<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Mike, Gavin,</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>We started to work on the merchant side to test the integration of our prototype for the recurring payments. We modified the 'Payment Request Generator' from Gavin to include a new check box 'set recurring'. We forked the code and checked in our modification here: <a href="https://github.com/killbill/paymentrequest/commit/e530f6ec528266aacfd076d7c3154ad39267c3f3">https://github.com/killbill/paymentrequest/commit/e530f6ec528266aacfd076d7c3154ad39267c3f3</a></div><div><br></div><div>We also found a few issues with the code diff that we sent yesterday for bitcoinj and checked in the bug fixes in our fork-- so the diff sent yesterday is slightly outdated.</div><div><br></div><div>So at this point we have a working prototype for bitcoinj and we are waiting for your feedbacks. We also started to look at integrating the protocol in Kill Bill to check that what is proposed supports indeed the business cases of a full recurring billing platform.</div><div><br></div><div>Hope to hear from you guys soon!</div><div><br></div><br><div><div>On Feb 7, 2014, at 6:57 PM, Stephane Brossier <<a href="mailto:stephane@kill-bill.org">stephane@kill-bill.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Mike and all,<div><br></div><div>Pierre and I just committed a prototype implementation of the recurring payment protocol using bitcoinj. You can find the diff on our fork: </div><div><a href="https://github.com/killbill/bitcoinj/commit/40c657c4191498f12539c60316116aa68af368a7">https://github.com/killbill/bitcoinj/commit/40c657c4191498f12539c60316116aa68af368a7</a></div><div><br></div><div>We did not write the server (merchant side), but wanted to have some feedback before going deeper (merchant implementation and tests). We did our best to build it on top of the existing BIP-0070 protocol-- only a few additions in the messages, but no new calls and no new uri scheme. We created a new package 'recurring' where most of the new code lives.</div><div><br></div><div>At a high level:</div><div><br></div><div>1. Creation of the subscription:</div><div><br></div><div>The initial handshake for creating the subscription is exactly similar to the one for the payment protocol (PaymentRequest is used to provide the contract)</div><div><br></div><div>2. Wallet can decide to poll the merchants for its active subscriptions.</div><div><br></div><div>Here the flow is exactly similar to the payment protocol but the wallet receives a callback to verify the payment matches the contract and should go through.</div><div><br></div><div>Please give us some feedback whenever you have the chance. In the meantime we will start implementing the merchant side and test the code.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers!</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Jan 31, 2014, at 10:13 AM, Mike Hearn <<a href="mailto:mike@plan99.net">mike@plan99.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">That looks OK at a very high level. Things you probably want to think about:<div><ul><li>How to trigger it off the existing payment protocol (no new top level messages or mime types or uri extensions please)</li>
<li>Data structures to define the payment schedule</li><li>Do you allow pre-submission of time locked transactions or not?</li></ul><div>I think as you prototype these things will become clearer. You could try prototyping either in Bitcoin Core (C++) or bitcoinj (java, look at the PaymentSession class).</div>
</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:47 AM, Stephane Brossier <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stephane@kill-bill.org" target="_blank">stephane@kill-bill.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><b><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">From what I have seen so far, there seems to be an agreement that this is a nice feature to add. </span><b><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;display:inline!important">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We are pretty new to that community and so we don't know exactly what the process is, and in particular how we reach consensus via email. I am certainly open to follow 'the way' if there is one, but one solution would be to follow Mike's suggestion on providing a (prototype) implementation first and then defining/refining the BIP. Odinn also suggested a possible retribution for our time through crowd-sourcing which I am interested to pursue if that makes sense.</span></div>
</b></div><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We have quite some experience on the subscription side of things and while we are growing our knowledge on the Bitcoin technology (and ecosystem at large) we would benefit from:</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">* some feedbacks on the high level proposal</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">* additional requirements we might have missed</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">So, below is a high level description of what we have in mind. If this sounds reasonable, we could start working on an implementation.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> </span></p><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I. Abstract</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">---------------</span></div><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">This describes a protocol to enable recurring payments in bitcoins and can be seen as an extension of BIP-0070. The main goal here is to have the customer subscribe to a service of some kind (that is, agreeing on the terms of that subscription contract), and then have the wallet make recurring payments without any intervention from the customer as long as the payments match what the customer agreed on paying.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">An example of such service would be an online streaming website, to which a user pays a fixed recurring monthly fee to access videos (a.k.a. resources). Note that there is also usage based billing: for example, the user may need to purchase additional access for premium videos (overage charges). This type of billing is more complicated and there are many variations to it used in the industry (pre-paid, …). For the sake of discussion, we’ll focus on fixed recurring payments only, but we will keep usage in mind to make sure the protocol will be able to support it as well.</span></div>
<div><b><br></b></div><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">II. Motivation</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">------------------</span></div><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Subscription based services have been growing in the past few years and so the intent it to make it possible for customers to pay in bitcoins. </span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Bitcoin’s push model presents new advantages for the customer compared to traditional payment methods: the user has control over the subscription (for example, there is no need to call the merchant to explicitly cancel the credit card payments). It also opens the door to subscription management tools in wallets (e.g. Hive apps), which would give user an overview of what they are paying each month.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">III. Flow of Operations</span></div>----------------------------------------</b><div><b><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br>
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Creation of the subscription:</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </span></div><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">1. The customer clicks 'subscribe' -> A message is sent to the merchant.</span></div><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">2. The merchant sends back a message to the wallet with the details of the subscription such as the amount to be paid. In reality, there will be more information but for the purpose of the prototype implementation this is sufficient.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">3. The wallet prompts the customer for authorization.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">4. The customer authorizes (or denies) it.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">5. The wallet sends the confirmation to the merchant.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">6. The merchant confirms the subscription was created.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Ongoing payments:</span></div>
</b><div class="im"><b><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></div></b></div><b><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">From that time on and since Bitcoin is a 'push' model, the wallet is responsible to poll the merchant for due payments associated with that subscription. Note that the merchant could specify hints to the wallet on when to poll (specific dates) or not during the registration of the subscription.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Note that we can't simply have the wallet push X bitcoins every month: the user account on the merchant side may have gotten credits, invoice adjustments, etc. since the last invoice, so the amount to pay for a given billing period may be lower than the regular amount. It could even be zero if the user decides to make a one-time payment to the merchant directly using a different wallet. Hence, the wallet needs to get the latest invoice balance to make sure how much it should pay. This also opens the door for the support of overage charges.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Quick note on the implementation on the merchant side: an entitlement system is a piece of logic on the merchant side which grants the user access to certain resources depending on the account status (unpaid invoices, etc.). This goes often hand in hand with a dunning system, which progressively restricts access as the user's account is more and more overdue. Since wallets can be offline for an extended period of time, payments may be missed and lead to an overdue state (e.g. extra fees, service degraded). It is the responsibility of the customer to ensure the wallet is up often enough for payments to happen.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In that recurring phase where the wallet polls the merchant, the wallet is responsible to check that payments match the subscription contract; that is, the amount, frequency of payments, … match what the customer agreed on. If so, the payment is made without asking for explicit approval from customer, and the flow is similar to BIP-0070: The message is sent to the merchant, and in parallel, a transaction is sent to the btcnet. The merchant sends an ACK to the wallet and of course checks the states of the transactions on the btcnet to mark that payment as successful.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Subscription change (optional):</span></div>
</b><b><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></div></b><b><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Optionally we could implement a change in the ongoing subscription to address the upgrade/downgrade scenarios. Of course, we could also simply support a cancellation followed by a creation of a new subscription, but having that as a one atomic message is probably better. The steps are very similar to the initial registration.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">1. The customer clicks 'upgrade', 'downgrade', … -> A msg is sent to the merchant.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">2. The merchant sends back a msg to the wallet with the detail of the NEW subscription. </span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">3. The wallet prompts the customer for authorization.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">4. The customer authorizes (or denies) it.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">5. The wallet sends the confirmation to the merchant.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">6. The merchant confirms the change in the subscription.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Cancellation of the subscription:</span></div>
</b><b><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></div></b><b><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The cancellation is initiated from the customer:</span></div><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt">
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">1. The customer clicks 'cancel' -> The wallet is informed that it should not accept any new payment associated to that subscription.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">2. The wallet sends a message to the merchant to inform about the cancellation.</span></div>
<div style="line-height:1.15;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">3. The merchant confirms the subscription was cancelled.</span></div>
<br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span><br><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"></span></b></div>
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