String and two-field exponent/mantissa representations are mostly the same in terms of semantics, yes. Making it two separate fields makes it less likely it would be put into `parseFloat`, but after doing some research I think strings are more popular in JSON [1, 2], so probably I’d stick to that as well.

[1]: https://msgspec.dev/supported-types#decimal

[2]: e.g. https://getlago.com/docs/api-reference/fees/fee-object#schem..., although they still use `amount_cents` for all currencies as the base rate