are better and faster than cash, as most of us use the phone to make these payments.

I'm talking about these. Obviously, you won't (and shouldn't) ever buy a car via lightning. The problem comes with transactions we make once a day, once a week etc., like buying groceries, renewing your Spotify subscription, and the like. You can't expect millions of people to wait days for these, and it's exactly what will happen if we all paid them on-chain.

What I also see happening (and this is just a guess) is a change back to the way we did some things back years ago. Once again this is US based so the rest of the world might have acted differently. But here you if you wanted to pay by check some places took it and just took the risk, others like a lot of supermarkets, took down some information and gave you a card so the cashier knew they could take a check from you without getting more info.

Changing the way wallets work a bit would solve this. Instead of RBF we call it 'Unchangeable Transaction' when you make it, you have to check that box so the store knows that no matter what you can't do anything about the TX going through.

Also, you can make it so POS terminal generates a QR code that the wallet understands that makes sure the fee should get you into the next block or 2. No sending a 3 sat/vb transaction when fees are where they are now (7x that amount)

And so on.

Honestly, and although you are giving up a lot of privacy I think it's going to wind up with what I see now which is places like Coinbase issuing debit cards that pull from your crypto balance.

Because, people are cheap, why send your crypto to whoever for free and pay a fee when you do it, when you can use your debit card and not pay the tx fee AND get 1% to 4% back.  https://www.coinbase.com/card

-Dave

[Wind_FURY]

If it's not going to be the "future of Bitcoin payments", make it function more privately and be a kind of privacy layer built on top of Bitcoin.

And how do you propose this will happen more effectively?

I don't know to be honest. I was merely suggesting that if it isn't going to be the future of Bitcoin payments like you said, then it's probably better for it to be built also as a privacy layer?

We're currently in an era when mixers are getting seized, and with tools like WasabiWallet filtering incoming transactions, shouldn't there be an open network that welcomes all UTXOs to enter, and makes them untraceable when they exit? Some users might find that useful.

It is already functioning quite privately. More privacy can emerge with BOLT12 and of course with greater liquidity.

👍

Most of the users don't really mind the 10 minute confirm times in onchain transactions.

Confirmation doesn't take 10 minutes, unless you're having the highest priority. Hundreds of thousands of transactions don't have that, especially recently with the rise of Ordinals we had to wait for like hours --if not days-- to have our transactions confirmed.

There is no future where merchants accept it as point-of-sale based payment method without going off-chain.

My point was, under normal circumstances, many users don't mind waiting for their onchain transactions to confirm.

[joniboini]

We're currently in an era when mixers are getting seized, and with tools like WasabiWallet filtering incoming transactions, shouldn't there be an open network that welcomes all UTXOs to enter, and makes them untraceable when they exit? Some users might find that useful.

CMIIW, I believe people can still use coinjoin without relying on Wasabi no? Although I don't think they are suitable for small payments unless the seller allows unconfirmed transactions to be accepted. I can see they sell this as a feature for their customers though.

My point was, under normal circumstances, many users don't mind waiting for their onchain transactions to confirm.

From OP's post, I'd assume we are talking about users who want fast payment confirmation. I don't think those who visit stores and buy stuff with Bitcoin would like to wait more than a few minutes just to get their payment confirmed by the seller.

[srageras]

Is there any way to let similar virtual Cryptocurrency enter the market? For example, entering a supermarket for goods trading？