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Money enters through a charge, moves between balances through a transfer, and leaves through a withdrawal. A charge lands in a balance, a transfer moves it between balances, a withdrawal moves it out to a bank account, mobile money wallet, or crypto wallet. A charge lands in a balance, a transfer moves it between balances, a withdrawal moves it out to a bank account, mobile money wallet, or crypto wallet.
  • Transfers and withdrawals draw on available_balance only.
  • There is no path between two accounts. Moving value from one to another is two transfers through your platform.

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Enters

A charge lands in the balance of whichever account collected it.
  • You collect. The charge is yours, and you transfer each account its share. See Split payments.
  • The account collects. The charge is theirs. The account needs a payment-accepting capability, which lengthens its requirements.
See Choose your integration.

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Settles

A charge arrives in pending_balance and moves to available_balance on settlement. Read pending_settlements_by_day for the date. See Balances.
A transfer sent before settlement fails with INSUFFICIENT_BALANCE. Trigger transfers on settlement, not on the charge succeeding.

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Moves

A transfer moves an amount between your available_balance and an account’s, in either direction. It moves one currency and does not convert. Tag related transfers with transfer_group to reconcile which charge funded which shares.

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Leaves

A withdrawal moves funds from available_balance to a bank account or wallet. Withdraw from an account by acting as it with X-Account-Id. It requires payouts active on the withdrawing account. See Payouts.
An account’s first payout is held for a one-time review, so it completes a few minutes later than the ones after it. This is per account and happens only until one payout has completed, then later payouts dispatch without the wait. See Payouts.
Do not treat a network or 5xx error on a transfer or withdrawal as proof it was not created. Verify the current state before retrying, or retry with the same Idempotency-Key.

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Comes back

A refund debits the balance the charge landed in.
  • If you collected, the refund debits your balance. Recover an already-transferred share with a transfer back, while the account still holds it.
  • If the account collected, the refund debits theirs.
See Split payments.