Pocket Recipient¶

Introduction¶

Pocket is Polkadot Desktop's send flow, a feature that lets a Desktop user package a payment or asset transfer and route it to a recipient identified by their App identity. This page documents the App-side counterpart, covering how the Polkadot App receives a Pocket transfer initiated from Desktop and the user-visible flow inside the App.

The Desktop sender-side view is documented at Pocket Send Flow in Polkadot Desktop. This page is the receiver's view.

Conceptual Model¶

From the recipient's perspective:

• A Desktop user (the sender) initiates a Pocket transfer addressed to the recipient's paired App identity.
• The transfer arrives at the App as a pending incoming item, surfaced to the recipient in the App's UI.
• The recipient reviews and either accepts or declines the transfer.
• On accept, the transfer settles to the recipient's account. On decline (or timeout), it does not.

The distinguishing property of Pocket relative to a plain Balances.transfer_keep_alive is the accept step. A standard transfer settles unilaterally, so the recipient cannot reject it. Pocket's two-sided flow gives the recipient a chance to refuse, which matters when the transfer is contextually meaningful (an in-band payment between users who know each other) rather than a balance change.

The Product-developer surface that bridges to Pocket is part of the open question above, including whether a Product can initiate a Pocket transfer programmatically, or only the Desktop UI can. Once resolved, the integration pattern will be documented here.

Where to Go Next¶