09 — Roadmap · 03
Rail profiles
PATH RAIL PROFILES
PATH does not replace an instant rail. It names the last mile — who, where, what is owed, who may act, whether it arrived — in a form another scheme can read. A rail profile is the published table that maps that last mile onto a system which already moves money. It applies to anyone touching the rail, whether they hold the destination or merely reach it.
- Target
- Q4 2026 → Q3 2027
- Year
- 2026
- Window
- Q4
- Status
- now
The envelope is PATH. The rail stays the rail.
- 01UPIIndia. Unified Payments Interface. Collect requests, VPA addressing, and a confirmation that is not a PATH receipt until it is mapped.
- 02PIXBrazil. The scheme people see. Keys, QR payloads, and a return that has to become a signed receipt.
- 03SPIBrazil. Sistema de Pagamentos Instantâneos — the settlement system PIX sits on. Not a rail of its own: it is described in the pix profile, because the two are not the same object.
- 04WeroEurope. The European Payments Initiative wallet, on SEPA Instant. Described in the sepa-inst profile. A PATH request should be payable there without becoming a Wero-only object.
What we are doing now
Writing the mappings: which PATH object is which UPI collect, which PIX QR, which Wero instruction. Where a field has no counterpart, the profile says so rather than inventing one. The rows that cannot be translated are part of the table. Compatibility is a published table, not an adapter that pretends the schemes are identical. Rail identifiers take one spelling, fixed by the rail register in PIP-0007.
What ships
A profile per scheme: identifier kinds, request shapes, confirmation to receipt, and the errors that must not be collapsed. An implementer should be able to take a PATH request and produce a UPI or PIX payload without reading a private annex. A profile is written when a member first touches that rail, not in advance of anyone using it.
What it is not
A new clearing system, and not a gateway. PATH still carries no money, and a profile does not put UPI inside PATH or PATH inside PIX. It is the last mile, spoken in their grammar. A member settling its own customers over PIX needs the profile without being a gateway at all — the two are separate, and a gateway needs a profile rather than replacing it. Membership of those schemes stays with those schemes.