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A rail is the network a payment travels on. It is not something you create — it is a property of the movement, chosen when you send money. Rails differ in three ways that matter: how fast they settle, what they cost, and where they reach. Everything else about a transfer can be identical and the rail alone changes the answer to “when does it land”. The names below are the ones you will meet everywhere else in these docs.

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The kinds

Kira does not promise a settlement time, and neither should you to your own customer. The rail decides how long it takes, and Kira reports each stage as it happens rather than predicting the last one.

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Choosing one

The rail follows from the counterparty: a bank account is paid over a bank rail, a wallet over a network. So the choice is made when you save the counterparty, not when you pay it — see Counterparty.
Price the rail you intend to use. A quotation prices the rail you name, so a price obtained for one rail and settled on another is not the price you were quoted.

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What it is called elsewhere

The rail shows up under two names in the API reference. On a counterparty it is the account type, because it is decided by what kind of account you are paying. On a completed transfer it is the payment method, because by then it is a fact rather than a choice. Both take the same small set of values — see Recipient values and Payout values.