How to send ERC20 token with Web3.js

• In this article, Web3.js version 0.20.6 is used.
• If you use Web3.js version 1.0.0, please read How to send ERC20 token with Web3.js@1.0.0 instead.

Prepare ABI to interact with ERC20 Token Smart Contracts

• ABI is an interface which represents what functions/state variables a smart contract has.
• To interact with smart contracts with Web3.js, ABI is needed to call its functions and state variables.
• In general, ABI contains all of functions/state variables which a smart contract has. However, in this article, I’m going to use minimum ABI because only transfer is needed.

The minimum ABI to call a transfer function

let minABI = [
 // transfer
 {
  "constant": false,
  "inputs": [
   {
    "name": "_to",
    "type": "address"
   },
   {
    "name": "_value",
    "type": "uint256"
   }
  ],
  "name": "transfer",
  "outputs": [
   {
    "name": "",
    "type": "bool"
   }
  ],
  "type": "function"
 }
];

Example code

In this example, following values are used:

• decimals: 18
• amount to send: 100 tokens
• ERC20 Token address: 0x2A65D41dbC6E8925bD9253abfAdaFab98eA53E34
• Recipient’s address: 0x8Df70546681657D6FFE227aB51662e5b6e831B7A

let tokenAddress = "0x2A65D41dbC6E8925bD9253abfAdaFab98eA53E34";
let toAddress = "0x8Df70546681657D6FFE227aB51662e5b6e831B7A";
// Use BigNumber
let decimals = web3.toBigNumber(18);
let amount = web3.toBigNumber(100);
let minABI = [
  // transfer
  {
    "constant": false,
    "inputs": [
      {
        "name": "_to",
        "type": "address"
      },
      {
        "name": "_value",
        "type": "uint256"
      }
    ],
    "name": "transfer",
    "outputs": [
      {
        "name": "",
        "type": "bool"
      }
    ],
    "type": "function"
  }
];
// Get ERC20 Token contract instance
let contract = web3.eth.contract(minABI).at(tokenAddress);
// calculate ERC20 token amount
let value = amount.times(web3.toBigNumber(10).pow(decimals));
// call transfer function
contract.transfer(toAddress, value, (error, txHash) => {
  // it returns tx hash because sending tx
  console.log(txHash);
});

Tx result I sent using the code above

Ethereum Transaction 0x8e5096bf6f7470729afe8675375266b7248d4d44784967c5d4c6dcc349d402ec

Related article

How to get ERC20 token balance with Web3.js

Working Demo

https://piyolab.github.io/playground/ethereum/sendERC20Token/

Support

If you find this article is helpful, it would be greatly appreciated if you could tip Ether to the address below. Thank you!

0x0089d53F703f7E0843953D48133f74cE247184c2