Supported Bitcoin Lightning Network Wallets

Written by Lightning Pay

Updated: Nov 5, 2024

 

Lightning Pay aims to build the most seamless bridge between the traditional financial system and your bitcoin wallet. However, wallets come in all kinds of shapes and functions. While we aim to support as many of the best and most commonly used wallets as possible, there will always be some caveats. We'll try to keep this article up to date as much as possible to let you know which wallets work best when using Lightning Pay. 

If you're just beginning to learn about Bitcoin and wallets, check out our Getting Started article, and our overview of Bitcoin Lightning Wallets as well.

Buying Bitcoin

When buying bitcoin, there are three different methods we can use to deliver the bitcoin to your wallet.

  1. Bitcoin On-Chain Address - This method utilises the Bitcoin base layer to deliver bitcoin to and address of your choosing. You can setup a destination address in your account profile, or enter the address in the correct field during the buying process. These come in the format of a long string of numbers and letters, for example: bc1q563v5amsut00h6uvc2jm46rf7txswjmrqevu97
  2. Lightning Address - Another address type that is used for a Lightning Wallet. These wallets use a second layer of bitcoin optimised for smaller payments. You can also set up these wallet addresses in your account profile, or enter them during the buying process. The format of these addresses are user@wallet.com
  3. Manual Withdrawal (LNURLw) - This is a QR code format, compatible with many Lightning Wallets. It allows your wallet to request a withdrawal and receive payments, all within your wallet app. 

Bitcoin On-Chain Address

Bitcoin's base layer is optimised for secure final settlement of funds, and is great for larger amounts. Because the bitcoin blockchain is optimised to be a robust, secure, decentralised, and immutable. Therefore, the interoperability between bitcoin wallets using this payments layer is very good, and there are very few circumstances where you will have trouble with whatever wallet you choose to use with Lightning Pay. 

That being said, here are a few wallets we would recommend you start with first.

Lightning Address

A number of wallets provide a human readable address to receive payment, even when the user is offline. As of the time of writing, these wallets have been tested to work with Lightning Pay's lightning address withdrawal feature.

The following wallets should work as well, but may have some issues with liquidity, or special conditions based on their implementation of lightning addresses. 

Zeus - This is a unique implementation of a Lightning Address, made by a great Self-Custody Wallet. The caveat is that you must be online within 24 hours of receiving payment and manually claim it, or it will be returned. We've had a few users trip over this while using Lightning Pay.

  • Phoenix Wallet - Offers a special brand of Lightning address, based on new technology (BIP-353 and Bolt12). These are not currently compatible with Lightning Pay withdrawals.

LNURLw

By default, Lightning Pay uses LNURLw as a mechanism for withdrawing bitcoin from the platform. As of the time of writing, here is a list of the most commonly used Bitcoin Lightning Wallets that support withdrawals from Lightning Pay.

As of the date of the last update of this article, the following wallets are not supported. We hope these wallets add support for LNURLw soon, as we love these otherwise!

Selling Bitcoin or Bill Pay

In order to sell bitcoin through Lightning Pay or use the Bill Pay feature, you’ll simply need to have bitcoin available on any lightning bitcoin wallet. All wallets that support payments on the lightning network can be used to deposit bitcoin for sale.

 

While we've done our best to give you an overview of compatibility between various wallets and Lightning Pay, the bitcoin technology space is constantly evolving, so this is likely to be incomplete. If you have any questions about a specific wallet, we are more than happy to help you out. Just reach out to us at support@lightningpay.nz.