Payments & Settlement

Payment obligation and guaranteed settlement

Creating a pay or kya-pay token is not just a request — it creates a binding obligation on the buyer to pay the seller. At creation, the token's amount is committed against the buyer's wallet (which is why token creation requires the amount to be within the buyer's available balance).

Because the funds are committed up front, Skyfire enforces this obligation to guarantee settlement: when a seller charges a valid pay or kya-pay token for a service it delivered, the seller is guaranteed to be paid, up to the token's committed amount. Sellers do not carry buyer non-payment risk for charges within a valid token.

The token amount is the maximum a seller can charge. A seller charges the actual amount owed (which may be less, and may be split across multiple charges) via the Charge Token API after delivery. Charges above the token's remaining balance are rejected.

The charge lifecycle

1. Buyer creates a pay or kya-pay token for a specific seller service.
2. Seller validates the token when the request arrives (signature + claims), and rejects it if it has already expired. See Verify and Extract Data from Tokens.
3. Seller delivers the service, tool, or resource.
4. Seller charges the token with Charge Token. kya tokens cannot be charged — only pay and kya-pay.
5. Skyfire settles the funds from the buyer's wallet to the seller's wallet.

Token expiration and the 24-hour grace period

Tokens expire between 10 seconds and 24 hours after creation (set via expiresAt). To support long-running operations, Skyfire allows a token that was validated before expiry to be charged for up to 24 hours after it expires.

This grace period applies only to tokens that were accepted and validated before expiry. Sellers should never accept an already-expired token from a buyer, but may complete charges after expiry for work that began while the token was valid.

Settlement timing

• After a token's charge window closes (expiry + the 24-hour grace period), full settlement occurs within a 3-hour window — so settlement can take up to ~51 hours total.
• Charges settle sooner once the cumulative charges on a token exceed $1.00: past that threshold, they settle within the 3-hour window rather than waiting for the grace period to close.

Account deactivation

Deactivating an account does not void tokens that were already issued. Any pay or kya-pay token created before an account was deactivated remains chargeable by the seller until it expires, plus the standard 24-hour grace period — exactly as it would if the account were still active. The buyer's payment obligation for those outstanding tokens stands, and Skyfire settles them normally.

New token creation stops at deactivation, but in-flight tokens are honored so sellers are paid for services they were legitimately asked to deliver.