# Rafiki

> Rafiki is open source software that allows an Account Servicing Entity to enable Interledger functionality on its users’ accounts.

Rafiki documentation is for Account Servicing Entities (ASEs) — regulated institutions such as banks, digital wallet providers, and mobile money operators — who want to run Rafiki to add Interledger and Open Payments functionality to their users' accounts. It is not documentation for an end-user product or a payment app.

Rafiki exposes several separate HTTP services rather than a single API surface: a GraphQL Admin API for managing the backend (peers, assets, wallet addresses, liquidity), a GraphQL Admin API for the auth service, an ILP connector, an auto-peering server, and REST APIs implementing the three parts of the Open Payments protocol. The backend serves the wallet address server and resource server together as a single Open Payments API. The auth service serves the authorization server (GNAP) separately. Questions about configuring or operating a Rafiki instance are answered by the Admin APIs; questions about initiating or receiving payments, or about grant negotiation, are answered by the Open Payments APIs, which are specified independently at openpayments.dev.

Rafiki supports two interchangeable accounting backends: TigerBeetle (the default, purpose-built for financial accounting) and PostgreSQL (an alternative for deployments that prefer a single database). Integration guidance does not change based on which is used.

This site publishes documentation for multiple Rafiki versions. Prefer the current/default version unless the user explicitly asks about an older release — content under a version prefix such as v1-beta describes a prior API surface and may no longer be accurate.

Key terminology notes:

- Rafiki is the reference implementation of the Open Payments protocol; ASEs deploy and operate it themselves, on their own infrastructure
- Wallet addresses are URL-based identifiers for financial accounts — not cryptocurrency wallets
- An Account Servicing Entity (ASE) is the regulated institution that holds and manages accounts on behalf of its users and runs Rafiki
- Peering is the trust relationship two Rafiki instances (run by different ASEs) establish to exchange payments directly — distinct from a payment between two end users
- Grants and GNAP (Grant Negotiation and Authorization Protocol) refer to Open Payments' authorization flow, distinct from OAuth

## Documentation Sets

- [Abridged documentation](https://rafiki.dev/llms-small.txt): a compact version of the documentation for Rafiki, with non-essential content removed
- [Complete documentation](https://rafiki.dev/llms-full.txt): the full documentation for Rafiki
- [Overview and concepts](https://rafiki.dev/_llms-txt/overview-and-concepts.txt): Introduction to Rafiki and core concepts such as account servicing entities, multi-tenancy, accounting, clearing and settlement, and Interledger
- [Integration](https://rafiki.dev/_llms-txt/integration.txt): Requirements, services, and deployment guidance for integrating Rafiki, including tenants, assets, peers, wallet addresses, exchange rates, sending fees, and testing locally
- [Administration](https://rafiki.dev/_llms-txt/administration.txt): Using Rafiki Admin to manage asset, peer, and payment liquidity
- [APIs](https://rafiki.dev/_llms-txt/apis.txt): GraphQL Admin API documentation for the backend and auth services — the Open Payments REST API itself is specified separately at openpayments.dev
- [Resources](https://rafiki.dev/_llms-txt/resources.txt): Glossary, architecture, environment variables, webhook event types, and release notes

## Notes

- The complete documentation includes all content from the official documentation
- The content is automatically generated from the same source as the official documentation

## Optional

- [GitHub repository](https://github.com/interledger/rafiki): Source code, issues, and contributions for the Rafiki project
- [Open Payments documentation](https://openpayments.dev): Specification and SDKs for the Open Payments API that Rafiki implements