Invoice

An invoice is a payment request generated by a recipient. It encodes all the information a sender needs to make a payment — the amount, the recipient's identity, and a cryptographic proof of payment.

What is an Invoice?

Think of an invoice as a "payment QR code." The recipient generates one, and the sender scans it (or copies the encoded string) to initiate a payment. The invoice contains:

• Amount (optional — can be left open for donations)
• Payment hash — a cryptographic commitment to a secret (preimage) that proves payment
• Recipient's public key — identifies who should receive the payment
• Expiry time — how long the invoice is valid
• Description — a human-readable note (e.g., "Coffee")

Invoice Format

Fiber invoices use bech32m encoding (similar to Lightning's BOLT 11, but not compatible):

• Mainnet prefix: fibb (fiber bytes, since 1 CKB = 1 Byte)
• Testnet prefix: fibt
• Dev prefix: fibd

Example: fibt100amount...encoded_data...signature

For the full encoding specification, see Invoice Protocol.

Creating an Invoice

Using fnn-cli

fnn-cli invoice new_invoice --amount 1000 --currency fibt --description "Test payment"

Using RPC

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "new_invoice",
  "params": [
    {
      "amount": "0x3E8",
      "currency": "fibt",
      "description": "Test payment",
      "expiry": 3600
    }
  ],
  "id": 1
}

Paying an Invoice

Using fnn-cli

fnn-cli payment send_payment --invoice "fibt1..."

Using RPC

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "send_payment",
  "params": [
    {
      "invoice": "fibt1..."
    }
  ],
  "id": 1
}

Invoice States

Managing Invoices

Related Topics

• Hold Invoice — deferred settlement for conditional payments
• Invoice Protocol — the technical specification
• Payment Lifecycle — how payments are processed after an invoice is paid