A tab you settle later
4 minDifficulty Checked 2026-11-10- A channel sets XRP aside for one receiver. It works in one direction only.
- Claims are checked off the ledger, so payments do not wait for consensus.
- Payment channels hold XRP. The channel costs its creator one owner reserve.
Think of a bar tab backed by a deposit.
You hand the bartender's safe 100 XRP. Nobody can touch it but the two of you. Each time you order, you sign a slip: "I now owe 3 total." Then "5 total." Then "9 total." The bartender checks your signature and pours. No trip to the bank each time.
At closing time, the bartender takes the last slip to the bank once and collects 9. You get the other 91 back.
A payment channel is that tab on the XRP Ledger.
- The payer opens the channel and locks XRP in it.
- The payee is the only one who can be paid from it.
- The slips are called claims. They are signed messages, sent any way you like. They are not ledger transactions.
- The payee settles with one ledger transaction when they choose.
Checking a signature takes a tiny fraction of a second. So a channel can carry payments far faster than the ledger closes, limited by how fast the two sides can sign and verify.
Good fits, from xrpl.org:
- Things delivered instantly, like digital items.
- Cheap things, where a fee per payment would be a real part of the price.
- Things bought in bulk when the final quantity is not known up front.
A channel goes one way: from the payer to the payee.
Payment channels have been on mainnet since 2017-03-31. They arrived in the same ledger as escrow.
PaymentChannelCreate creates a PayChannel entry and deducts Amount from the sender.
| Field | Required | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
Amount | Yes | XRP, in drops, to set aside |
Destination | Yes | The only account that can receive from the channel. Cannot be the sender |
SettleDelay | Yes | Seconds the payer must wait to close a channel that still holds XRP |
PublicKey | Yes | The 33-byte public key that signs claims. secp256k1 or Ed25519 |
CancelAfter | No | A fixed time when the channel expires. It can never be changed |
DestinationTag | No | Tag for a hosted recipient |
The PayChannel entry tracks two numbers:
Amount: total XRP ever allocated to the channel.Balance: total XRP already paid out.
The difference is what the payee can still redeem. When the channel closes, the difference returns to the payer.
PaymentChannelFund lets the payer add XRP. It can also set a new Expiration.
The entry counts as one item toward the creator's owner reserve, 0.2 XRP today. The reserve frees up only when the channel is removed after it expires or is closed.
The channel ID is a hash of the source address, the destination address and the creating transaction's Sequence (or TicketSequence). Two parties can have several channels, so the payee should confirm which ID is in use.
If the destination blocks incoming payment channels, PaymentChannelCreate fails with tecNO_PERMISSION. With the fixPayChanCancelAfter amendment (enabled 2025-08-29), a CancelAfter in the past fails with tecEXPIRED.
xrpl.org recommends Ed25519 keys for the fastest signing and verifying.
Related: Owner reserve, Checks.
- Payment ChannelsRead 2026-11-10
- PaymentChannelCreateRead 2026-11-10
- PayChannelRead 2026-11-10
- Known AmendmentsRead 2026-11-10
