Assets & Payments

Payment Network

The Aletheia Payment Network lets banks and payment institutions settle their customers' payments in AEY directly on StableChain. A payment is final when its block is final, about a second after it is sent: no clearing house, no settlement cycle, no end-of-day batch.

Settles in AEY, final in about a second

Participants Admitted by governance

Messages ISO 20022 semantics

01 How a payment settles

1 Instructed The customer's bank (the debtor agent) sends the payment from the customer's account.
2 Routed The chain checks that each bank is active and serves its customer's account.
3 Within limits Per-payment and daily limits of both banks, and the bank's certification for the scheme.
4 Unique The payment reference (UETR) has not been settled before by that bank.
5 Settled The AEY moves from debtor to creditor in one finalized block.

02 What can be sent

Payment type	How it works
Credit transfer	The debtor pays the creditor through both their banks; single or in a batch.
Request to pay	The payee asks; the payer accepts once, before it expires, and it settles as a credit transfer.
Mandate and direct debit	The debtor signs a mandate with a maximum, a frequency and a window; the creditor collects within it.
Scheduled payment	The debtor books a payment for a future day; the chain executes it that day, with every check.
Return	The creditor sends back all or part of a payment it received.
Recall request	The debtor asks for a payment back; the creditor accepts or declines. Finality itself is never undone.

03 Participants

AdmissionBanks and payment institutions are admitted, changed, suspended or terminated only by governance. A suspension takes effect at once; other changes after one epoch.

Settlement accountEach participant has one settlement account. An indirect participant acts through a sponsor, and only while the sponsor is active.

Account numbersA participant serves its settlement account and the accounts it assigns Aletheian account numbers to, within its own routing range.

04 Protection built in

LimitsEach bank has a per-payment maximum and daily outgoing and incoming maximums, counted per UTC day.

No double paymentEvery settled payment is remembered by its bank and reference for 400 days; a second payment with the same reference is refused.

Returns and recallsMoney can come back only through a return or an accepted recall, as a new payment. A final payment is never reversed.

05 Payments to and from other systems

When one side of a payment is outside Aletheia, for example a SEPA Instant transfer to a European bank, the AEY is locked in an escrow on StableChain while a licensed gateway completes the external leg. The escrow then either settles (the external payment succeeded) or is released back to the payer (it did not). It can never do both, and it never resolves by time alone. The chain checks after every block that the escrowed AEY matches the escrow account exactly.

1 Locked The payer's AEY is placed in escrow for the external leg.
2 External leg The gateway sends the payment on the external rail.
3 Settled Confirmed: the escrowed AEY completes the payment.
4 Or released Failed: the AEY returns to the payer in full.

06 Privacy

The ledger records accounts, amounts, the banks involved and a hash of the payment reference. Names, addresses and other personal data stay with the banks and never go on chain. Because only a hash of the reference is recorded, the reference itself cannot be read from the ledger.