universal-money-address

Universal Money Address (UMA)

• Name: Universal Money Address (UMA)
• URL: https://www.uma.me/
• Category: payment-address and compliance interoperability standard / Lightning payment coordination protocol
• Tags: bitcoin-ecosystem bitcoin-standards
• Summary: UMA is LNURL extended into provider-to-provider payment negotiation and compliance messaging. Useful standard work, but still coordination middleware rather than a wallet or payment rail.
• What it does:
  • Defines human-readable payment addresses for sending fiat or crypto across UMA-enabled providers
  • Extends LNURL with POST-based payreq negotiation so counterparties can exchange payer data, compliance data, currency preferences, and settlement instructions
  • Specifies encrypted Travel Rule, sanctions, and post-transaction messaging between institutions
  • Adds UMA Auth, which combines UMA, OAuth 2.0, and Nostr Wallet Connect for delegated app access to UMA-enabled wallets
• Key claims:
  • Official materials position UMA as an open-source standard using Lightning for fast settlement while supporting cross-currency transfers between wallets, exchanges, and banks
  • The protocol repo is the real center of gravity: message specs for address format, auth and encryption, payreq flows, and post-transaction hooks
  • The POST-based payreq design matters because it makes compliance and negotiation first-class instead of pretending address resolution alone solves the problem
  • UMA Auth shows the project is not just about aliases; it is also a permissions and connectivity layer for third-party wallet access
• Whitepaper: No canonical standalone UMA whitepaper or litepaper surfaced in this pass. The clearest current source of truth was the official site, developer materials, the protocol-spec repository, and the UMA Auth extension spec; see ../../whitepapers/universal-money-address-primary-sources-2026-05-02.md.
• Sources:
  • https://www.uma.me/
  • https://www.uma.me/developers
  • https://github.com/uma-universal-money-address
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uma-universal-money-address/protocol/master/README.md
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uma-universal-money-address/protocol/master/umad-05-payreq-request.md
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uma-universal-money-address/protocol/master/umad-07-post-tx-hooks.md
  • https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uma-universal-money-address/protocol/master/extensions/umade-01-auth.md

Internal linkages

• Strongest comparisons: lnurl, open-payments, and notabene.

Control surface

• The real leverage sits with providers: who supports which settlement assets, which compliance fields are mandatory, which counterparties are reachable, and what UMA Auth scopes outside apps can actually get.

• So UMA reduces coordination friction without removing institutional chokepoints. It is still provider-to-provider payment middleware riding above stronger settlement rails.

• Last reviewed: 2026-06-17 UTC