What is the Path Payment response without paths?

External question — Stellar Stack Exchange Author: Tobin Original post: https://stellar.stackexchange.com/questions/6002 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. When searching for path payments using the Lab, I find there is always 1 record at the end of the array which contains no intermediate paths. This is true for any currency source/destination pair and amount I've tried. In this example of XLM -> USDC, it has given me a destination amount populated from..where? I can put any source_amount in so it's presumably not finding actual offers to match against? My assumption is that this is for me to feed into the Transaction builder, and thus create an offer. Is that right or am I way off? { "_embedded": { "records": [ { "source_asset_type": "native", "source_amount": "12.0000000", "destination_asset_type": "credit_alphanum4", "destination_asset_code": "USDC", "destination_asset_issuer": "GA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KZVN", "destination_amount": "2.1112437", "path": [ { "asset_type": "credit_alphanum4", "asset_code": "MOBI", "asset_issuer": "GA6HCMBLTZS5VYYBCATRBRZ3BZJMAFUDKYYF6AH6MVCMGWMRDNSWJPIH" } ] }, { "source_asset_type": "native", "source_amount": "12.0000000", "destination_asset_type": "credit_alphanum4", "destination_asset_code": "USDC", "destination_asset_issuer": "GA5ZSEJYB37JRC5AVCIA5MOP4RHTM335X2KGX3IHOJAPP5RE34K4KZVN", "destination_amount": "2.1104581", "path": [] } ] } }

External answer — Stellar Stack Exchange Author: challet Original post: https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/6308 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I've noticed it as well, and it happened when the sender has themself an order involved in the path. It's like they are trading with themself in the path which is actually the same as sending an other asset than the one specified. I think an empty path can be understood as : there is a direct payment available with an other asset.