ZapPlanner - periodic payments in bitcoin

Bitcoin is not made for subscription-based payments#

Many stakeholders in the creator industry have been looking at alternatives or additions to the ad-based revenue model to diversify the income sources. As a consequence, today’s creator economy was built on subscribers and patrons. This lead to a massive boom in subscription businesses of both creator-led platforms like Patreon and Substack and enterprise companies like Netflix and Amazon. Normally subscriptions are payments requested by the receiving side. Blockchain-based systems like bitcoin are not built for it, but only allow to send payments. As a consequence, bitcoin finds no adoption in subscription-based payment services. To solve this issue ZapPlanner was created.

Introducing ZapPlanner#

ZapPlanner is a showcase that introduces the principle of push payments to simulate subscription payments. Push payments give control and privacy back to the user. The user manages the subscription rather than the service. Subscriptions can be cancelled simply by not paying, and any wallet can be used to make a subscription payment, making it easier to stay anonymous.

ZapPlanner sends payments on your behalf, on a regular schedule. It’s an easy way to support your favorite Value4Value creators, and it’s motivating for them to receive consistent support, too!

ZapPlanner executes payments on the schedule that you specify, and will automatically stop the subscription if you stop it. So you always have control and can cancel the subscription at any time.

How to use ZapPlanner#

• Go to https://zapplanner.albylabs.com/
• Click the 'New Periodic Payment' button and fill in the fields to specify who you want to pay, how much and how often.
• Click 'Continue', review the subscription you want to create and link your wallet or enter your nostr wallet connect URL. If you don’t have one, you can easily create one directly in the app.
• Click 'Create Periodic Payment'
• You will now be on your subscription page. You can bookmark it or receive a confirmation email for every payment you send.
• You can cancel the subscription at any time, either on the bookmarked page, or by removing your connection string on the Alby NWC app.

Leveraging Nostr Wallet Connect#

ZapPlanner is built on Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) to enable seamless lightning functionality through a secure, indirect connection to your wallet, made possible by the exchange of Nostr events. Learn more about NWC here: Introducing Nostr Wallet Connect and for more details about ZapPlanner follow this link.

Do you have any other ideas or want to contribute and improve ZapPlanner? create an issue on the GitHub repository or reach out to us on Nostr. Until then try out ZapPlanner and support your favorite content creator with Value4Value payments.