Author: Gavin Andresen 2014-01-27 14:54:09
Published on: 2014-01-27T14:54:09+00:00
In an email correspondence between Andreas Schildbach and Gavin Andresen, the purpose of PaymentACK was discussed. The BIP70 specification for PaymentACK is brief in explaining its meaning, stating only that it is sent from the merchant's server to the bitcoin wallet in response to a Payment message. The purpose of PaymentACK is to give the customer reassurance that their payment request has been received and will be processed (or not). If the payment is invalid or syntactically incorrect, then a PaymentACK with a message stating there is a problem should be the response. It is not recommended to wait until the payment is confirmed before sending back an ACK; however, waiting a few seconds to detect a 0-confirmation double-spend attempt before sending back an ACK is acceptable. The BIP is intentionally vague on how long it might take to get an ACK, but the intent is to give the customer reassurance that their payment was received and is being processed, whatever "processed" means.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T00:53:05.326401+00:00