DNS://Money / What is a pay alias?
What is a pay alias?
Direct answer
A pay alias is a human-readable name — like pay:yourname — that resolves to your payment details, so a person or AI agent can pay you without ever touching your account number. On DNS://Money it resolves on any settlement rail (XRPL is live on mainnet today).
How is it different from a bank alias?
You may know aliases from FedNow, RTP, Pix, or Visa+ — where a phone number or email maps to a bank account. A pay: alias is broader on two axes:
| pay: alias (DNS://Money) | Bank alias (FedNow/RTP/Pix/Visa+) | |
|---|---|---|
| Resolves to | full payment instruction | one bank account |
| Rails | XRPL today; rail-agnostic | single rail |
| Built for AI agents | Yes | No |
| Identifier | a chosen name (pay:agent.compute) | phone / email |
How does it work?
- Claim a name once:
pay:yourname. - A sender resolves it — the protocol returns the rail, address, and routing to pay.
- The optimal rail is chosen for that payment.
- It settles on that rail. DNS://Money names and resolves; it never holds funds.
Can AI agents use it?
Yes — that's the point. On 2026-03-13, two AI systems resolved pay: aliases and paid each other on XRPL mainnet, autonomously and on-chain. View the genesis transaction →
Related
- pay:
- The namespace for payment aliases, e.g.
pay:vendor.alpha. - payment name resolution
- Turning a pay alias into executable payment instructions.
- FAS-1 (Financial Address Standard)
- The open spec that defines how a pay: alias resolves.