Pay fiat bills with sats, decentralized, P2P, no KYC | Idea for developers
845 sats \ 13 comments \ @DarthCoin 16 Mar 2022 bitcoin

CALL FOR ACTION TO ALL DEVELOPERS, CODERS, ENTHUSIASTS

Introduction - Scope - Goal

Create a decentralized marketplace for paying fiat bills with bitcoin (onchain or LN)

Description / case

For example I live on/off BTC for many yeears. I earn in BTC, I spend in BTC,I HODL too (of course). I stop using banks years ago. But also I still have to pay bills, normal electricity bills etc. Not all can be paid with Bitrefill. So, I have a way to buy groceries directly with BTC, but some bills I can't. Then I had some nocoiner friends that I onboard them easily by paying my fiat bills from their bank account then I gave them back BTC, directly. I help him, he help me, no BS KYC, no middleman, market price. But then this friend also start buying a lot of BTC and now doesn't have anymore fiat in his bank account, so can't help me anymore.
Then I used many other intermediary services like:
All kinda shit, because you need to do KYC for paying a damn electricity bill. yeah I know is really fucked up. In the end yes, I found an electric company that accept BTC, I convinced my landlord to accept BTC, but still there are little bills in your life that come up and you need somebody to pay them. Yes, these servicces worked as promoted, are paying your bills nicely and you give them sats, in exchange of % comission, is normal, you have to pay for their services.
But what about doing this in a more decentralized manner, more and more people will need to pay bills with BTC. Why not having a "secret friend" that is always there to pay then for you, with no KYC, fast, escrow, not too many personal details given? Like a "bills marketplace".

Suggestion / Concept

Let's take the example of RoboSats. http://robosats6tkf3eva7x2voqso3a5wcorsnw34jveyxfqi2fu7oyheasid.onion/ https://github.com/Reckless-Satoshi/robosats
Can be used this P2P eexchange also, but is not designed to have a form for bills details. But can be an example to start.
So we need something simple where users can make offers to pay others bills and the one that offers best price and is in the same currency area will win. Like a Bisq of bills. A chat room also is good, so users can exchange more personal details if is needed. A standard form to offer the bills also is needed, but with certain level of privacy: a. public level display: country, currency, amount in fiat b. personal level display (only after the offer is taken): destination bank account, IBAN etc and most important in the description of payment, name and invoice number of the bill.
Buyer can make price offers based on BTC exchange rate and sellet can accept them or not.
Once is paid, the payer, will have to provide certain proof of payment. Usually banks send a confirmation email or print a receipt. That confirmation could be sent to the seller. Once the payment is confirmed, seller release the BTC from escrow and exchange take a % comission.
Everybody is happy.
I am not a coder / developer, so I cannot make this for myself. So please if some great mind is out there, this is really needed to make Bitcoin adoption going forward.
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607 sats \ 4 replies \ @Reckless_Satoshi 16 Mar 2022 freebie
Really cool @DarthCoin!
Reckless_Satoshi here, maintainer of RoboSats. I would say the platform is already well equipped to fulfill this task, can't think of anything really missing. E.g. simply use the free text input "Pay my T-mobile bill" as "payment method". The bill and payment details will always have to be exchanged on a encrypted 1-to-1 chat (... I do not think there should be an specific form for these. That would mean it's saved in a database somewhere).
People know very well how to use Robosats to buy 'actual things' (amazon cards, etc), also the craziest sort of exchanges. In fact, we have seen things that are next level compared to simply paying the bills ;)
In my opinion, the limitation for this sort of exchange is not technical. Rather it comes down to whether there is market makers willing to pay your bills. If there are, then it will be about whether users are willing to accept some ridiculous premiums. I believe most would opt for swallowing their pride, have a cheap fiat bank account and stack more sats. My guess is that the gap between makers and takers for this sort of exchange is too big at the moment for a market to be functional. It is also very fragmented geographically, which limits the market size and liquidity (country-scale at best, even more regional depending on the sort of bill). But I am hopeful AF! Let's take this idea seriously!
Cheers, Reckless_Satoshi
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bzzzt 13 Nov 2023
O shit robosats 100% already could work for this 😮
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @deleted231216 16 Mar 2022
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510 sats \ 1 reply \ @Reckless_Satoshi 17 Mar 2022 freebie
Thanks a lot!
Sadly this isn't possible if banks refuse to open an account for you, because you can't pass KYC due to no government ID. Personally I would pay up to 25% fees for personal shopping/bill payment services.
Very true, not everyone has the privilege of having access to banking at all. The client base for this sort of venture seems to be sparse in any case.
Amazon gift cards can't be used for daily expenses like food and rent.
There is some ways to convert them back into cash (well someone told me! though it has a cost of course...)
BTW would you be able to add an option for longer expiry times (mainly for cash in person and cash by mail)?
Looking into this already for some time. TL;DR: bad things can happen.
The boring full explanation:
HTLCs with long expiry times are hard to route, lock a lot of liquidity (in many nodes) for long period (high cost) and can also lead to channel force closure. In addition there must be ample safety margin. Some days the bitcoin network can find 150% as many blocks as expected, and that can lead to an escrow that gets unlocked during the fiat payment step (a total disaster!).
5-6 days is the max currently (and with some safety margin that barely allows for ~24h "public order" + 3h to "provide invoice/escrow" +24h to "exchange fiat").
Advanced maker options are coming soon, so it might be possible to extend fiat exchange step up to ~2 days at will, trading off for a shorter public order duration ~2-4 hours. Probably good enough for cash in hand... But I am starting to believe the LN model might never be good enough for cash by mail. Needs more research.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @deleted231216 17 Mar 2022
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @cointastical 16 Mar 2022
Sounds like the (now defunct) Lamium!
Introduction to Lamium https://medium.com/@LamiumBTC/introduction-to-lamium-6a1074445f38
Lamium -- kind of like a purse.io but for your bills, decentralized bill payment https://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/bv19c3 https://teddit.net/r/Bitcoin/comments/bv19c3 <-- A read-only Reddit post viewer
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @cointastical 16 Mar 2022
Do many utilities / bills take online payment without first needing to be logged into the subscriber's account?
I don't have many, but those that I do have require that I log into my account first and then fill out the form to let me pay (and pay my own account, only).
There are some services in which I can pay cash, like Verizon mobile phone, but even then will they let just anyone pay? I did that once a couple years ago, on a kiosk, but I'm remembering that it asked me for my birthdate, or for the last digits of my SSN or something like that.
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @note_bene 16 Mar 2022
I think it's a great idea, people need to be able to "buy actual things" with bitcoin.
In the early days, SilkRoad probably was what pumped the initial demand (and thus price) for the coins. Obviously we don't want that, and so people have been trying to artificially push El Salvadorean street vendors and Tesla dealers to accept bitcoin, but neither of these are real needs. And standard 1st world retail is also tough to force adoption.
But bills is something everyone has to pay. If something like a phone bill could be paid in sats, that would create a lot of demand for coins.
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @f321x 16 Mar 2022 freebie
Could be a feature request for bisq
1 sat \ 0 replies \ @yakshaver 17 Mar 2022 freebie
If I could rift on this a bit... how about an app that can MITM NFC details for Android/Apple Pay in exchange for sats. You specify if you want to buy or sell sats in the app.
If you are selling sats, then you tap your phone to pay by NFC with Android/Apple Pay. The app finds someone buying sats and relays the exchange with the NFC terminal to the sat buyer. They authorize the payment on their phone as if they were standing there, and receive the equivalent in sats.
Lot's of thorny details about if you can MITM NFC for those apps and the sat buyer having their phone unlocked at the time. But I do think it's technically possible and would be a real game changer.
Because these are technically in-person purchases, the sat buyer can't reverse their cc payment and because it's Lightning they get their sats immediately. How to escrow this kind of instant payment is also tricky, but I believe a reasonable protocol could be worked out.
A big advantage is that it would not require tying up Lightning liquidity.
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @pleblira 17 Mar 2022 freebie
test
10 sats \ 0 replies \ @deleted231216 16 Mar 2022
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