Payment privacy and on-chain transparency - Numpay Docs

Every Numpay payment is an on-chain transfer on Base, a public blockchain. That makes payments verifiable by anyone, and also means some details are public. Numpay keeps your identity off-chain so the public record shows only pseudonymous addresses.

What a payment exposes

Field	Visibility	Impact
Wallet addresses	Public	Pseudonymous: not linked to a name on-chain
Amount	Public	Visible to anyone viewing the transaction
Timestamp	Public	Visible to anyone viewing the transaction
Mobile number / email	Not on-chain	Stored only in Numpay’s database
Display name	Not on-chain	Stored only in Numpay’s database

Identity decoupling

Off-chain directory. The link between your mobile number or email and your wallet lives in Numpay’s database, not in a smart contract.
User-controlled wallets. Each wallet is a smart account controlled by its owner’s key.
Smart account, not your key’s address. Payments go to your Kernel smart account. The address of the key behind it never appears in a transfer.

Privacy enhancements on the roadmap

Technique	What it does	Benefit	Trade-off
Stealth addresses	A fresh one-time address per payment	Prevents linking payments to one wallet	More complex key management
Zero-knowledge proofs	Prove a payment is valid without revealing amount or sender	Hides amounts and parties	Compute-heavy, higher gas

The Shadow Protocol specification describes how Numpay plans to add zero-knowledge privacy.

How Numpay compares

	Numpay today	Plain Ethereum wallet	Privacy coins (Zcash, Monero)
Identity linkage	Pseudonymous on-chain; identity held off-chain	Pseudonymous, no identity	Private by default
Amount privacy	Visible	Visible	Shielded
User control of keys	Full	Full	Full
Auditability	Fully auditable	Fully auditable	Limited