The Request Network team is committed to create a financial platform with the potential to become the standard for invoices, accounting, auditing, and payments in crypto-currencies and fiat assets. You can learn more on our website and on our blog.

Request Network is built to allow anyone to develop advanced payment conditions (what we call request extensions). Today we’re explaining one of the potential use cases: Continuous Payments. What does it mean? It means that you will eventually get paid by the second, the minute, or by the day instead of at the end of the month.

What is the concept of Continuous Payments?

Continuous Payments are a way to split a payment into many smaller payments.

The fact that we manage our finances on a monthly basis has motivated us to introduce Continuous Payments — there’s always a gap between our paycheck and all our expenses. We’d like to change that.

For example, we receive our paycheck at the end of the month whereas our rent is generally debited at the beginning of each month. This results in a gap because we have to wait for our salary of March to sustain our expenses of April.

With Continuous Payments, your rent would be debited bit by bit every day instead of the entire amount being charged every 1st of the month.

Similarly, instead of receiving your paycheck at the end of the month, you would be paid every day or even every minute you work.

Below is a graph representing today’s standard account vs what it would look like with a continuous account.

Continuous accounts make it easier to manage your finances

The impacts on managing our finances

Today, if you just look at your standard account balance, you can’t be sure how much money you really own. We got into the habit of making accounting calculations to try to determine if we will make it until the end of the month.

Regarding the rent:

either the landlord asks the tenant to pay on the 1st of the month, which creates a discrepancy in the tenant’s account as he only receives his salary at the end of the month.

or the landlord accepts to be paid at the end of the month, which is advantageous for the tenant but not reassuring for the landlord as he doesn’t know during the entire month if the rent will finally be paid.

None of these cases is adequate: the first case is not favorable for the tenant, and the second one is not favorable for the landlord.

Regarding the salary, the employer usually pays every 2 weeks or at the end of the month for work that has been done every day, as a continuous effort.

It clearly would be fairer to pay salaries continuously.

Continuous Payments would also be useful for many recurring expenses such as financial loans, internet, phone subscriptions, car insurances, gym memberships, electricity bills, and more.

We’re used to document an expense on a monthly basis because there was no other way to manage them. In controlling and accounting , we always think and calculate on a monthly basis — this is our standard. But why? Shouldn’t the future be a place where we earn and spend money or tokens continuously?

Continuous Payments are an important step in the direction of finance simplicity. A Continuous Account better reflects our balance than a Standard Account. Continuous Payments also allow for better finance management for the payer, and trust for the payee. For businesses, continuous payments bring a market trust between customers and suppliers.

How Request will integrate Continuous Payments?

On the user interface side, Request will make it easy to create a continuous payment request, as well as other payment types (escrow, factoring, down payments…).

Continuous invoices will be incorporated into Request as an extension. The extension layer has been designed to handle any type of advanced payment conditions.

To bypass an infinity of transaction costs, a continuous invoice will work in a similar way as a vesting contract — your balance on the invoice increases continuously and you can withdraw the invoice funds to your account at any time.

Depending on the demands, we expect Request to support Continuous Payments in Q1 2018.

Who would be the first to use continuous payments?

Who needs this? Here’s a list of potential early adopters:

Crypto-companies paying their employees

Consulting companies invoicing their clients at the end of the month

Temporary employment agencies and temporary workers

Real estate agencies

Car leasing companies

Businesses with regular flows

Early adopters interested in better finance management

Paying salaries could be the first application, it will be fairer for the employees to be paid continuously and could result in a better finance management.

On a side note, it will be interesting to analyze the economical impact of a fluid economy. We imagine that accounting and auditing firms would also be interested in revisiting the ‘monthly-basis’ standard.

Feel free to contact us at continuous@request.network to be among the first ones to use this extension.

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