Lightning Network URL (LNURL) Pay

LNURL Pay is an HTTP endpoint that enables asynchronous payments over the Lightning Network. It abstracts Invoices in order to orchestrate said payments. It makes receiving money dramatically simpler and allows for the send of the money to specify a comment to be attached to the payment.

A brand or app can also create an LNURL pay for each of their users or fundraising campaigns with their logo for brand impressions just like ZBD does for my LNURL Pay below.

santos’ LNURL pay

Ideal Use Cases for LNURL Pays.

There are many ideal use cases for LNURL Pays.

User Deposits

LNURL Pays are excellent for user deposits. You can generate one for each unique users that are associated with their profile, enabling them to easily receive money.

LNURL Pays can be set such that they can be used an unlimited number of times and they don’t expire. So it makes receiving payments easy.

Just like every user has a $cashtag for CashApp, every user can have an LNURL Pay. The only difference is there is interoperability between providers, so any other wallet that supports LNURL Pay can also make payments. You don’t have the issue where CashApp can’t pay Venmo and Venmo can’t pay Zelle.

In-person Fundraising

One crafty thing you can do for donations is throw your LNURL Pay QR code on a large screen and anyone who has a wallet can now pay you directly just by scanning and confirming a payment.

It’s super easy. Since you can create as many of these as you want, you can even create one for each one of your campaigns to measure how many donations you’ve actually received for a given goal or cause that you’re trying raise for. Cool, right?

This is great for nonprofits.

Remote Fundraising / Donations

Conversely, if you are a nonprofit, you can even collect payments by adding your QR code to a flier, brochure and much more. Anyone who has a lightning wallet will be able to pay it directly. They won’t need to go to a site or anything!

Streaming

Streamers can take their QR image and easily add it to any streaming software, such as OBS, to enable direct payments to them from their audience. Never has this been possible before.

For an example, check out ZBD Streamer.

User Tips / Zaps / User-to-User Payments

LNURL pays are great for tips or commonly referred to as “zaps”. It can also be used for user-to-user payments, since they are a static QR code. Though the best user experience for these use cases is Lightning Address.

Social Media

Since every user can have a QR code that works to receive money to their account, users can attach it to blog posts, social media posts, images, live streams, videos, & art.

Ecommerce

These are perfect for ecommerce. You can generate them and associate it with a specific user. When a payment is made, you’ll receive a webhook that informs you which static charge was paid, so you can look up the user who it was associated with.

This allows for much simpler design compared to BOLT-11 with less failure cases.

Points of Friction for LNURL pay

Nonhuman Readable

LNURL Pays are not human readable, which can cause confusion for users. They are meant to be rendered as a QR code. So, if Alice sends Bob an LNURL Pay as text and Bob isn’t familiar with it, he won’t know what to do with it. There is no distinguishing trait for the QR code either amongst other QR codes, so it must be used in the right context.

Lack of Support

While, nearly every wallet out of the box supports LNURL Pays, some don’t. This is an error that the user can encounter. The wallets that currently don’t support it are Strike and CashApp.

Point of Sale

While LNURL Pays can be used at the point of sale, they are not the most ideal. It’s better to generate an invoice for this activity, so you can redirect the merchant to a success screen upon a successful payment of an invoice.

You can however create one for tips from the consumer. For example, if you’re a restaurant or take-out spot, you could generate one for each waiter or for the store.

LNRUL Pay

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Click here to view the data decoded.

Example Product Flows of an LNURL Pay

Conclusion

Overall, this articles provides a comprehensive overview of LNURL Pay, its benefits, and potential use cases. Users can learn about how they can implement LNURL Pay for fundraising, tipping, and even ecommerce. The page also highlights some challenges that users may face when using LNURL Pay, such as the lack of support from some wallets.