hello. does anyone know if to use Ton Payments in a web application I need to deploy a smart contract or can it be used without it?

do you want to use offchain payment channels?

no. it would be for payments for a web video game. the idea would be to reduce recurring costs.

although now that I think about it, that would be equivalent to offchain.😆

yes, most likely you want to use payment channels

you need to deploy a smart-contract for your user and you (the game) then

or you can create custodial wallets for users and deposit funds to them to make "instant" payments

The second one seems to be an easier idea to execute.
The first one, this smart contract would be valid for all users? I suppose it is necessary to deploy it to configure it to my wallet?

for payment channel to be opened you need to deploy a smart-contract that both parties will deposit, and then exchange offchain transfers. This contrac tis only valid for 2 parties, and for the different pair of them you need to deploy a new one

there's a detailed description in ton github and in docs

can you tell me more about your case in dm, please?

I understand you now. it is a contract for each connection between different partners, the documentation mentions that a smart contract needs to be deployed but makes no reference or assumes a lot of things and lacks details on that part.

https://docs.ton.org/develop/dapps/defi/ton-payments