01What
Opens a one-way channel from you to a recipient, funded with locked XRP. You can then pay them off-ledger with signed claims, as often as every few milliseconds.
02Why you'd use it
Per-second billing, pay-per-request APIs, streaming content, machine-to-machine payments — anything where individual on-ledger transactions would be too slow or too many.
03How
- 1Enter the Destination Address — the one party this channel can pay.
- 2Enter the Channel Amount in XRP to lock as the channel's capacity.
- 3Set Settle Delay in seconds (86400 = 1 day) — after you request a close, the recipient gets this long to redeem their final claim. Pick something they are comfortable with.
- 4Leave Channel Public Key as your wallet's key unless you sign claims with a different key.
- 5Submit, confirm tesSUCCESS, and find the Channel ID in the transaction result — every claim references it.
Watch out
- Channels are one-directional: this one only pays the destination. Payments back require their own channel.
- The locked XRP leaves your spendable balance, and the channel object locks 0.2 XRP of owner reserve too.
- Too short a settle delay and the recipient may refuse to accept your claims — it is their protection window.
- Claims are signed off-ledger with your key; the ledger only sees the channel open, the redemptions, and the close.
For example
An AI-API vendor charges 0.01 XRP per request. A customer opens a 100 XRP channel with a 1-day settle delay, then fires ten thousand requests, attaching a fresh signed claim to each — with exactly one ledger transaction so far.