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Request for standing orders in Bitcoin Cash for business banking case use One.Surgery has just hired two part-time international employees on a 12 month contract, salary paid in bitcoin cash! We maybe one of the first "non-crypto focussed" organisations in the world offering a salary in cryptocurrency (and we will write another post about the huge advantages of this in due course, as well as the employee experiences with accepting BCH). However, I would like to suggest a feature add on to a BCH wallet which I believe will be a significant upgrade and incentive for a business case use (and further the idea of having business banking on the blockchain, rather than traditional banks). We are proposing paying our employees a monthly salary, paid at the end of the month, from employer BCH wallet to employee BCH wallet. Currently I am not aware of a wallet or service that allows us to set up an automated standing order, such as (x) about of BCH (or USD), paid on (y) date of each month (or any other regular timeframe), to (z) BCH address, for (x) number of months. The service / wallet could also run a check the day / hour before the standing order is due to be sent, to ensure the funds are in the account and the recipient wallet is still valid, or will veto the payment. Perhaps even an automated email when payments are due / sent. I believe there will be multiple case uses for such a feature, particular in the business world, and really essential for payroll management. As it currently stands, we will have to manually pay 2 addresses at the end of each month, which can be quite arduous, and potentially unreliable if the wallet holder is busy. I do not think there would be too many roadblocks to the idea, as the BCH is still being pushed / authorised by the owner of the primary BCH wallet, rather than a pull of BCH that direct debits use. Thoughts welcome! Many thanks!
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There are two related Electron Cash wallet plugins I'm aware of: 1. https://github.com/KarolTrzeszczkowski/Mecenas-recurring-payment-EC-plugin 2. https://github.com/cculianu/electron_cash_scheduled_payments_plugin/releases I'm not aware of any other wallets with integrated functionality like you need. It does seem like an important area for wallets to improve.
Thanks, will take a look at these. An out of the box solution would be really great. Lots of other simple case uses - paying for your monthly rent to landlord, for example.
Recurring payments is a common feature of good payment gateways. It would be best to be able to create a script to do this entirely on the ledger rather than open to an external entity over time but that's likely not quite viable. However, re: "As it currently stands, we will have to manually pay 2 addresses at the end of each month, which can be quite arduous, and potentially unreliable if the wallet holder is busy." I think this is a MUCH larger issue. If making a simple transfer to two people at the same time of the month is an arduous task for BCH then adding features like recurring payments should come much later. Given my experience with BCH wallets I don't find this this to be the case, however. Could you describe the problem in more detail?
Well, in this particular case, its not arduous in the technical sense (as its just two payments per month), but in the theoretical sense, its arduous.... and is not a scalable solution. Imagine if an organisation has 10 employees and would have to manually pay out this each month with 10 different transactions. Its time consuming and manual entries each month has a much higher chance of human error (paying the wrong amount to the wrong person). Furthermore, as a salaried employee, one expects a consistent payment at a consistent time. (eg: 0800 on the 30th of the month). So a manual process of ensuring someone is available to pay at a consistent time every month to swipe left is arduous and inconsistent. The employer may not have access to the wallet at that moment, or busy at the expected pay time.. the employer could be unwell, in a meeting, running other tasks etc... What about different time zones for payments? What about employees on different payment schedules? Ultimately you don't want employees to remind you to pay because their payment hadnt arrived at their promised time, or to ask you when the next payment will come. An automated process is much more reliable and a professional way to run the company. The point is, if there is scope for businesses to take up BCH, I do not think its just about accepting payments at the point of sales and celebrate adoption... especially if we want to encourage the business to hold that BCH for further uses. There are multiple running costs for the business, and having a wallet/banking solution that helps automate the running of businesses would make it a much greater prospect to run your accounts through BCH. I am currently looking at a fiat bank account for the organisation... but a BCH bank account would be even better, if the wallet features were there, it could become attractive. Its a use-case idea for further BCH adoption.