Sending XRP

Sending XRP is like handing someone cash, except the whole network watches and writes it down.

You need three things: the other person's address, an amount, and a tiny fee. Your wallet builds a payment, you sign it, and the network checks it. A direct XRP payment is one transaction with nobody in the middle. It typically completes in 8 seconds or less.

The ledger checks a few things first:

• Your account exists and the signature is yours.
• You are not paying yourself.
• You have enough XRP for the amount and the fee.

Then it looks at the other side. If the address is already an account, the XRP lands there. If the address has never been funded, your payment has to open it. An account needs 1 XRP to exist, so the payment must deliver at least 1 XRP. A smaller payment to a new address fails.

A few accounts block payments from strangers. That setting is called Deposit Authorization. A payment to one of those accounts fails unless the owner approved you first.

There is no undo. Once the payment is in a validated ledger, it is final. Nobody can pull it back, including you. Check the address before you sign. If you are paying an exchange, check the tag too. See Destination tags.

The fee does not go to anyone. The ledger destroys it.

Every transfer of value uses the Payment transaction type. It is a direct XRP payment when XRP is both sent and received.

{
  "TransactionType": "Payment",
  "Account": "rf1BiGeXwwQoi8Z2ueFYTEXSwuJYfV2Jpn",
  "Destination": "ra5nK24KXen9AHvsdFTKHSANinZseWnPcX",
  "DeliverMax": "1000000",
  "Fee": "12",
  "Sequence": 2
}

• DeliverMax is the amount, in drops, as a string. API v1 calls the same field Amount. A transaction names one or the other, never both.
• SendMax and Paths must be omitted for XRP-to-XRP payments.
• A direct XRP payment always delivers the exact amount. The only cost is the transaction cost in Fee.

Creating accounts. Payment is the only transaction that can create an account. Sending enough XRP to an unfunded address creates it, and the starting balance is the amount received. Other transactions to unfunded addresses always fail.

Result codes.

A tec result still destroys the fee.

Finality. Look the payment up with the tx method and its hash. "validated": true means the result comes from a validated ledger and is final. Without it, the result is tentative. Read the amount received from meta.delivered_amount, not from Amount. See Partial payments.

Related: Accounts and reserves, Fees and burn.