Lightning wallets are a great way to transact bitcoin very quickly, with low fees and increased privacy. If you're new to the Lightning Network, check out this article to learn more.
Lightning wallets work a bit different than bitcoin wallets. With a bitcoin wallet, when you want to receive funds, you show the sender your receiving address - anyone can any amount of bitcoin here.
Lightning Invoices are for a specific amount of bitcoin. For example, Bob sends Alice a $21 Lightning invoice. Alice can only pay that amount, not more or less, and the invoice usually expires after 24 hours. Lightning Invoices are most useful today for merchants and POS type applications.
Lighting Payment Addresses are more static, like a bitcoin address. Bob can share a Lightning Payment Address to Alice and Alice can send any amount of sats to Bob, at any time. Lightning Payment Addresses are Ideal for tips on a website or for receiving bitcoin on an ongoing basis from someone like Bitcoin Well.
Why do we have Lightning Invoices and Payment Addresses?
When the Lightning Network first began, it was smaller and less developed than it is today. Lightning payments had to be requested by a recipient, where a specific amount of sats or dollars were requested and the sender would accept this request and send the requested amount of bitcoin. These requests are called Lightning Invoices. Lightning Invoices are less practical for most folks today, as they are fixed in value and expire after a short time. As a result, more bitcoin Lightning developers began working on solutions to mimic bitcoin's easy to use, static receiving address but for Lightning wallets. Thus, the Payment Address was born.