Payment methods

The payment method is the means by which the sender’s ASE will fulfill its payment obligations to the recipient’s ASE. Cash, credit/debit cards, bank transfers, gift cards and mobile money can all be considered different payment methods.

When an outgoing-payment is completed against an open and active incoming-payment, the sender’s ASE becomes obligated to make payment using the payment method initially specified in the incoming-payment response.

Though Open Payments is designed to be an abstraction layer that can issue payment instructions between transacting parties atop any payment method, Interledger (ILP) is the only payment method that currently integrates with Open Payments readily.

When using ILP as a payment method in Open Payments, the following information is required from the recipient’s ASE, in the incoming payment’s method object.

• A type of ilp to indicate the payment method.
• The ILP address of the recipient’s ASE: The ILP address is required so that packets representing payments routed over the Interledger network will be forwarded to the node owned and operated by the intended receiver (i.e. recipient’s ASE).
• A shared secret: A cryptographically secured secret to be exchanged between the sender’s ASE and the recipient’s ASE to ensure that packets sent over the Interledger network through a STREAM connection can only be read by the two parties.

incoming-payment methods object

"methods": [
  {
    "type": "ilp",
    "ilpAddress": "g.ilp.iwuyge987y.98y08y",
    "sharedSecret": "1c7eaXa4rd2fFOBl1iydvCT1tV5TbM3RW1WLCafu_JA"
  }
]

After the incoming-payment response is received, the sender’s ASE creates a quote request containing "method": "ilp".