There are many ways recurring payments can be implemented with the existing protocol.  Here are three off the top of my head:

1.  Use a third-party wallet like Coinbase and grant direct-debit permission to the service provider;

2.  Receive a notification (email, wallet app, etc.) that a bill is due and pay it as a standard bitcoin payment;

3.  Fund a 1-of-2 wallet where both you and the service provider have signing authority.

The goal was to avoid solutions that lock you up to specific services. We don't want a situation where you need a coinbase account to subscribe to the New York Times and a Bitpay account to pay your rent.

Yes email is possible, but adds unneccessary steps. I don't get my regular bills in the mail. They go directly to my e-bank, and I just need to verify them. Similarly a bitcoin client should be able to handle recurring payments all by itself.

My proposal consists of wallet notifications and regular bitcoin payments. But there are some propblems that you are not adressing, such as the price of BTC may have doubled since your last payment so your client can't know how much it needs to pay.

Sure, that could be useful. But the point was to make a standard easy way to set this up. Click a link and be done with it. I want a standard way to set up recurring payments so that all web sites could easily set up bitcoin subscriptions. This suggestion could be part of it if neccessary, but it's not solving the problem I'm talking about.

Sorry if I was a bit unclear. I'm not necessarily talking about an adress book in the usual sense, more of a database of all the services you subscribe to. This is quite close to an adress book though since it's just a list of recipients you do regular payments to. I'm also talking about how to make the best use of this database to make the user experience as good as possible.

To make my self short, my suggestion consists of three things:

1. A database of recipients with standardized entries (recipient name, service info, payment info, adress seed, a link so the client can automatically look up info that changes with time). We need a standard for this so that all clients are compatible with all subscription based services.

2. A standard way to easily add entries to the database. I should be able to go to a subscription based web site, click "pay with bitcoin" and automatically download the neccessary info to my bitcoin client, and be able to handle all payments from the client from that point on.

3. A standard for web sites to provide information that changes with every payment, such as the price in BTC, so that a bitcoin client could look it up at the moment of payment.

I hope that was a lot clearer.

The reason I was talking about an adress book was that number 1 above is very close to it, and it may make sense to store recurring payment recipients in the same database as regular recipients (friends), but this is not necessary.

your idea has nothing to do with recurring payments.. your just trying to make a business directory.

now here is some flaws.

imagine i had to pay XYZ inc.

they would NEVER use 1 bitcoin address for all transactions. but they would however use one address PER customer. so your third party service directory would be filled with 1000 addresses linked to XYX inc, because 1000 customers use them regular.

a dirctory service which links businesses to a bitcoin address is only useful when the address is a global address. such as a donation address or an address that does not require auditing payments and linking paymnets to customers.

recurring payments would in your examples not require your service. as it is easier for the customer to use their own wallet address label s to identify who they are paying.

as for those 'donation addresses' blockchain.info already has tags, making it easy for people to see their payment was made to seans outpost or other charities listed.

im still failing to se what point your trying to make that a service you provide is an essential tool for recurring payments. seems more like an information grab to make bitcoin addresses more transparent and less Pseudonymous.

either way, i wont be using your business directory. so have a nice day


 

yep i get your idea:
bitcoin URi
bitcoin: bitcoin:1Ar4nd0m4ddr3ssBlahBlahBlah?amount=1&label=NewYorkTimes&recurring=yes&duration=30days
and the wallet does the rest


bitcoin is always a PUSH system. no one should take fund without authorization.

when having funds in coinbase, coinbase owns the keys, so you simply set up an arrangement that you allow funds to go to XYZ inc once a month, and coinbase pushes it to XYZ inc on those dates

same goes for (hopefully future) personal wallet apps. you set up the wallet feature to push transactions to XYZ/newyorktimes once every 30 days and our wallet automatically does it.

all that new york tiimes or XYZ inc can and should do, is to provide the customer with an URi that helps users setup the payment schedule faster. thus giving the customer full control of keeping the schedule active, or cancelling. and not allowing the end recipient any authority to just take funds as they please

Thank you for your comment.

An API of some sort is definitely part of what I'm talking about, altough I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on your specific proposal.

The ideal way to use bitcoin is one adress per transaction, not per customer. That is why I specifically said the database should contain an adress seed, not just an adress. That lets the customer generate a new adress for every transaction. It was implicit that every customer should have their own wallet seed.

See HD Wallets for what I'm talking about.

im kind of understanding now..

your not trying to be a business directory
your not trying to lobby wallet developers to add automatic payments features into bitoin-core.

what you propose is that you are a payment processor. where people pay you an amount and you ensure the funds get distributed to the agreed recipient list..

and your last post where you make these address seeds, i guess you will be the account manager for the business recipients too. in which case you can pay thos businesses OFF-CHAIN and simply allow them to withdraw funds.. there is no need for seeded addresses on your server, for businesses to get paid. either the business themselves provide their own virgin addresses. or they use yor service to receive funds and simply receive the lump sums and a list of who paid what.

the flaw.. bitcoin is suppose to be about self management. so most of us would prefer to get dev's to implement self controlled auto repayments. instead of having third party services hold our stash with promises they will pay out on time.