Who owns what

Atum coordinates the payment network. Each participant owns their layer.

You (payment provider) — own the customer relationship, authorization, UX, and (per payment) which settlement providers may fulfill the request, by identity
Atum — owns orchestration, routing, and settlement coordination; applies the settlement-provider list you put on the request, and applies credential-type and issuer trust from its own list
Settlement providers — own liquidity, pricing, and settlement execution

Responsibility matrix

	You	Atum	Settlement provider
Onboard customers	✅ Own your customers and business relationship	—	—
Verify identity	✅ Maintain your credentials	✅ Verify attached credentials against Atum’s issuer list	✅ Maintain your credentials
Choose settlement providers	✅ Optional per-payment allow/deny by identity	✅ Apply those constraints	—
Authorize payment	✅ Create the request and obtain user authorization	—	—
Validate request	—	✅ Validate and check compliance	—
Route the payment	—	✅ Route requests to settlement providers	—
Price the route	—	—	✅ Submit price quotes for supported corridors
Execute settlement	—	✅ Protocol coordination	✅ Settlement execution
Track status	—	✅ Lifecycle tracking and status APIs	✅ Send delivery events
Reconcile	✅ Reconcile against your ledgers	—	✅ Reconcile settlements
Operate infrastructure	✅ Your apps, keys, environments	✅ Network services and monitoring	✅ Settlement agent, keys, vaults

These require correct behavior from both sides:

Compliance — Atum verifies attached identity credentials at the gateway; you onboard participants accurately and keep credentials current.
Asset identifiers — Atum publishes chain defaults; you must use the correct asset identifiers for each corridor
Async settlement — Past the ~30s synchronous window Atum reports pending; you collect the outcome by re-attempting the same purchase (or, out of band, reading /status by payment_id)
Testnet vs production — Atum hosts the Payment Gateway; you bring accounts, tokens, and funding

Network participants — who plays each role
What is Atum ID? — Known to Atum vs credentials you bring
Policy enforcement — identity lists you set vs credential-type trust Atum applies
Know Your Agent — who is answerable when software spends
Atum payment lifecycle — the five stages end to end
Payment Gateway API — the API boundary