One x402 payment, up to nine recipients

The x402 specification has gained a way to split a single payment. A pull request merged on 26 October adds optional multi-payee splits to the exact scheme on SVM, the Solana family of networks: one client payment can be distributed atomically across the merchant and up to eight additional recipients in one transaction. The stated uses are platform fees, revenue sharing, referral commissions and recovering the fee payer's costs, with no extra round-trips or separate transactions. The change was opened in August and merged after two months of review.

The resource server declares the splits in its payment requirements. Each split names a recipient and an absolute amount in the same asset, not a percentage; the merchant receives what is left, which must be greater than zero. Every leg has to map to a distinct on-chain transfer, and split recipients must differ from one another and from the merchant. When no splits are declared the scheme behaves exactly as before, so existing integrations are unaffected.

The rules for money that does not add up are deliberate. Split legs must match their declared amount exactly, while the merchant's leg keeps the existing tolerance for paying more than required, which smart wallets need when they round fees up. Any excess therefore goes to the merchant and never to a third party. Each split can carry a memo that the client confirms with the address and amount before signing, shown alongside the address and never instead of it. Facilitators advertise how many splits they support, and one that advertises nothing is treated as supporting none, so an older service fails closed rather than accepting a payment it cannot check.

The ceiling of eight splits, nine legs in all, comes from Solana's transaction size limit. One deliberate exception to the scheme's isolation rules is added too: the fee payer may fund the creation of a recipient's token account, but only when the resource server, the facilitator and the client all opt in. The change is specification only. Reference-implementation changes to the @x402/svm package are to follow in a separate pull request, and the parent exact scheme now carries a network-agnostic note so that other networks can adopt the same model.