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. 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.
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.
On the contrary, how will they know bitcoin/blockchain technology if they wouldn't use or apply it? For me this is a good step as other industry outside of banking are really applying blockchain because of the many advantage of it. As far as refund is concern, this should be the first thing that a merchant will have to understand, that any transaction in bitcoin cannot be reversed and they can only be refunded by the person receiving the funds. However, bitcoin can detect if you put an invalid address by mistake.
