Pay and receive

A Lightning payment spends your VOUT Lightning balance. It does not draw automatically from the BTC or RGB assets in your on-chain wallet. If the balance is insufficient, add funds before paying.

VOUT handles payments to its own users in the account ledger. A BTC invoice from an outside Lightning wallet is paid through the node’s channels. The review screen identifies the payment and shows the applicable fee before you confirm.

Pay a VOUT user

Choose the recipient’s @username, select the asset and enter the amount. Review the username and amount before confirming. A display name or avatar can help you recognize someone, but the username determines the account the service resolves.

The service debits your account and credits the recipient in one ledger transaction. No Bitcoin transaction or channel HTLC is needed for this transfer, and it has no routing fee. The funds remain in VOUT custody after they move to the recipient.

Paying an invoice issued to another VOUT account follows the same internal settlement path. The invoice fixes the recipient and, when specified, the amount. A completed invoice cannot credit the recipient a second time.

Pay a BTC Lightning invoice

Scan or paste the recipient’s BOLT11 invoice. VOUT reads the amount, description and expiry. If the invoice does not specify an amount, enter one. Review those details and the maximum routing fee, then confirm.

The service reserves the amount and a fee allowance before asking the node to pay. When the payment succeeds, it returns the unused fee allowance. If the payment fails, the reserved amount and fee allowance return to your balance.

An outside payment needs a route with enough liquidity. It can fail even when you have enough BTC: a peer may be offline, the recipient may lack inbound capacity, or no route may fit the fee allowance. An expired invoice needs a new invoice from the recipient.

The routing fee is separate from the Bitcoin fee charged when you add funds or withdraw. The review and the final activity entry show different stages of that cost: the review shows the maximum reserved fee; the completed entry shows what was spent and what returned.

Receive a payment

1. Open the Lightning receive screen and choose the asset.
2. Enter an amount and, if useful, a short memo describing the payment.
3. Create the request and show its QR code, or copy and share the request.
4. Keep the request’s expiry in mind. Check the receive result or activity entry to confirm that payment arrived.

BTC requests use BOLT11. Another Lightning wallet can attempt to pay them on the same network, subject to routing and liquidity. The request displayed by the app has an expiry countdown; create a fresh one if it expires unpaid.

RGB requests are intended for a VOUT Lightning balance. They use VOUT’s own request format, and their QR code can use a compact reference that the VOUT service resolves. They are not ordinary BTC invoices. Receiving an RGB amount into your VOUT account is also different from receiving an RGB transfer into your self-custodial on-chain wallet.

The service binds each invoice to an account before returning it. An arriving payment is credited only when it matches that binding. For RGB, the service also requires the expected contract and exact asset amount. A notification or a sender’s screenshot does not replace a completed entry in your own account.

When a payment stays pending

Pending means the service has not established a final outcome. The node may still be attempting the payment, or the service may be waiting for its result. A dropped connection is insufficient evidence that nothing was sent.

VOUT keeps the reservation until it can settle the existing payment. It reconciles unresolved payments with the node and releases a reservation when failure is established. This prevents a refund from making funds available while the original payment can still succeed.

Check the existing activity entry before trying again. Repeatedly creating new payments can produce separate valid requests. If the state does not resolve, retain the payment reference and contact support without sharing your seed phrase, backup password or private recovery files.