NIPs stands for Nostr Implementation Possibilities.
The nostr protocol is defined by the NIPs.
With the basic protocol Bitagent can send events to relays.
Bitagent provides nostr identifiers, yourname@bitagent.ch for example, to identify you on nostr.
Lightning zaps are a combination of a lightning address (LUD-16) and a nostr indetifier (NIP-05).
If you have both of them you can send sats in nostr.