Expected Amount

Overview

Expected Amount is the target used to determine whether a payment satisfies the invoice or payment request. It originates from the merchant’s order amount and can be converted into a crypto amount when the payer selects a Pay Currency.

The value should be immutable for the lifetime of that payment session unless the product explicitly regenerates the quote. Changing the target after funds arrive makes matching and customer communication unreliable.

Expected amount must include its unit and precision. The number 100 can mean 100 USD, 100 USDT, or 100 smallest units depending on context. APIs should never pass or store the numeric value without the currency and amount semantics.

Matching compares expected amount with Paid Amount and applies Amount Tolerance where permitted. Network fees paid by the sender normally do not reduce the amount delivered to the destination on account-based transfers, while other asset mechanics can differ.

Reconciliation should preserve the expected amount, pricing currency, quote rate, pay amount, variance, and final acceptance result. This evidence explains whether a payment was exact, underpaid, overpaid, manually accepted, or rejected.

The expected amount should be calculated using deterministic decimal arithmetic rather than binary floating-point approximations. The system needs explicit rounding direction, smallest accepted unit, and display precision. If an asset cannot represent the exact converted amount, the chosen rounding policy should be included in the quote and amount-tolerance calculation before payment instructions are issued.

Customer support tools should show both human-readable precision and raw smallest-unit values. This helps diagnose disputes caused by decimal conversion, wallet truncation, or a QR code that encoded a different amount from the visible text.