Accept

Acceptance is the drawee acknowledging the obligation. It is the drawee's signature on the bill, and it is what turns a bill drawn on someone into a debt owed by them.

Who may perform it

The payer, the drawee named at issue.

Conditions

  • The default rule: the bill can't be blocked, recoursed to the end, only recoursable, or paid.
  • The bill can't already be accepted.

Acceptance does not require a request

Nothing in the conditions requires a request to accept to have been made. A drawee who intends to honour a bill can accept it unprompted.

The request exists for the holder's benefit, not the protocol's: it puts a deadline on the drawee and gives the holder a recourse path if that deadline passes.

Result

An Accept block. The bill is accepted, and unblocked if a request was open.

Two consequences follow immediately:

  • The holder may now mint the bill. Minting is the one action gated on acceptance.
  • The acceptance path is closed permanently. An accepted bill cannot later be rejected, because RejectToAccept requires that the bill is not already accepted.

Rejecting acceptance

The drawee may refuse instead.

Who may perform it

The payer.

Conditions

RejectToAccept carries the same conditions as Accept:

  • The default rule: the bill can't be blocked, recoursed to the end, only recoursable, or paid.
  • The bill can't already be accepted.

Like acceptance, rejection does not require a request to have been made.

Result

A RejectToAccept block, and the bill becomes only recoursable. From this point the sole remaining actions are RequestRecourse, Recourse and RejectToPayRecourse; the bill cannot be endorsed, sold, minted or requested to pay.

Rejecting acceptance is therefore not a neutral act. It does not merely decline a request; it ends the bill's ordinary life and starts the process of allocating the loss up the endorsement chain.

Special case: the drawee is also the holder

If the bill has been endorsed back to the drawee, that identity holds both roles and gets both sets of actions. They can request acceptance and then accept the same bill.

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