As a merchant, this article will provide you with helpful background information to offer Lightning as a payment method to your customers and effectively use the Coinsnap system.
What is a Lightning payment?
Lightning payments are credited to the recipient immediately, are very inexpensive, available worldwide, cannot be reversed, and are ideal for micropayments.
Because of these advantages, bitcoin payments over the Lightning network are the future of payment processing.
Until now, however, merchants who wanted to accept Lightning payments had to operate their own Lightning node.
With Coinsnap, it’s now easy to accept Lightning payments on your website and online store.
As a merchant, all you need is your own Lightning wallet that offers a Lightning address.
Customers’ Lightning payments are credited directly to the Lightning Wallet via this Lightning address.
What is a Lightning address?
A Lightning address looks like an email address, but is intended for sending and receiving Lightning payments.
To receive Lightning payments, you need a Lightning address, which is provided by some Lightning wallets.
Create a Lightning wallet and deposit the Lightning address at Coinsnap. An overview of all Lightning wallets that provide a Lightning address can be found at the bottom of the page under Lightning Wallet.
All Lightning payments are then credited directly to the Lightning wallet.
What is Lightning Login?
Lightning Login can be used to perform authorizations, registrations or logins to external services and websites. The advantage for the user is that no personal data has to be provided. Registration with these websites is anonymous.
On the Lightning login page, you will be shown a QR code that you scan with a Lightning Wallet or copy the Lightning LNURL address into the Lightning Wallet. When you want to log in again later, scan the QR code with the same Lightning Wallet and you will be logged back into your account.
To use Lightning Login, you need a Lightning Wallet that supports Lightning Login (LNURL-Auth). An overview of Lightning Wallets that support Lightning Login can be found at the bottom of this page.
Lightning Wallet with Lightning Address
The following Lightning wallet providers provide their users with a Lightning address for receiving Lightning payments:
Lightning Wallet
Lightning Address
Lightning Login
For more information on the Lightning address, visit Coincharge at https://coincharge.io/lightning-address/ or https://lightningaddress.com/.
Do you know of any other Lightning wallet providers that provide their customers with a Lightning address to receive Lightning payments?
Then please let us know so that we can include these Lightning Wallet providers here.
Settlement in Lightning
End customers can pay with both Bitcoin and Lightning. Settlement, i.e. crediting the merchant, takes place via Lightning to the merchant’s Lightning Wallet. It does not matter how the end customer has previously paid.
Once the end customer’s Bitcoin or Lightning payment is completed, the merchant’s Lightning wallet is credited.
The Lightning credit is then available to you in your Lightning Wallet without restriction. You can use this Lightning credit to pay with Lightning at other merchants as well.
However, you can also exchange the Lightning credit into Bitcoin to store it as Bitcoin credit on a Bitcoin hardware wallet securely and for the long term.
However, you can also change the Lightning credit into euros or another fiat currency and withdraw it to your bank account.
Settlement in Bitcoin
Lightning is Bitcoin just in a different form. The difference is comparable to cash, which you pay with, and money in a bank account, which you save.
If you don’t need Lightning for payment but want to keep it, you should keep it on a secure Bitcoin hardware wallet.
You can exchange your Lightning balance into Bitcoin at a swap service and transfer it directly to your Bitcoin hardware wallet. We explained how to do this using Boltz Exchange as an example in the article: “Switching Lightning to Bitcoin”.
Coinsnap is currently developing a direct connection to Boltz Exchange so that the switch and direct payout to your Bitcoin address will happen automatically as soon as you receive a Lightning balance.
Settlement to the bank account
Want to offer your customers payment in Bitcoin and Lightning, but have the payments paid out to your bank account?
We work with Bitcoin brokers that convert Lightning to fiat currency and make the withdrawal to your bank account.
Depending on the currency or country, different providers come into question and different requirements must be met.
In the article “Payout to bank account” we present some providers in more detail.
Coinsnap is currently developing direct connections to Bitcoin brokers that offer Lightning to fiat currency switching. Your incoming Lightning payments will then be forwarded directly to the Bitcoin broker, exchanged into your desired currency and credited to your bank account.
