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+# AiFinPay Protocol Economics
+
+**Effective date:** 14 August 2026  
+**Status:** Founder-approved canonical product and engineering rule  
+**Jira source of truth:** AIFINP-122
+
+This document defines the current fee model for AiFinPay payment routes. It supersedes older examples that used a fee-bearing AIFP-2/x402 route or a `100/1` merchant split.
+
+## AIFP-2 — x402 / agent payments
+
+AiFinPay charges **0% protocol fee** on AIFP-2 payments.
+
+- `treasuryBps = 0`
+- `creatorBps = 0`
+- the agent pays the quoted merchant/provider amount;
+- the agent also pays the blockchain network transaction cost (gas) when the selected rail requires it;
+- gas is a network cost, not AiFinPay revenue and not an AiFinPay protocol fee;
+- no treasury, creator, reseller, or platform percentage may be silently added to the AIFP-2 route.
+
+AIFP-2 routing must fail closed if the selected payment target is fee-bearing.
+
+## AIFP-1 — merchant AI-traffic monetization
+
+AiFinPay charges **exactly 1% protocol fee** on successful AIFP-1 merchant monetization transactions.
+
+- `treasuryBps = 100`
+- `creatorBps = 0`
+- AiFinPay treasury: 1%
+- merchant: 99% before external network/settlement costs
+- creator fee: 0%
+
+There is no additional `0.01%` creator leg in the canonical AIFP-1 profile.
+
+## 5% contract cap
+
+A contract may enforce a combined fee cap of **5%** as a security guardrail. The cap limits owner/configuration authority; it is **not** a business fee, default fee, target rate, or permission for a production route to charge 5%.
+
+Canonical production profiles remain:
+
+| Route | Treasury BPS | Creator BPS | AiFinPay fee |
+|---|---:|---:|---:|
+| AIFP-2 / x402 | 0 | 0 | 0% |
+| AIFP-1 merchant monetization | 100 | 0 | 1% |
+
+## Legacy deployments
+
+Existing v1.1/v1.2 or other deployments with `100/1` or other fee-bearing splits may be retained in deployment evidence for auditability. They are **legacy historical state**, not the target economics.
+
+They must not be selected for new AIFP-2 traffic.
+
+## Engineering requirements
+
+All SDKs, MCP servers, bridges, gateways, routers, contracts/programs, deployment scripts, registries, ledgers, dashboards, examples and tests must carry or derive an explicit product route and enforce the matching economics.
+
+Required invariants:
+
+1. AIFP-2 cannot resolve to a fee-bearing payment target.
+2. AIFP-1 cannot silently resolve to the AIFP-2 `0/0` target when the merchant monetization fee is expected.
+3. Fee rounding checks apply only when the corresponding configured BPS is non-zero.
+4. Ledger and telemetry distinguish merchant amount, AiFinPay protocol fee, creator fee and chain gas/network cost.
+5. Gas/network cost is never counted as AiFinPay protocol revenue.
+6. A route is not production-ready until its economics are verified in end-to-end tests and on-chain/on-rail evidence.
+
+## Release policy
+
+No public SDK/package release, registry activation or new network payment route should be described as compliant with the current model until it proves:
+
+- AIFP-2: exact provider/merchant amount, AiFinPay fee 0, creator fee 0;
+- AIFP-1: merchant 99%, AiFinPay treasury 1%, creator fee 0;
+- replay/idempotency protection;
+- route isolation;
+- reconciliation records that match the selected product route.