The Idempotency Problem in African Cross-Border Settlement

Synchronous settlement does not guarantee receipt. When the x402 facilitator times out, stablecoins can move on-chain while the client receives an error and has no way to know whether the payment is confirmed, reverted, or stalled. In low-connectivity environments like Nairobi or Lagos, this is not an edge case. The fix is an ephemeral in-memory settlement state machine that polls the chain after a timeout, preserving stateless architecture while closing the confirmation gap. A bridge-level idem