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// project 04 open-source payments

AgnostiPay

Pay straight from the account you already have.

agnostipay.org (opens in a new tab)
role
co-founder — technology
year
2021–2024
status
prototype
built with
bunq & Bitvavo APIs, Laravel, WordPress, Docusaurus
The AgnostiPay foundation website: “Open & Direct Payment Technology — Harness the Power of Direct Transactions.”

The idea

Paying someone online still runs through a chain of intermediaries — gateways, payment providers, card schemes — each a closed garden with its own fees and rules. Yet in Europe, PSD2 already gives everyone the right to reach their own bank account through an API.

AgnostiPay turns that right into open technology. People connect the accounts they already use — banks, exchanges, wallets — with their own credentials, and pay each other directly, account to account. Not a new bank or wallet: a connector between people and their own providers.

Playbooks

At the heart of the protocol sits the playbook: a signed agreement that describes how a payment happens — when, under which conditions, along which route. Book a holiday and the playbook can say: cancel free for fourteen days, then pay 500; pay the rest on arrival at the hotel, once you approve.

Subscriptions, escrow, split and milestone payments, refunds or streaming payments: each becomes a matter of writing the right playbook.

What we built

  • A working demo (2021): a phone app that holds the user’s own account keys, and a webshop with AgnostiPay at checkout. Paying from a crypto exchange account, the app finds no common currency, converts at the exchange and pays the shop’s bank account.
  • The protocol and a 25-page technical white paper, researched with a grant from the Interledger Foundation (2022–2023).
  • Open documentation and a foundation site for developers and partners: agnostipay.io and agnostipay.org.

How it works

The core runs client-side, on the user’s own device: no central server holds the money or the keys. As an SDK it fits into any app, webshop or wallet.

AgnostiPay connects people on the client side and ILP connects ledgers on the back end; combined, they can make agnostic value exchange possible for anyone, worldwide.

progress report to the Interledger community, 2023

The research ran in the open, with monthly reports to the Interledger community: how everyday bank accounts can join the Interledger network through Open Payments, and why a licensed, federated service could speed up adoption.

Two network diagrams: traditional, segregated networks where people only reach each other through their banks, next to AgnostiPay’s direct peer-to-peer connections between people and their providers.
The network layer — from segregated networks to direct connections.
The AgnostiPay demo app with two connected accounts: Bitvavo (preferred) and bunq.
Your accounts, your keys.
A webshop checkout on a phone, with AgnostiPay next to credit card, iDEAL and PayPal.
AgnostiPay at checkout.
The payment screen: no common currency, so the playbook converts bitcoin to euros at Bitvavo and pays a bunq account.
Convert, then pay.
A holiday booking as a playbook: the flow between traveller, both banks and the travel organiser, next to the playbook itself — cancel free for fourteen days, then pay 500; pay the other 500 on arrival at the hotel, after approval.
A playbook and how it runs.
Payments that playbooks make possible: subscriptions, escrow, split, milestone and streaming payments, and many more.
What playbooks make possible.