Stellar, like almost all encryption systems and blockchain payments works with Public-key cryptography(1) that was invented in the 1970s where the public key is the address where you receive funds. Early on Stellar supported human style names that look like anthony*tempo.eu.com, +33123123*tempo.eu.com and jsmith@gmail.com*tempo.eu.com with a system called federation(2) which does a simple https get to pull information.

This is great as it easier to type and remember than the stellar public key which looks something like:

“GC2BQYBXFOVPRDH35D5HT2AFVCDGXJM5YVTAF5THFSAISYOWAJQKRESK”

Smart anchors such as flutterwave.com have used federation with the format account_number.swiftcode*flutterwave.com. When a wallet does a federation lookup flutterwave validates the bank account number and swift code. Quite cool and is much more simple and less expensive than ethereum’s lookup system called Ethereum ENS.

Bitcoin implemented bip 0021 in 2012 (3), which is used for payments. It looks a bit like a uri and can be used as one as was registered with iana.org (4). It can also be converted to a QR code.

bitcoin:175tWpb8K1S7NmH4Zx6rewF9WQrcZv245W?amount=20.3

{
    "stellar": {
        "payment": {
            "destination":  ACCOUNT_ID,
            "network":      NETWORK_CODE, // (*)
            "amount":       AMOUNT,
            "asset": {      // (**)
                "code":     ASSET_CODE,
                "issuer":   ASSET_ISSER
            },
            "memo": {       // (***)
                "type":     MEMO_TYPE,
                "value":    MEMO
            }
        }
    }
}