<p>It seems you are mixing two concepts in your question.</p>
<p>1.) the necessity of having an invoice
2.) the necessity of being online</p>
<p>Re1: invoices are not necessary with the not standardized keysend feature or the soon to be standardized BOLT 12 offers. Offers are specifically designed having refunds in mind as the also provide anonymous payer proofs which currently in lightning do not exist</p>
<p>Re2: both techniques in 1 still require both nodes to be online at the time a payment / refund is being conducted. That is just the nature of the protocol and there seems to be little we can do about it.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-08-04T08:55:59.823Z
2021-08-04T08:55:59.823Z
Rene Pickhardt
<p>I wonder if there is a way to force a refund. Let's say A makes a payment to B. Later, B finds that he has to refund A, but A is offline. Can B reverse this payment while A is offline?</p>
<p>Could it be a solution for A to create an invoice when paying B, which B can pay later when A is offline?</p>

<lightning-network><payment><offline><invoices>
Pay invoice to offline lightning node
Olympus
# Pay invoice to offline lightning node

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-08-04)

I wonder if there is a way to force a refund. Let's say A makes a payment to B. Later, B finds that he has to refund A, but A is offline. Can B reverse this payment while A is offline?

Could it be a solution for A to create an invoice when paying B, which B can pay later when A is offline?

**Tags:** lightning-network, payment, offline, invoices


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-08-04. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

It seems you are mixing two concepts in your question.

1.) the necessity of having an invoice
2.) the necessity of being online

Re1: invoices are not necessary with the not standardized keysend feature or the soon to be standardized BOLT 12 offers. Offers are specifically designed having refunds in mind as the also provide anonymous payer proofs which currently in lightning do not exist

Re2: both techniques in 1 still require both nodes to be online at the time a payment / refund is being conducted. That is just the nature of the protocol and there seems to be little we can do about it.


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