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Ease of payment opinions - lightning vs card
1755 sats \ 3 comments \ @BallLightning 15 Dec lightning
I was wandering whether lightning payments at a physical location (with modern technology) can be made with as good user experience as card payment. Assumptions:
  1. lightning is mature enough so that paths don't fail often and so there isn't significant delays causing by trying different payment paths
  2. the payment is made by scanning a lightning invoice QR code
  3. we don't count opening an app as an inconvenience, since even now I can see a trend where cards are in the phone anyway.
So let's see how card payment works now from ux point of view:
  1. merchant presents you with a device, where on its screen you can see the the amount you will be charged
  2. you present your card to the device
  3. the merchant receives some form of feedback that the payment has been authorized
And about a lightning payment:
  1. merchant presents you with a device with a QR code, representing a lighting invoice
  2. you scan the code and your device shows you the payment amount and a button that you should press to pay
  3. you press pay
  4. the merchant receives a feedback that the invoice has been paid
As you can see the only difference here is that you need to press one more button to pay here. (I particularly like this step and I dislike that currently paying by card you just trust (the bank, merchant, merchant's device's display) that you will be charged the correct amount, but it seems this is not a concern for most people.) When everybody is really trying to make spending money as frictionless as possible and paying attention to even the smallest things, do you think this is significant UX degradation that will make real adoption more difficult?
Some time ago I posted an objective degradation use case, where it is currently possible in many cities to use your debit or credit card as a public transit card (day card, not just one ride payment) and I didn't get any engagement there. Let's see what's your opinion here on this much simpler case.
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415 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 15 Dec
You never used LNURL NFC cards (so called bolt cards)? See here some examples: https://darth-coin.github.io/merchants/bitcoin-lightning-payments-irl-en.html
You can make your own ones with https://plebtag.com/ or buy yourself the NFC cards and configure it with a BTCpay server or LNbits or https://boltcard.org/ for example.
Those NFC cards can be programmed to have a certain amount of sats "spendable" and also how many payments you could do per day etc, various limits.
Is not a simple LNURL, it contain also a security string that will not allow to be spend after read (skimming).
The cards are very handy with kids for example. You load them up and they have a limited spend amount.
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14 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 15 Dec
I particularly like this step and I dislike that currently paying by card you just trust (the bank, merchant, merchant's device's display) that you will be charged the correct amount.
Bitcoin txs are irreversible, so it's not likely we'll lose this step. Reversibility, for the payer, is actually a pretty nice from a UX pov. It allows us to mindlessly, ie frictionlessly, spend.
When everybody is really trying to make spending money as frictionless as possible and paying attention to even the smallest things, do you think this is significant UX degradation that will make real adoption more difficult?
It'll make adoption proportionally difficult so if this friction is actually small, then it's a minor hinderance. But, there are solutions to this.
BitKit allows you to configure an instant payment threshold where you don't make this check. I think we'll also eventually see some kind of implicit escrow emerge for medium to large payments.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @we_can_supply_you 18h freebie
Assumptions:
1 & 2 This is already true. I've been using lightning for over a year on a nearly daily basis. Never had a payment fail.
I believe some wallets already support NFC, though I haven't played w it personally. No need to open an app or unlock your phone. Just tap the phone and tap "ok" or set it to automatically appove all taps.
When people understand Bitcoin, the current friction is no big deal. But friction should continue to be reduced for mass adoption. Lightning being a pain to get inbound liquidity on is the primary piece of friction right now for new users.