Quick guide for small shops \ stacker news ~bitcoin

We all want more merchant adoption, we want to pay with sats for our groceries or enjoying a beer in a bar.

But also many merchants, small shops, bars don't know how to start quickly accepting Bitcoin, but still having some certain control of their money. Yes, there are so many custodial, semi-custodial, self-custodial solutions, payment processors, BTCpay, LNbits, Alby etc but sometimes for certain use cases, are not the most suitable ones.

So today I am presenting you a quick simple solution and I had in mind you @BTCLNAT or any other user LATAM or from places where internet is quite restricted or not always online, slow or forced to use Tor.

How to use Rizful node + Zeus PoS in your shop

What you need:

some sats into another LN wallet, required to buy some liquidity through an inbound channel. If you still do not have any sats (you start from zero) it also can be your first customer paying with sats (or the bitcoiner friend helping you with the setup).
Rizful.com - simple but powerful self-manageable LN node in the cloud and free.
Zeus PoS - fast and simple PoS that can be connected to various funding sources (including receive-only) with NWC connection.

Setup your Rizful node

go to Rizful.com and create a free account. Save all the information you get from starting your LN node: nodeID, LN address (can be personalized), login details, both NWC strings (receive only + send/receive string).
buy your first inbound channel. Their documentation is very helpful and straight forward.

click on the "get inbound" button and select the channel size you need. Size it correctly! Calculate more or less how much you will be receiving during a certain period of time, depending of your activity. Let's say for 1 week you expect to receive aprox 500k sats. So you will buy a 500k sats channel for around 13k sats fee. The channel will be almost instant open and ready to be used.

Optional you can also open a channel with other LN nodes, but with funds from onchain wallet, but you will need to deposit first into your Rizful node onchain and from there opening the channel. Be aware, that will be "Outbound capacity" so you will not be able to receive until you start making some payment and drain a bit that channel. A LN channel is like a glass filled with water. You can have a full glass but also you an empty glass, depending on what do you need more. But as a merchant you should start with an empty glass because you start to receive more.

generate your NWC strings. One for receive only (for the Zeus PoS, used by your employees) and another one for yourself (send/receive - full access) to be used in your own wallet app (Zeus, Alby Go etc).

Setup your Zeus PoS

Install Zeus, using Obtainium or ZapStore. Please skip the shitty Google or Apple stores.
In the first screen, select "Advanced" and create a new connection using the NWC (Nostr Wallet Connect) option from the drop-down menu. Put a name to your wallet and optional an image.

paste the "receive-only" NWC string from Rizful node into the NWC URL field and save the wallet config.
Go back to main screen and from top left menu select "Settings" - "Security" - "Set PIN". You must put a PIN to access Zeus in order to link any account to the PoS.
Go back to main screen in "Settings" and choose "Point of Sale". From the drop-down menu (default option "disabled") select "standalone".
Start configuring your products, prices etc and done, your PoS is ready to be used.
You can access the PoS from top right menu icon that will appear once you activate the standalone PoS.

Now you are ready to sale your products directly from that PoS and receive the sats straight into your Rizful node.

What to do once you start charging with bitcoin

If you have successful sales with bitcoin, your LN channel will get filled quite fast. So what you have to do? Empty the channel into your own onchain wallet.

Let's say you have a 500k sats channel and from your Zeus PoS report you received 400k in 3 days. Or you,, as the owner, can login to your Rizful node and check the channel balance.

We suppose you already have prepared an onchain wallet to save your stack. You can use Sparrow or Electrum or whatever onchain wallet you want.

Go to a swap service and prepare a swap into your onchain wallet address from your Rizful node. You will pay a LN invoice from Rizful node page directly or from your "full access NWC" using Zeus or Alby Go, if you like (NOT from your shop Zeus PoS, that is receive-only!).

DO NOT swap out all the balance ! Leave like 1%. So in our example will be like 390k sats sending to the swap service through a LN invoice and provide the BTC address from your onchain wallet (Sparrow, Electrum etc) to receive the sats. This way you can re-use that inbound channel multiple times.

Swap services you can use (select Lightning BTC to BTC):

Swap Market (it can have multiple swap providers): https://swapmarket.github.io/
Boltz: https://boltz.exchange/
FixedFloat: https://ff.io/
Robosats - P2P exchange: https://robosats.org/ (put order to "sell" sats from LN into an onchain address.
CoinOS (custodial): https://coinos.io (require to create a free account, no-KYC and then send sats over LN and withdraw to your onchain. It can be used also as a temporary custodial "cache" to empty your channel until you move out the funds into bigger UTXOs.
Blink (custodial): https://blink.sv (require to create an account and then internally swap to your self-custodial onchain address). It can be used also as a temporary custodial "cache" to empty your channel until you move out the funds into bigger UTXOs.
Wallet of Satoshi (custodial): https://walletofsatoshi.com - with integrated swap to onchain. It can be used also as a temporary custodial "cache" to empty your channel until you move out the funds into bigger UTXOs.
more about submarine swaps and fees here in a SN post: #163372

DONE. Happy Lightning!

Conclusion

And that's it! The idea is that after each certain period of receiving sats from your sales, you empty the channel into an onchain address, in self-custody.

Later once you accumulate more sats and you are more comfortable with LN nodes, you read and learn more about how to manage them (see my extensive guides about nodes) you can go more advanced running your own BTCPay server or a LNbits, with more tools for e-shops.

Or you can just continue with Zeus PoS, but this time, using it with its own embedded node (see my extensive guide for Zeus) and have full control over your own LND node, managing channels, liquidity etc.

You can also switch anytime between a NWC wallet to embedded LN node inside Zeus, for your PoS. It works the same, with multiple funding sources. For example, your embedded LN node in Zeus got filled quickly and you do not have time for a making a swap out. So you can switch instantly to a Rizful NWC wallet and continue charging sats in your empty channel.

I hope this mini guide will help you for more Bitcoin adoption!

199 sats \ 0 replies \ @rizful_com 18h

Awesome guide, thanks for this! We also have a new guide which focuses on starting your first Lightning Node and getting an NWC code to send & receive zaps: https://rizful.com/get_zaps_with_your_own_lightning_node

... As well as another which focuses on getting fully set-up on Nostr... https://rizful.com/get_on_nostr_today

56 sats \ 0 replies \ @sangekrypto 18h

It's great that you made that guide, the more people implement it, the more advanced a country like this will be, the more sophisticated its payment system will be, this country can use sats as a means of payment, this is great. I support you.

156 sats \ 0 replies \ @dingding541 18h

Excellent guide Darth thank you Bookmarked

457 sats \ 5 replies \ @unschooled 20h

Lovely guide. What are the advantages to using a NWC wallet with Rizful? If I understand correctly, it eliminates the need to have an always-online lightning node?

336 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin OP 20h

Yes, A rizful node is always online, without bothering with managing the infrastructure. Also could be a solution for places where is hard to run your own 24/7 node (Cuba or other places in LATAM) where the internet is not so well.

The NWC is just a simple way to connect that node to a mobile wallet app and make and receive payments. See more details about NWC here https://nwc.dev/ Is like a lndhub connection.

Consider it as a "transition" solution to your own self-custody node.

157 sats \ 3 replies \ @unschooled 20h

Nice - thanks for explaining. Could it also be used in uncle Jim scenarios, where a merchant trusts a node runner? I've noticed it's hard to establish a peer connection over Tor. Seems to work by allowing them into a meshnet to open that first channel, but obviously is not ideal

166 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin OP 20h

If you use AlbyGo or Zeus with a NWC wallet over Tor (Orbot) is working pretty well. So having the remote node somewhere out of your shitty place could help.

We have many ways for "uncle Jim" scenarios, as described also here: #330346 using a LNbits, for multiple community merchants, as a local trusted LN bank. Yes, indeed, with Lnbits you have more options.

What I tried to present in this quick guide is that you can use Rizful, a remote free node, in just 3 click. For a LNbits or BTCpay you need something more than that. Optional you can replace Rizful for an Alby Hub (on your own PC or remote, as I described here).

We just need to present to noobs all the options available and they can choose the best suitable for their case.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCLNAT 5h

usando un LNbits, para múltiples comerciantes de la comunidad, como un banco LN local de confianza. Sí, de hecho, con Lnbits tienes más opciones.

That is the option we are using with the Cubabitcoin Lightning node.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @unschooled 19h

💯%

137 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 20h

👍

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCLNAT 6h

Using the Rizful node seems like a good option for connectivity, easier than synchronizing with the Zeus and Blixt Neutrinos nodes. The version of Zeus that NWC has starts from 0.10, but I’m on 0.9.7 and don’t have that option, or at least I can’t see it. I’m unclear about how long the liquidity purchase lasts (1 month, 6 months, 1 year?).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin OP 1h

v0.10 is in alpha testing version now and soon in few days will be available the beta. You can install pre-releases if you DO NOT use the shitty google play store, but Obtainium (direct install from github source) - as it should be done by all bitcoiners.

I’m unclear about how long the liquidity purchase lasts (1 month, 6 months, 1 year?).

That is for when you BUY an empty channel from a LSP and you choose the period you need that channel. After that period, usually the LSP will close the channel automatically. But some LSPs (like Olympus) are introducing a way to renew your channel lease with extended period, without closing that channel. If you need that channel more time and don't want to close it.

Some users prefer to close and open new channels, some prefer to keep the channel open as long is possible. Depends of the use case, size of the channel etc.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @redlight_pleb 6h

Amazing guide and will be a reference that I’ll be using to others. Bookmarked, thanks heaps Darth

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 17h

Excellent guide!

36 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin OP 17h

Hopefully more people will start using some of these scenarios that I test myself and present them here. I am tired of people whining about not having places where to buy stuff with sats, coming up with all kind of excuses and going back using visa fiat cards.

This scenario took me just few minutes to setup with no effort. I always put myself in the place of a noob merchant / user and look at the solutions from a simple point of view.

If somebody come to say that this option is hard to do it, it means is a lazy bastard moron that will not achieve nothing in his miserable life and do not deserve Bitcoin at all.