Guides

Connect to Coincards using Zap Desktop Lightning Wallet!

Looking to connect to Coincards using the Zap Desktop lightning wallet? Our node is operational and has plenty of liquidity for both inbound and outbound transactions making it one of the best nodes to connect to when getting started!

Use Zap Desktop for quick and easy Lightning Network integration!

*Coincards is not partnered or affiliated with Zap Wallet and makes no gaurantees on its software. This tutorial is strictly for information purposes.*

HOW COINCARDS WORKS:

Ordering from Coincards is Quick and Easy!
01.

Select An Amount and Add to Cart

02.

Complete Your Payment

03.

Receive your Gift Code and Redeem!

Zap Desktop - Spending on Coincards:

Using Coincards.com with the Zap’s Desktop wallet is super easy. We’ve written this quick how-to guide to get you started!
We’re going to start off by assuming you have Zap Desktop installed on your mobile device and you have successfully funded it and opened a channel with Coincards.

From there, start off by visiting Coincards.com and selecting the country you want to shop from.

Next, Browse our vast selection of products or use the top bar to search for a particular product. In this demo, we will search for an Amazon.com gift card in the USA region.
Once your cart has everything you need, head on over to our checkout page!
Coincards.com checkout and payments are powered by our own BTCPay Server instance.

After hitting the Proceed to BTCPay button, you will be redirected to our payment screen which defaults to on-chain BTC. For this tutorial, we want to use an off-chain lightning transaction.

Select the “Bitcoin” option and a dropdown will appear. Select “Bitcoin (Lightning)” from the menu. You will now have a BOLT11 invoice.

Click the “Copy” tab on the invoice and select the “BOLT11 Invoice” text to copy to your device.

Open your Zap Desktop Wallet up and click the Pay button.
Clicking on the Pay button will bring you to the Send Satoshis screen. This is where you can now paste the invoice details which will then automatically fulfill the payment details and automatically fulfill the memo with your Coincards order.

Click the Send #### Satoshis button to complete the payment!

Switch back to your Coincards.com screen and you will now see your invoice has been paid and accounted for.
Success! Your order is now completed and your order should be instantly processed with an email in your inbox!

Select your country to get started:

Zap Desktop - Install and Setup:

Zap Desktop comes with the ability to Create a new wallet, Connect to your existing node (Like BTCPay), or Recover a wallet. For this tutorial, we will Create a new wallet.

Zap Desktop will create your wallet using the BIP39 standard keywords for a 24-word seed phrase. Write these words down in a safe and secure place as they will be needed to recover your wallet should you ever need to.

Zap will ask you to confirm your seed phrase with three random words and then also ask you to secure your wallet file with a password.

Zap will also ask you for a backup location. For this tutorial, we will choose locally backedup, but we won’t get into details of backing up your channels on Google or Dropbox.
Once all steps are done, Zap wallet will be created! Your wallet needs to start by downloading the latest data from the blockchain. This might take a few minutes, but your wallet will now show an address available for you to start funding your wallet on-chain!

Zap Desktop - Funding Your Lightning Wallet and Opening a Channel:

On Zap Desktop, you must fund your lightning node and open an outbound channel in order to start spending. We are going to run through the basics of connecting to the Coincards lightning node after funding your wallet.
To get started open your Zap desktop wallet and select the QR code image, next to your balance.
This will open a up your on-chain wallets address and QR code where you can send your on-chain funds to.
Once your on-chain funds have been received by your wallet, its now time to open a channel through an on-chain transaction.

Click the Channels link in the Zap desktop wallet and Create – Open new channel.

Zap will suggest a few services that have become larger centralized nodes that facilitate funds, however we want to keep things as decentralized and direct as possible so we suggest opening a connection to Coincards directly. When asked to Search the network, simply copy and paste the following address into your Zap Desktop wallet

02233a3b30d7c8b08542eefe66978e45d2962ed21e857ce33ea1452b5b90173d77@54.39.133.223:9735

Once you paste the Coincards node info into the search bar, Zap will automatically identify our nodes public key and allow you to open a channel. Select the amount of funds, you would like to commit to the channel, but make sure to leave enough funds to pay for the transaction fee.

Once opened, Zap will return you to the main page and show a list of all valid open channels connected to your Zap Desktop wallet. Your most recently opened channel will need 3 confirmations before its usable.

When your channel opening transaction has reached 3 on-chain confirmations your channel will now become valid and can be used for off-chain transactions.

You are now ready to spend!