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LIGHTNING-PAY(7)						LIGHTNING-PAY(7)

NAME
     pay -- Command for sending a payment to a BOLT11/BOLT12 invoice

SYNOPSIS
     pay  bolt11  [amount_msat] [label] [riskfactor] [maxfeepercent] [retry_for]
     [maxdelay] [exemptfee]  [localinvreqid]  [exclude]  [maxfee]  [description]
     [partial_msat]

DESCRIPTION
     Command deprecated in v26.06, removed after v27.03.

     NOTE:  As	of  v26.06, xpay transparantly handles most pay invocations, and
     pay is deprecated.

     The pay RPC command attempts to find a route to the given destination,  and
     send the funds it asks for.

     The  response will occur when the payment fails or succeeds. Once a payment
     has succeeded, calls to pay with the same bolt11 will succeed immediately.

     When using $ lightning-cli, you may skip optional parameters by using null.
     Alternatively, use -k option to provide parameters by name.

     *	bolt11 (string): NOTE: invstring is an alternate name for  this  parame-
	ter, since v26.06, for xpay compatibility.

	Bolt11	or bolt12 invoice (such as one received from lightningd-fetchin-
	voice(7)). For a bolt11 invoice, if  it  does  not  contain  an  amount,
	amount_msat is required, otherwise if it is specified it must be null.

     *	amount_msat  (msat, optional): amount_msat is in millisatoshi precision;
	it can be a whole number, or a whole number with suffix msat or sat,  or
	a  three  decimal  point  number  with suffix sat, or an 1 to 11 decimal
	point number suffixed by btc.

     *	label (string, optional): It is used to attach a label to payments,  and
	is returned in lightning- listpays(7) and lightning-listsendpays(7).

     *	riskfactor  (number, optional): The riskfactor is described in detail in
	lightning-getroute(7). The default is 10.

     *	maxfeepercent (number, optional): Percentage of the amount that is to be
	paid. The default is 0.5.

     *	retry_for (u16, optional): Until retry_for seconds passes,  the  command
	will  keep  finding  routes  and retrying the payment. The default is 60
	seconds.

     *	maxdelay (u16, optional): A payment may be delayed for	up  to	maxdelay
	blocks by another node; clients should be prepared for this worst case.

     *	exemptfee  (msat,  optional):  This option can be used for tiny payments
	which would be dominated by the fee leveraged by forwarding nodes.  Set-
	ting  exemptfee  allows  the   maxfeepercent check to be skipped on fees
	that are smaller than exemptfee. The default is 5000 millisatoshi.

     *	localinvreqid (hex, optional): localinvreqid is used by offers to link a
	payment attempt to a local invoice_request offer created by  lightningd-
	invoicerequest(7).  This  ensures that we only make a single payment for
	an offer, and that the offer is marked used once paid.

     *	exclude (array, optional): exclude is a  JSON  array  of  short-channel-
	id/direction  (e.g.  [	'564334x877x1/0', '564195x1292x0/1' ]) or pubkey
	which should be excluded from consideration for routing. The default  is
	not to exclude any channels or nodes.:

	*  (short_channel_id_dir)
	*  (pubkey)

     *	maxfee (msat, optional): maxfee overrides both maxfeepercent and exempt-
	fee  defaults  (and  if  you specify maxfee you cannot specify either of
	those), and creates an absolute limit on what fee we will pay. This  al-
	lows you to implement your own heuristics rather than the primitive ones
	used here.

     *	description  (string, optional): It is only required for bolt11 invoices
	which do not contain a description themselves, but contain a description
	hash: in this case description is required. description is then  checked
	against the hash inside the invoice before it will be paid.

     *	partial_msat (msat, optional): Explicitly state that you are only paying
	some  part  of	the invoice.  Presumably someone else is paying the rest
	(otherwise the payment will time out at the recipient).  Note that  this
	is currently not supported for self-payment (please file an issue if you
	need this) (added v23.05)

RANDOMIZATION
     To protect user privacy, the payment algorithm performs some randomization.

     1: Route Randomization

     Route  randomization  means  the  payment algorithm does not always use the
     lowest-fee or shortest route. This prevents some highly-connected node from
     learning all of the user payments by reducing their fees below the  network
     average.

     2: Shadow Route

     Shadow route means the payment algorithm will virtually extend the route by
     adding  delays  and  fees	along it, making it appear to intermediate nodes
     that the route is longer than it actually is.  This  prevents  intermediate
     nodes from reliably guessing their distance from the payee.

     Route  randomization  will never exceed maxfeepercent of the payment. Route
     randomization and shadow routing will not take  routes  that  would  exceed
     maxdelay.

RETURN VALUE
     On success, an object is returned, containing:

     *	payment_preimage  (secret):  The  proof  of payment: SHA256 of this pay-
	ment_hash.
     *	payment_hash (hash): The hash of the payment_preimage which  will  prove
	payment.
     *	created_at  (number):  The  UNIX timestamp showing when this payment was
	initiated.
     *	parts (u32): How many attempts this took.
     *	amount_msat (msat): Amount the recipient received.
     *	amount_sent_msat (msat): Total amount we sent (including fees).
     *	status (string) (one of "complete", "pending", "failed"): Status of pay-
	ment.
     *	destination (pubkey, optional): The final destination of the payment.

     The following warnings may also be returned:

     *	warning_partial_completion: Not all parts of a multi-part  payment  have
	completed.

     You  can monitor the progress and retries of a payment using the lightning-
     paystatus(7) command.

ERRORS
     The following error codes may occur:

     *	-1: Catchall nonspecific error.
     *	201: Already paid with this hash using different amount or destination.
     *	203: Permanent failure at destination. The data field of the error  will
	be  routing failure object (except for self-payment, which currently re-
	turns the error directly from lightning-sendpay(7)).
     *	205: Unable to find a route.
     *	206: Route too expensive. Either the fee or the  needed  total	locktime
	for  the  route exceeds your maxfeepercent or maxdelay settings, respec-
	tively. The data field of the error will indicate the actual fee as well
	as the feepercent percentage that the fee has of the destination payment
	amount. It will also indicate the actual delay along the route.
     *	207: Invoice expired. Payment took too long before  expiration,  or  al-
	ready  expired	at the time you initiated payment. The data field of the
	error indicates now (the current time) and expiry (the	invoice  expira-
	tion) as UNIX epoch time in seconds.
     *	210: Payment timed out without a payment in progress.

     Error  codes  202 and 204 will only get reported at sendpay; in pay we will
     keep retrying if we would have gotten those errors.

     A routing failure object has the fields below:

     erring_index: The index of the node along the route that reported	the  er-
     ror.  0  for  the local node, 1 for the first hop, and so on.  erring_node:
     The hex string of the pubkey id  of  the  node  that  reported  the  error.
     erring_channel:  The short channel ID of the channel that has the error, or
     0:0:0 if the destination node raised  the	error.	 failcode:  The  failure
     code, as per BOLT #4.  channel_update: The hex string of the channel_update
     message  received	from  the remote node. Only present if error is from the
     remote node and the failcode has the UPDATE bit set, as per BOLT #4.

     The data field of errors will include statistics getroute_tries  and  send-
     pay_tries.  It  will also contain a failures field with detailed data about
     routing errors.

AUTHOR
     Rusty Russell rusty@rustcorp.com.au is mainly responsible.

SEE ALSO
     lightning-xpay(7), lightning-listpays(7),	lightning-decode(7),  lightning-
     listinvoices(7), lightning-delinvoice(7), lightning-getroute(7), lightning-
     invoice(7)

RESOURCES
     Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning

EXAMPLES
     Example 1:

     Request:

     $ lightning-cli pay "lnbcrt100n1pnt2bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000"

     {
       "id": "example:pay#1",
       "method": "pay",
       "params": [
	 "lnbcrt100n1pnt2bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000bolt11invl032000000000"
       ]
     }

     Response:

     {
       "destination": "nodeid030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303",
       "payment_hash": "paymenthashinvl0320032003200320032003200320032003200320032003200",
       "created_at": 1738000000,
       "parts": 1,
       "amount_msat": 50000,
       "amount_sent_msat": 50001,
       "payment_preimage": "paymentpreimagep010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101",
       "status": "complete"
     }

     Example 2:

     Request:

     $ lightning-cli pay -k "bolt11"="lnbcrt100n1pnt2bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000"

     {
       "id": "example:pay#2",
       "method": "pay",
       "params": {
	 "bolt11": "lnbcrt100n1pnt2bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000bolt11invl030300000000"
       }
     }

     Response:

     {
       "destination": "nodeid030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303030303",
       "payment_hash": "paymenthashinvl0330033003300330033003300330033003300330033003300",
       "created_at": 1738000000,
       "parts": 1,
       "amount_msat": 100000,
       "amount_sent_msat": 100000,
       "payment_preimage": "paymentpreimagep020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202",
       "status": "complete"
     }

Core Lightning v26.06.1 					LIGHTNING-PAY(7)

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