Topic: Mainstream businesses/stores which accept Lightning Network payments? (Read 382 times)

There might be no incentive to use Bitcoin or the Lightning Network on top of traditional payment processors. But I have to admit that fees on BTC (or the LN) are much lower than those charged by credit cards. We'll have to see what use cases the Lightning Network will bring to the mainstream world once its development is complete. The atomic swaps feature could turn out to be real useful for merchants & businesses to convert any cryptocurrency into Bitcoin or vice versa. They could quickly cash out to a stablecoin of their choice too. With instant transactions and ridiculously low fees, the Lightning Network could boost Bitcoin's adoption as we know it.

But we need to promote the benefits of Bitcoin's second-layer solution to the public. Otherwise, mainstream businesses/stores won't accept LN payments anytime soon. It's still too early to talk about this since the LN is still in its infancy. But rest assured that if it becomes successful in the long run, major retailers (like Walmart, Amazon, eBay, etc.) will begin accepting LN payments for the benefit of everyone.



I believe that merchants/businesses would save on fees by using crypto instead of traditional payments processors. It would be more cost-efficient for them to accept Bitcoin or "BTCLN" directly without going through a middleman like BitPay. The only downside is that the merchant/business would need to have a certain level of technical knowledge to send and receive crypto payments. Still, the advantages outweighs the disadvantages. If the need arises for mainstream businesses/stores to start accepting LN payments, you could expect BTC to gain traction like never before.

I'd like to see someday Walmart or even Amazon accepting LN payments directly. It would prove out to be extremely convenient for everyday people as transactions would be settled instantly at a fraction of the cost without middleman. But this could take a couple of years from now before it becomes a reality.

The most attractive uses cases are businesses that are high-margin -- and therefore can provide customer incentives -- but who are also viewed as risky by payment processors and banks:


This thinking naturally extends to other "risky" sectors like pornography, which are prone to high chargeback rates or outright banning by payment processors.

However, when you get down to low-margin, low-risk businesses like grocery stores and coffee shops, the incentives no longer align.

There's loads of incentive for them, you get your money in an hour rather than weeks or months, but there's no practical way they can translate that into an incentive for customers.



I think this is a valid enough reason but we've seen time and again that merchants can't be bothered to keep the possibility open. There is never enough uptake. What's needed is a fire and forget option that doesn't matter whether it draws much custom to start with. I don't know how onerous it is to accept it but it must be a relative hassle for it to keep happening.

To capitalize on Bitcoin users and hodlers willing to part with a small fraction of their wealth just because it has increased so much in value, without having to go through an extra step of selling coins at an exchange.

Beyond true, there's literally no incentive for merchants to hop onto the crypto wave. They're not going to get any more customers as the customers they currently have are going to use them if they use crypto or if they dont.

Why accept crypto then? To save on fees? Maybe -- though most companies are going to want to use something like BitPay which is still going to charge them somewhere in the realm of 1 percent.

But it's just the same as Bitcoin itself. It's great for merchants and always has been. There's still zero incentive for the customer unless they're already into crytpo. Maybe LNs will come up with some truly unique uses but as it stands it's a curio inside a curio to the average personage.

That's certainly true, mate. We should encourage people to use Bitcoin first, in order to drive adoption for the Lightning Network. While I'm quite fond with the LN's instant transaction speeds, and extremely low fees, it's not meant to be used as a replacement for mainstream BTC transactions. Even if people decide to use the LN instead of Bitcoin itself, they still need to own some on-chain BTC in order to open/close a channel.

Instant transactions prove to be extremely convenient for mobile payments on the go. With a variety of LN wallets for mobile devices, people are able to pay for goods & services in a seamless way. I'd have to say that the number of businesses/stores accepting LN payments are still limited these days. But at least, it's better something than nothing.

My most favorite LN services are Bitrefill, and JoltFun. I can buy gift cards online instantly with the LN using Bitrefill, while I can buy games online instantly with JoltFun. Sometimes I'd wish we had a sort of marketplace like eBay or Amazon that would accept LN payments for convenience. Maybe as LN adoption grows over time, we'll be able to experience this?

Nonetheless, I have to agree that the LN is still NOT ready yet for mainstream use. I know many people are excited about how the LN settles transactions instantly at a fraction of the cost, but there are still many issues that need to be addressed in order to make the LN a robust Layer-Two solution for micropayments. It's no doubt that developers are still working hard on improving the Lightning Network. Soon, we'll be able to enjoy atomic swaps, submarine swaps, and even Watchtowers within the Lightning Network. With all that's coming, I believe that Bitcoin will become much more attractive to merchants/businesses than any other cryptocurrency known to date. Just my thoughts

Ouch. UK based gift card website, I was praying that maybe they still supported some US gift cards. I was beyond excited when I found the little area to type in my country:

They only have 3 giftcards for the US, I guess my search continues to try to find one of these LN companies without any sort of mark up.

I just noticed that https://giftoff.com/  a UK based gift card site, are now offering lightning payments through opennode.

I've bought plenty of stuff through them over the years with no problems at all. No sort of premium either. If I were a lightning user this would be my main port of call.

Might be grave digging a bit here (by a month and a little bit or so) But I'd have to say that JoltFun, BitRefill, some random gambling websites (LightingSpin, etc) are going to be the best that you're going to find in the LN.

We have to first focus, as a community, on getting people into bitcoin usage first not into LN. It's not there yet, and we'd be doing them a disservice to push them into something that isn't ready and isn't really fully possible to use without bugs.

I'd love to see Bitcoin used at my local stores, that'd be great. But lets first get them onto something that works, not something that doesn't.

Agree. You'd get a fair price by paying with the LN instead of using the main Bitcoin blockchain. It's a win-win situation for both the merchant and the consumer. Honestly, I'd wish that other gift card services like eGifter and Gyft would accept Lightning Network payments too. That would ramp up the competition within the crypto space. But so far, bitrefill seems to be the only place where you can buy gift cards online using the Lightning Network.

Personally, I've found out that it's possible to buy games on the Steam platform with a gift card from bitrefill. You'd just select the gift card from the site, and place the code on your Steam wallet. The process is seamless and very convenient for the end user. It's a workaround for people looking to use their Bitcoins on the Steam platform. I know they used to accept Bitcoin before, but the high fees back in 2017 let Valve decide to remove the pioneer cryptocurrency as an acceptable payment method. That's why we need more services like Bitrefill that would make use of the Lightning Network to increase adoption of Bitcoin within the mainstream world. I'm sure that most people will prefer to use the Lightning Network for paying at mainstream businesses/stores instead of average cryptocurrencies or traditional Fiat currencies of today.

Hopefully, we'd get to see giant stores like Walmart, Amazon, and eBay accepting payments from the LN in the future.

There are other places to save money while paying with bitcoins, bitrefill and some other major gift (re)sellers always had markups.

You can still use purse.io or one of the several other places with cheap giftcards, but there's often a time/reliability component involved.

LN doesn't want anything. bitrefill is just overcharging, which is why i don't really use them unless i need instant processing.

for most gift cards, i use egifter---they give 1-5% discounts when paying with bitcoin, and sometimes they run other promotions too. when i need amazon.com gift cards, i use the bitpay wallet, which sells them at 1:1.

and there disapears the good old days of getting giftcards of $50 and it only costing $40 of btc..
LN wants people to pay $51 worth of milisats for $50 giftcard........

.....
anyone see the problem with that promotion..

bitrefill actually processes on-chain (non-RBF) bitcoin transactions < $200 without confirmation so you can get gift cards instantly without even using LN. https://www.bitrefill.com/faq/#when-is-order-delivered

the difference is that they give you a 2% discount for using LN. their prices normally have a ~ 2-4% mark-up over value, so using LN gets it closer to (what i feel is) a fair price.

As much as I use Purse for my Amazon purchases using Bitcoin, I would've loved for it to accept Lightning Network payments. But they've decided to take the route of accepting Bitcoin Cash instead. If BCH begins to adopt 0-conf transactions, then it'll work the same as the Lightning Network. But it won't be a decentralized solution, as relying on big blocks introduces centralization risks to the entire Blockchain network.

Anyhow, with instant exchanges accepting Lightning Network payments (like Floatbit and CoinPlaza), you could instantly convert your BTCLN to BCH or BTC to use it at Purse. So even if there's a lack of mainstream businesses/stores which accept LN payments, it's still possible to enjoy instant transactions and low fees by exchanging your BTCLN to the aforementioned cryptocurrencies. At least, this is a temporary workaround until more merchants start accepting LN payments for the benefit of all.

Personally, my most favorite service is Bitrefill. I can buy gift cards from major stores (both online and physical) with the Lightning Network. Payments and delivery of the digital gift card are instant, making the process seamless to any user. This is great for widespread adoption of the Lightning Network. But we need more businesses/stores to accept LN payments in the mainstream world in order to increase the adoption of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Nope, and as I recall, they were/are big blockers. They added support for Bitcoin Cash instead of working on Lightning, and they've floated the idea of adding Ethereum as well. I doubt you'll find much work being done to support Lightning at Purse.io beyond this blog post.

Kindly correct me if I'm wrong. AFAIK, with what I've seen with blue wallet before it allows you to connect with several marketplaces and businesses that accepts LN payments.

This is a potentially exciting development for future Lightning integration: Square Crypto Is Creating a ‘Lightning Development Kit’ for Bitcoin Wallets


I think Square is probably correct on that last point. Improved LN interoperability among different devices and existing Bitcoin wallets is crucial to achieve an ecosystem that's ready for mainstream consumer/merchant adoption.

To add the above sites where you can check stores/merchants -

https://lnroute.com/stores/

And also, coingate.com, you can check the sites here -

https://blog.coingate.com/2018/07/lightning-network-payments-launched-pilot/

I hope more and more merchants will utilize the use of LN as it addresses the high fees involved in btc transactions.