A structured payment request lets a program understand what must be paid without scraping human-facing checkout text. It can identify the resource, price, currency or token, recipient, destination network, expiration, nonce, and the proof format expected after payment.
The request is untrusted until validated. A wallet or agent must bind it to the intended resource and origin, reject unsupported assets or recipients, prevent replay and substitution, enforce policy, and avoid paying altered instructions from unrelated content.
ELI5
A machine-readable payment request is a bill written in a structured format software can understand. It tells an authorized program what costs money, how much to pay, which asset to use, and where the payment should go.
For example, an API can return a request for a tiny USDC amount before providing one record. The agent's wallet checks every field against its rules before authorizing the exact payment.
