The period of time (default 1 hour) that it takes for a transfer of ndau to become available to the recipient to send to a different account. The ndau is pending during the recourse period, and then is cleared once the recourse period is over. This is similar to how it takes time for a bank check to clear when being deposited. The recourse period exists to help make ndau more resistant to fraud.
The ndau recourse period discourages the use of ndau for fraud or ransomware and can support a future dispute resolution mechanism for unauthorized transfers. This recourse period may be especially valuable to exchanges, as they are both likely targets for fraudulent outgoing transfers and likely to detect them within a short recourse period.
Transfer transactions are subject to the source account’s recourse period, and ndau transferred into an account may not be transferred out of it until the recourse period for those incoming transfers has elapsed. In every other respect, those ndau behave just as they do after the recourse period ends (for example, they can be used to pay transaction fees).
When an ndau account is created, its recourse period is set to a default (currently 1 hour) specified by the BPC . An account holder may change an account’s recourse period to any value from 0 up to a BPC-defined limit, but the current recourse period must elapse before such a change takes effect.