Using Withdrawal QR Codes

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Introduction

The Lightning Network is a push-based system: in order to receive payments, the payee must first create a Charge / Payment Request, which the payer can pay. This is a great workflow when users are making payments for goods and services. Usually this workflow is as follows:

This is a great user experience between User and a Project (e.g. game or application). However, this user workflow is limited to User paying Project.

To perform the reverse (Project paying User), as with all Lightning payments, the Project must first ask for a Lightning Network Charge/Invoice from the User, for a specific amount. This provides for subpar UX because the User is now an active participant when receiving funds.

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Withdrawal Request API

Withdrawal Requests are the exact opposite of a Charge. Whereas a Charge is a payment from a User to a Project, a Withdrawal Request can be understood as a payment from a Project to a User. In other words, a Charge is a QR code that accepts a Bitcoin payment while a Withdrawal Request is a QR code that allows a User to claim Bitcoin.

ZBD’s Withdrawal Request capability is based on the LNURL open-source specification, which provides a standard for easier communication between Wallets (users) and Projects, through the use of HTTP requests. A developer building upon ZBD’s Withdrawal Requests functionality does not need to understand the underlying methodology and workflow of LNURL - the ZBD API abstracts away any complexities. Let’s see how to do it.

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Creating a Withdrawal Request

When creating a Withdrawal Request code to allow Lightning Wallets to withdraw funds from the Project (game or application) you must provide the following attributes to the /withdrawal-requests endpoint:

To create the Withdrawal Request, use the ZBD API (or leverage one of our SDKs) by passing the correct attributes:

If the submitted request suceeds, you can expect a JSON API response that resembles the following:

{
  "message": "Successfully created Withdrawal Request.",
  "data": {
    "id": "c121356b-9671-4fbd-a751-987fb4b3d0b3",
    "unit": "msats",
    "amount": "50000",
    "status": "pending",
    "description": "Description of the Withdrawal Request",
    "createdAt": "2019-12-23T03:58:17.993Z",
    "callbackUrl": "http://your-website.com/zbd-callback",
    "internalId": "11af01d092444a317cb33faa6b8304b8",
    "invoice": {
      "expiresAt": "2019-12-23T04:08:18.038Z",
      "request": "lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7cn9w3sj6ctsdyh85etzv4jx2efwd9hj7a3s9acxz7tvdaskgtthd96xserjv9mkzmpdwfjhzat9wd6r7um9vdex2apav3skxdfev93rwvm9x43nwcf5vvekgdmpxq6rgvrrxumnxdp3vserqe35v4jr2efs8y6k2epkxf3rxc35vg6nwdrpx9jrqv3kxfjxxwqxmuhcd"
    }
  }
}

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Displaying as QR Code

In order to display the Withdrawal Request as a QR code, simple use the data.invoice.request attribute returned from the API response and pass it to your QR code generator of choice. The QR code should look something like this:

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Request Updates

Note that the Withdrawal Request is created in a pending state as it still hasn’t been claimed. All Withdrawal Requests will either complete or expire. If no User is able to Withdraw the funds on time before the Withdrawal Request’s expiration time, the Request will expire and will therefore no longer be valid. To know the status of your specific Withdrawal Request, check the status attribute returned from the CreateWithdrawalRequest or GetWithdrawalRequestDetails API calls.

{
  ...
  "status": "expired" // pending | completed | expired | error
  ...
}

To subscribe to updates on a specific Withdrawal Request, the recommended approach is to provide a callbackUrl property when creating that Withdrawal Request. Whenever there are updates to the Withdrawal Request (a payment was made, or it has expired) the ZBD API will make a POST request to the URL provided in callbackUrl, passing the Withdrawal Request updates as data in the request.