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A memo, or a second number

Some services use one account for many customers. A memo, or a second form of address, is how that service's own records can tell one customer from another.

This page is Stellar, from its developer guide, and a pointer to the XRP Ledger's destination tag. It does not describe any other network.

Information, not advice.

One account, many customers

Stellar's developer guide says most custodial services, including exchanges, use one pooled account. An internal database maps a payment to a customer, using either a muxed account or a transaction memo.

The guide says memos were the earlier method, and that many services still use them. It says muxed accounts are better in the long term, and that they are not yet supported by every wallet, exchange and anchor.

Technical detail

The guide shows no calendar date for a last update. It was read on 30 Oct 2026. The code samples, the test-network example, the example addresses and the fee used in the examples are not copied. SEP-29 was not opened, so this page does not say that the network rejects a payment which has no memo. No other network's memo was opened.

An address that starts with M

A muxed account joins an ordinary Stellar address, which starts with G, to a number. The guide says the number is a 64-bit integer. The string form of the address starts with M.

The guide says a muxed account does not exist on the ledger. The underlying G account does. It says there is no check on the number. For the operations the guide lists, the network treats the operation as if no muxed account had been used.

Technical detail

The guide says muxed accounts are defined in CAP-27, were introduced in Protocol 13, and that the string form is SEP-23. Those two documents were not opened as separate pages.

The guide lists where an M address can be used: the source of a transaction, the fee source of a fee-bump transaction, the destination of a payment, the destination of an account merge, and the from field of a clawback. It says an M address passed to another kind of operation should fail in the software and not reach the network. The example of that failure is not copied.

A memo left off

Before muxed accounts, the guide says, services that used a pooled account often put a memo on the transaction to tell customers apart.

The Stellar Development Foundation's community page says the foundation cannot recover funds when a memo was left off a deposit. It says to contact the exchange, or the service the payment was sent to.

Technical detail

The question on the community page is “I forgot a memo on a deposit — can SDF recover my funds?” The other questions on that page were not used. The page was read on 30 Oct 2026. It shows no date on that answer.

The XRP Ledger's number

A destination tag is the XRP Ledger's own number. The ledger's page says it tells an exchange, or a stablecoin issuer, which customer to credit in that business's own records, and that the ledger does not check the customer. That account is on Coin, network, address.

A Stellar memo is not that tag. A Stellar address that starts with M is not that tag.

Technical detail

The XRP Ledger page says last updated one year ago, and gives no calendar date. It was read on 30 Oct 2026. No network other than Stellar and the XRP Ledger was opened for a second number.