Payment pointers and wallet addresses

Payment pointers

A payment pointer is a standardized identifier for a payment account that supports Interledger payments. Each payment pointer must resolve to an HTTPS URL that serves as an SPSP endpoint to facilitate sending and receiving ILP packets.

You can determine whether a URL is a payment pointer by sending a GET request to the URL with an accept: application/spsp4+json header.

Example request

curl --request GET \
 --url https://wallet.example.com/alice/ \
 --header 'accept: application/spsp4+json'

A response from an SPSP server means the URL is a payment pointer.

Example response

{
 "destination_account":"example.0.cloudnine.ind.alice.cdfa5e16-e759",
 "shared_secret":"7h0s7EpQDqcgzqmX-mwrNHFHinPvJq8Jw",
}

Payment pointers are often written out using the $ shorthand. For example, $wallet.example.com/alice, which resolves to https://wallet.example.com/alice/.

Rafiki assigns each of your customers’ accounts with a payment pointer. This payment pointer is also a wallet address because Rafiki supports both Interledger and Open Payments.

Wallet addresses

A wallet address is a secure, unique URL for a payment account that supports Open Payments. It acts as an entry point into the Open Payments APIs, facilitating interactions like sending and receiving payments.

You can determine whether a URL is a wallet address by sending a GET request to the URL with an accept: application/json header.

Example request

curl --request GET \
 --url https://wallet.example.com/alice \
 --header 'accept: application/json'

A valid response means the URL is a wallet address.

Example response

{
  "id": "https://wallet.example.com/alice",
  "publicName": "Alice",
  "assetCode": "USD",
  "assetScale": 2,
  "authServer": "https://auth.wallet.example.com",
  "resourceServer": "https://wallet.example.com",
}

Rafiki assigns each of your customers’ accounts with a wallet address. This wallet address is also a payment pointer because Rafiki supports Open Payments and Interledger. See the integration requirements for wallet addresses for more information.