Path 01 · Merchants
Fabric-based payment flows let you accept money from any bank or wallet without routing through a proprietary network that owns the customer data, sets the rules, and takes a cut on every transaction.
How it works
A Fabric payment follows the same pattern as any payment you know — but with a verifiable, tamper-evident record at every step that belongs to you, not to the network.
Your system creates a structured payment request — amount, currency, your receiver address, and an expiry — and signs it. This object is the checkout session. You can present it as a QR code, a deep link, or embed it in a payment page. No API call to a third-party network is required to create it.
Merchant-sideThe payer scans or opens the request. Their bank or Fabric-compatible wallet presents the payment details and collects their authorisation through the institution's own authentication flow. You never handle the payer's credentials. The payer's bank doesn't need a bilateral relationship with yours.
Bank or walletThe authorising institution issues a signed payment proof. You can verify it independently — without calling a payment network, without a webhook that might fail, and without waiting for a batch settlement file. The proof is the receipt. It does not require trust in any intermediary.
Open verificationFabric governs the messaging layer — the structured request and proof formats — not the money movement. Your bank receives funds through the same interbank settlement infrastructure it uses today. Nothing changes in the core banking stack. The Fabric layer adds verifiability, not a new payment network.
Existing railsWhy it matters
You are not dependent on the rules, pricing, or uptime of a single card network or PSP. Any institution that implements the Fabric standard can participate in your payment flow.
Fabric payment flows do not route through an intermediary that aggregates transaction data, profiles payers, or sells insights. The payment proof is yours. The customer relationship is yours to own.
Every payment produces a cryptographically signed proof you can verify without contacting anyone. It does not expire. It cannot be forged or altered. That is a stronger guarantee than a webhook or a settlement report.
Payments authorised by cryptographic signature are irreversible at the protocol level. There is no card-network-initiated chargeback. Dispute resolution, where needed, happens under rules you agree to — not rules imposed by a network.
Fabric is a messaging standard, not a new bank. Your receiving account stays at the institution you already work with. Adding Fabric support does not require switching banks or opening new accounts.
The standard is published under Apache 2.0. No licensing fees to implement it, no certification costs to comply with it, no royalties on transactions. The Foundation's only job is to maintain the standard.
How it compares
Fabric does not exist to replace card payments. It fills gaps that existing rails do not serve well — where privacy matters, where cross-border costs are prohibitive, or where a verifiable audit trail is required.
The CashPack Protocol defines digital bearer instruments — like physical cash, but with a tamper-evident chain and full Operator auditability. Useful for merchants who issue gift instruments, run voucher programmes, or operate in contexts where buyer privacy is a genuine product feature. Works over any settlement infrastructure — core banking, tokenized deposits, or public blockchains.
Talk to a Fabric-compatible processor, or start with the specification to understand how the payment flow works in detail.