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 pays you without touching your account number. On DNS://Money it resolves to XRPL or RLUSD today, and agents pay it over x402 on five networks.
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, RLUSD; x402 on Base, Solana, Algorand, X Layer | single rail |
| Built for AI agents | Yes | No |
| Identifier | a chosen name (pay:agent.compute), with an optional X handle as public metadata | 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.
- Fixed rules pick the rail from the alias's endpoints and the asset requested.
- It settles on that rail from the sender's own wallet, and DNS://Money records it. You can repoint the alias at any time; the name never changes.
Can AI agents use it?
Yes. 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.