Payments
How coin purchases are acquired and how payouts leave — the rails underneath both, the failure modes that shorten a processing relationship, and who runs which part on each route.
A purchase on one side, a payout on the other
Both halves of this product move money, and almost nothing about them is alike. A coin purchase is a card-not-present sale of a digital good, priced in dollars, underwritten by somebody who has decided in advance how much they like the look of your business. A prize payout is a transfer to a person whose identity has already been checked, sent down a rail that has no interest in what it is paying for.
They fail differently too. A purchase fails in under a second, silently, for reasons you never see. A payout fails days later, loudly, after somebody has been told the money is on its way. Treating the two as one subject called “payments” is how operators end up applying the remedy for one to the other.
The useful question is never “do payments work”. It is which of these two flows is failing, and whether the fix belongs to your configuration, your traffic or your acquirer.
Who runs the rails
We supply no payment rails. Not the card acquiring behind a coin purchase, not the bank rails behind a payout, on either route. One exception: on the managed platform the crypto rail is ours.
That is worth stating plainly because our own pages have implied otherwise, and because it is the first thing a founder needs in order to plan. Whatever route you take with us, somebody has to underwrite your business before a card payment for coins can be taken, and that somebody is not us. Budget the time for it. It is one of the two things that most often delays a launch, and unlike the other one it cannot be started late.
| API integration — you run the platform | Managed platform — we run the platform | |
|---|---|---|
| The merchant account behind a coin purchase | You | YouYours on both routes. The merchant account is in your name, the underwriting is about your business, and the acquirer's relationship is with you rather than with us. |
| Card, bank transfer and open-banking rails | You | YouYours on both routes. We do not resell acquiring and we are not a payment facilitator, so there is no arrangement under which a coin purchase is acquired through us. |
| The crypto rail | You | casinoapi.techThe one exception, and it is an exception for a structural reason: crypto needs no merchant account and no acquirer, so it is the only rail that can be ours without underwriting you. On an API integration it is yours like everything else. |
| Retry, cascade and routing between providers | You | YouYours on both routes. Orchestration is a property of a payments stack, and the stack is yours. |
| Moving the money on an approved payout | You | YouYours on both routes, other than in crypto. On the managed platform we decide whether a payout may proceed — that is the redemption engine — and you execute it. |
| Whether a payout may proceed at all | You | casinoapi.techThe gate, not the rail. Thresholds, holds and the verification requirement are your policy on both routes; on the managed platform the engine that enforces them is ours. |
| Chargebacks, representment and dispute handling | You | YouYours on both routes. A dispute is between a cardholder, their issuer and your acquirer. We are not a party to it and we cannot represent one on your behalf. |
| What we can see about a purchase | Nothing — we never see it | casinoapi.techOn an API integration, nothing — the purchase never touches us. On the managed platform we hold the ledger, so we can tell you whether a purchase completed and the coins were granted. Why an authorisation failed is the acquirer's record, not ours. |
The crypto row is the only place we appear as a rail, and the reason is structural rather than commercial: crypto is the one method that needs no merchant account and no acquirer, so it is the only one that can be ours without somebody underwriting you first.
How this category gets classified
A merchant category code travels with every card transaction and tells the issuing bank what kind of business took the payment. It is the code, not your legal analysis, that an issuer's policy applies to — which matters here more than in most categories, because a sweepstakes promotion is not gambling and is routinely processed as though it were.
The code is assigned by your acquirer. You do not choose it, and neither your counsel's opinion nor the wording of your official rules is in front of the person who assigns it. How classification actually happens sets out what is in front of them instead, and what the card schemes' own rulebooks do and do not say about this category.
What money in involves
Underwriting first, then a merchant account, then a stack that has to keep authorising in a category where issuers decline more than they do elsewhere. The costs that surprise people are not on the rate card — a reserve against your settled volume, a delay before you see the money, a fee for every dispute whether or not you win it, and the price of holding a second relationship you hope never to need. Declines and chargebacks covers the two ways a purchase goes wrong, which are not the same way and do not have the same remedy.
What money out involves
By the time money leaves, the interesting decisions have already been made: whether the player may redeem, whether they have been verified, whether a hold applies. What remains is physical — which rail carries it, what the recipient has to get right, and what happens when it comes back. Payout rails compares the methods and describes the one failure with no way back.
Where the product decisions live
Everything above is about rails. The decisions that shape what those rails carry are a different subject and live in the virtual-currency pages: what a package contains and what it costs is covered in coin packages, and thresholds, holds, the verification gate and the audit record are covered in the redemption engine.
The line between the two is worth keeping: if a sentence describes something you decide, it belongs over there. If it describes something an acquirer, a scheme or a bank does to you, it belongs here.
These rails are not ours, which is why these pages describe them rather than sell them. What we do run is set out on the product overview.