# Payment participants

To understand RippleNet integrated payments, it’s important to know the participants involved:

![RippleNet Payment Participants](/assets/payment-participants.a7830e37a9ffcd5db43965d3d72b0fe819a667aa851ddf187707713f5cee739b.52207222.svg)

* The **originator** is a customer of an institution who wants to send a payment and who funds the payment through that institution.
* The **sender** (or **sending institution**) initiates a payment in RippleNet through their RippleNet instance. It holds one or more RippleNet accounts from which it can send payments to RippleNet accounts held by other institutions.
* The **intermediaries** (or **intermediary institutions**) are the RippleNet instances at institutions that facilitate payments from the sender to the receiver. For ODL payments, intermediaries are one or more digital asset exchanges that hold XRP for both the sender and receiver.
* The **receiver** (or **receiving institution**) is a partner institution that is connected to the sender. It has one or more RippleNet accounts into which it can receive payments.
* The **beneficiary** is a customer of the receiver who receives the end payment from the receiver.


 

Note
There are numerous variables in this chain of payment participants. For example, a payment might have no **originator** or **beneficiary**, but is simply a payment between RippleNet institutions. And in the case of Internal Treasury transfers, where the payment is a transfer between two accounts owned by a single institution on RippleNet, the **sender** and **receiver** are the same entity.