Lightning Address
What is a Lightning address and which Lightning Wallets support sending and receiving Lightning payments via Lightning address?
These are the questions we want to explore in this article. We will explain what you need a Lightning address for and how you can get your own Lightning address.
What is a Lightning address?
To send a Lightning payment, the payer needs a Lightning invoice from the payee beforehand. This Lightning invoice contains, among other things, the details of the intended use and the amount.
Unfortunately, such a Lightning invoice can look very complicated:
lnbc1u1ps5q5xypp52tzp3t5ttzn0pnc2davp7y4nn4ferlywqmvp40m6lfuslwm20p7qdql235hqurfdenjqar0yp8kumr9d9hx2uccqzpgxq9g84sqsp5gngsa5kvty867jqrt93zmn84rr2fvu06pcqyey2td8hhknxvgkks9qyyssqclez6h2usx2xf69duqdef9nmh98xyzusuwwgfrgd3emtl8v9fr7hvaddns7p92d2xz9tdsaqvn5cjw9rf9wsq3tegav2nxfjvssqzecqnakr9f
It looks a bit more comfortable when this address is displayed in the form of a QR code.
However, there is also the situation where a payer does not have a Lightning invoice from a payee.
So if the payee does not or cannot create a Lightning Invoice in advance.
If you simply want to receive credit from a third party.
This may be, for example, to receive spontaneous Lightning donations or to receive credit from a service for a service.
For these cases there is LNURL-Pay. Here, a Lightning invoice is created via a request from the payer to the payee, where the payer adds the amount and the reason for payment (comment) himself.
The payee can publish his LNURL as a QR code or as a string on his page.
Such a LNURL looks like this, for example:
LNURL1DP68GURN8GHJ7MRW9E6XJURN9UH8WETVDSKKKMN0WAHZ7MRWW4EXCUP0DAHXCETFDEJHXJAAZ37
If you use a Lightning Wallet that supports LNURL Pay, you can enter this string in the corresponding Invoice field of your Lightning Wallet.
However, this LNURL string is too complicated and uncomfortable to remember or pass on.
However, there is the possibility that this LNURL address can be represented in the form of an email address.
For example, if an LNURL address is represented in the form onleines@lntxbot.com, then it is a Lightning address.
What is needed?
Send Lightning payments to a Lightning address
To make a Lightning payment to a Lightning address, a Lightning Wallet that supports sending to Lightning address is required.
Receive Lightning payments to a Lightning address
To receive Lightning payments yourself, you need your own Lightning address.
We list all the providers where you can get a Lightning address in the Lightning wallet providers section.
Send payment to a Lightning address
If you want to make a Lightning payment to a Lightning address, the Lightning wallet used must support at least LNURL Pay, which is the case with almost all Lightning wallets.
Then you can insert the above mentioned LNURL string into the Invoice field. More and more Lightning wallets that already support LNURL are also integrating the option of making a Lightning payment via a Lightning address.
Instead of the LNURL string, a Lightning address can also be used.
In our example, we pay from a BlueWallet to a Lightning address at Alby.
The Lightning address is entered in the Invoice field.
In this example onleines@getalby.com
The minimum or maximum amount that can be paid is displayed.
We would like to send 1,000 sats to this Lightning address and enter the appropriate amount.
Then we still have the option to send a message with the payment.
The payment has been successful and we receive the corresponding message on BlueWallet that the payment has been credited successfully.
The recipient of the Lightning payment will be informed by Alby about the receipt of the payment.
CoinchargePay
Those who use Coincharge’s payment processing for Lightning payments can store their Lightning address as the payout address. All incoming Lightning payments are then automatically forwarded to the merchant’s Lightning address.
If you want to use CoinchargePay, you can get a Lightning address from one of the featured providers.
How to get your own Lightning address to receive Lightning payments?
In order to be able to receive Lightning payments in this way, you need your own Lightning address.
There are the following ways how to get your own Lightning address.
- Platform providers offer Lightning addresses for convenient deposit.
- Lightning wallet providers provide a Lightning address
Deposit option at platforms
There are also services that provide their customers with their own Lightning Wallet for easy account deposit. Since the own Lightning address is a deposit option and helps the user to remember his own deposit address more easily.
The provider Starbackr provides a Lightning address for its users. This allows users to top up their own Starbackr account or receive Lightning donations from other users.
Starbackr also offers the possibility to make payments to other Lightning addresses.
At Bitrefill, the provider of voucher cards, registered users receive a Lightning address such as user@bitrefill.me. You can then send yourself Lightning payments to this address to top up your Bitrefill account. This credit can then be used to purchase voucher cards.
Lightning trading platform LNmarkets offers a similar service. As a registered user, you can fund your account at user@lnmarkets.com and then use it to execute your trades.
With Fountain.fm’s podcast app, you can make deposits to your Lightning address user@fountain.fm and then use the credit to listen to and boost your podcast.
At Stacker.News you can also make deposits to your Lightning address user@stacker.news, which can then be used to read Stacker News.
Lightning Wallet inclusive Lightning Address
The easiest way to get your own Lightning address is to use a Lightning Wallet, which offers Lightning addresses.
These lightning wallets provide a lightning address, which consists of the user name and an addition from the respective provider.
For example, if you use the Telegram Lightning Wallet from LNTXBOT, you get the address username@lntxbot.com or with the LightningTipBot it is username@ln.tips.
Which Lightning Wallet support Lightning addresses?
More and more Lightning wallets support Lightning addresses.
Some Lightning wallets offer the possibility to send a payment to another Lightning address.
However, in order to receive Lightning payments, this Lightning wallet must also provide its own Lightning address for its users.
In the following table we present the most important Lightning Wallets including the indication whether it is possible to send to a Lightning address (send) or a Lightning address is provided for receiving and what the corresponding Lightning address looks like.
Lightning Wallet Provider with Lightning Address
Wallet
System
Send to Lightning address
Receive at Lightning address
We try to keep this list up to date. Are there any new features or Lightning Wallets that should be listed here? Then please share it with us via Twitter at: https://twitter.com/coincharge_io or on our Telegram channel: https://t.me/coinchargeio
The Lightning Address
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