What happens if customers skip lightning

The Bitcoin Lightning Network is the quickest way to process Bitcoin payments. As a shop owner looking to accept Bitcoin, are you really gonna push your customers to use the Lightning Network instead of just regular Bitcoin transactions?

Sadly, the lightning network is not as widely used as one would think. If you're only going to accept LN and not onchain bitcoin, you might be setting up your business to losing potential customers. But really, store owners probably don't care. Most of them wants bitcoin or whatever crypto they're accepting to be settled in fiat directly to their bank accounts, so they'll be using a payment processor that accepts both BTC, LN and pretty much all widely used alts.

It totally depends on the customer’s preferences imo, they choose whatsoever method they want to use to pay you whether direct bitcoin transactions or lightning. As the store owner who wants to accept bitcoin payments they you should also provide the option other ways whether direct transaction or lightning payment to the customers, but in this case you can kinda advertise or inform the customers you accept lightning payment. Not many people use lightning network, so the option can be there but most people would prefer to pay using direct transaction AFAIK.

I do not see the point in accepting particularly Lightning Network and not Onchain too.  It is like accepting Monero but not Bitcoin.  If you are the owner of a business, the more options your customer has the better it goes for both of you.  The confirmation time varies, but at the end of the day as an entrepreneur I am assuming you care the most about getting the earnings whether it happens in 30 seconds or 30 minutes.

If you decide to accept Bitcoin, don't force yourself to sacrifice time. Instead, let your customers take their time. You should create specific Bitcoin payment rules that suit your product or service, for example... - Minimarket: "The groceries will be delivered after the transaction has been confirmed" - Restaurant/treatment clinic: "Order and pay first." If they don't want these rules, they'll pay you with fiat.

Well, the Lightning Network still needs the on-chain transaction when opening a channel. If you recommend this to your customer, it's time-consuming. Yes, it's an instant transaction, but like I said, it still needs an on-chain transaction before you can send and receive BTC immediately. It's too much hassle if you tell your customer to use LN to receive payment, plus transaction or routing fees on LN nowadays are pretty high depending on node operator policy and channel liquidity. So I don't think it's a good idea to tell your customers to use LN; most of us use the on-chain, and the current network fees is very cheap nowadays. However, if you are using a 3rd party payment gateway that has this option to receive LN, it's fine to add it in your list only if your payment gateway is set to auto-convert into fiat or stablecoin. There are few payment processors that offer it, like BTCpayserver, where you can add a 3rd-party exchange like BTCpay or Strike plugins, and BTC can be set to automatically convert to fiat or any stablecoin.

The main reasons for using the Lightening Network are the speed of confirmations and the low fees. For the store owner, what matters is the speed of confirmations, as this means faster order acceptance. Therefore, for stores that accept Bitcoin for everyday use, adding the Lightening Network is a great advantage, but it is not for all stores that accept Bitcoin payments.

I think the biggest issue isn’t whether Lightning is better but user behavior. Most users still default to what they know, which is on-chain. For merchants, it probably makes more sense to support both rather than trying to "force" Lightning. Lightning works great for speed and fees but if a customer doesn’t already use it, adding that extra step can reduce conversions. In the end it’s more about convenience than technology.

This is one of the reasons bitcoin lightning network was created, for fast transaction at a very low or zero fee. There are stores that are now accepting bitcoin and many of them accept the bitcoin lightning network. If I should choose between both, I will prefer the lightning network over the onchain transaction. It depends. Steak 'n Shake only accepting bitcoin lightning network but there was increase in the business sales after the acceptance. You can read about it:  Steak 'n Shake comment after accepting bitcoin for payment 9 months ago

Adding Bitcoin lightening network is an advantage indeed but that should be as an alternative or added payment method and having the main Bitcoin payment as the key crypto payment gateway for the business, the reason is to sustain none technical customer since lightening network payment requires some level of set which not every Bitcoin holder can set up but send Bitcoin directly is more easier, so those that want speed and less fees can make use of the lightening network to send their payment.

If you're a store owner, providing two payment options On-chain and LN is much better in my opinion. So your customers can choose their own payment options, if a customer does not use a wallet that supports LN they can directly do it via On-chain and vice versa if the customer uses a wallet that supports LN, they can do it. The best choice as a business person when receiving payments, it is the one that is ready to provide any form of payment so that the customer or client is not confused and will be happy, because they can do as they want.

According to the little research and findings I have done, Lightning Network seems to be the fastest and best to be used by vendors and merchants because of the fast rate of confirmation. If I were to give advice, I would advise the use of lightning because that would save time for business and also help customers be quick to wrap up their transactions and get on their way. As a business vendor who accepts bitcoin payment, this option should be their first priority because it saves time and has a fast rate of transaction confirmation.

If it is an online store, on-chain bitcoin should be good enough. For a brick 'n mortar, I suppose I would try to support both, however I shall create an option for people to order ahead online and pay with BTC which they can just pick up. Whenever you can tho, best to try and support major altcoins as well, similar to how businesses offer a variety of popular fiat payment channels. This way you can broaden your reach as lots of people use major alts for paying 'n stuff e.g. usdt

The main issue I see in LN is setup. Not many people have the patient to learn how to set it up correctly and even if they try, it's still so uncommon that most people who know about Bitcoin prefer the simpler on-chain payment. If LN could be made easy to use, there's no reason why merchants and customers won't use it. It would be nice for a UI to enable the switch from on-chain payment to LN by just flipping a switch instead of the laborious configuration involved in LN.

If customers don't use lightening network then they can use on-chain, but the truth is that, while the lightening network is more of a payment layer for mostly small amounts, the on-chain network available also known as the settlement later is more suited for larger amounts of funds and that's why it would be wiser for businesses to use lightening network to accept payments unless where big amounts is involved, then on-chain network comes through.

As store owner, I will not limit the method whether it is LN or native network, so my customers can choose where they want to pay. But before that, I will tell him that LN has advantages in time efficiency & the ability to transfer small amounts in the form of sats (suitable for micro transactions). In the end, it is up to him to decide how he will execute the transaction.

Whatever network a customer chooses to use in making their payments for services offered or payment for goods isn’t up to you as a merchant. Your primary response to yourself is to ensure that you receive your payments in the end. Yes, you are allowed a window of opportunity share your advice or insight on what you think might be the best means of payment or practice in this endeavor but, that’s as far as you can go. Waiting for confirmation becomes your primary responsibility and that is what you should communicate to your customer’s understanding while initiating payment. Once you both are able to come to terms with that, it’s all good.

You shouldn't even have to hold your customers handicapped with the payment option system otherwise you'll be loosing your customers due to the inconveniences such condition of payment would cause them. Know it that you can't force them to expose their privacies to the exchange because, some may value their privacy and only uses the blockchain network to enhance privacy and security but one thing is certained that whoever bitcoin or crypto user who can boldly walk to the shop and want to pay with bitcoin shouldn't have issues of passing Kyc in other to proceed transactions off chain. Like one of the repliers response, you should just be concerned to receive your payments with the accountability of alternative means of accepting your service payments. An experience user would also prefer using the lightening network for quick payment settlement and as well process transactions with very low fees.

If you are looking for global reach and widespread distribution, you should provide many payment options, not just one specific option. You should consider the requirements of all customers, as some of them do not prefer the Lightning network and would like to pay using the regular Bitcoin network, another cryptocurrency or even a stablecoin. Therefore, if you are a store owner and want to expand and attract more users, you must provide all these acceptable payment options.

A merchant should support both. If the customer don't use lightning then try to use normal bitcoin transaction, the fee is already pretty low these days and for first confirmation only take minutes, even faster if the fee is increased a little bit. With a little bit higher fee it's already viable way to make a daily transaction.