Nostr Web Client

In person or online? Because for online, lightning is an order of magnitude easier than anything with a card. Even on chain is much easier than a card.

Super Testnet 9mo ago

For online purchases, lightning is sometimes a 10x better experience than using a card because you don't need to fill out any forms or give up your identity. But lightning payments are also not reliable, specifically, they sometimes get stuck for several minutes and they sometimes fail. Due to those faults, I don't think using LN online is a 10x better experience than using a card in *all* cases, but it is in *most* cases.

In person, cards are a 10x better experience either way, because you don't have to fill out any forms *AND* card payments reliably work. But with cards, you *do* have to give up your identity information, and let your bank know what you bought, which sucks very badly.

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Discussion

Karadenizli 9mo ago

Agreed. I'd say tho that the gap between LN and card in person is much much smaller than the opposite gap online.

Scanning a QR code and paying genuinely isn't much harder than pulling your card out. It's only a couple more buttons than using apple pay. I say this as a business owner with a square POS. The interface is dead simple to the customer and my boomer customers will still spend 5+ seconds staring in confusion trying to find how to use their card. It would genuinely be easier for some of them to pull out a wallet app and scan a QR code.

I do think you have somewhat of a skewed perspective as a Dev. You are probably constantly trying edge cases and reading github issues of every lightning payment that failed. I have never had a lightning payment fail and as far as I've used, everything just works. Same way I'm oversampling boomers who struggle to use a credit card. I'm well aware of the limitations of lightning and that it's far from perfect but it is still extremely usable in its current form.