The invention concerns payment for transmission and/or service operations within a data packet transmission network (4) (improvement in payment token technology). According to the invention, between the source unit (S) and the destination unit (D), at least one node is used as a cache node (NC) and also behaves like a debit node. It includes a debit gateway (PD) modifying the payment token assigned to each data packet received, so as to reduce the initial value of the payment token, by an amount representing the cost of the at least one cache operation carried out, for the packet received, by the cache node. A manager of said at least one cache node receives from the toll center, for each packet received during the session, the financial settlement of the representative amount and restores it to a manager of said at least one replaced unit or node, or allows a manager of said at least one replaced unit or node to receive the financial settlement directly.