The account in the middle

Most players think of a wallet as a way of moving money. It is also a place money sits, under a second set of terms, held by a second company, with a second balance you can lose access to. This desk follows one 100.00 deposit through it and prices every hop.

Open the partner account Start with the fees

Account stub

Wallet take, both hops: 2.92% of the money funded
Round trip, 100.00: 6.86 through a wallet, 4.00 direct
Papers held twice: 2 of the 8 on file
Inactivity fee on 40.00: gone in the 14th month
Identical to paymentrails?: No - that desk owns the rails, this one owns the account

the seamOne hop from one ledger to another, each with its own terms and its own fee

the wallet balanceA claim on the wallet, safeguarded and not deposit-insured

the round trip6.86 through a wallet against 4.00 direct, on one sample account

Direct answerA payment wallet is a licensed account that holds your money at a company that is neither your bank nor the operator. Money you route through it crosses two extra seams, is priced by the wallet at each of them, is proved to a second identity file, and becomes a balance that is a claim on the wallet rather than a deposit at a bank.

Desk Wallet Desk, cycle 59 of the seriesSubject the licensed wallet between a bank and an operatorUnit the seam - one hop from one ledger to anotherSample account one 100.00 deposit, one stake at a 96% return, one withdrawalRates used a 1.5% fee each way, on the wallet’s side onlyNot quoted no real company’s fees, terms or figures anywhere on this site

What the account in the middle is

seam 01

A wallet is a counterparty, not a pipe

A rail is a route; a wallet is a company. The difference is not pedantry. When money sits in a wallet it sits at that company, and if the company closes your account, is sold, changes its terms or stops trading, what you have is not money in transit. It is a claim on the wallet, governed by the wallet’s terms, which you agreed to when you opened it and probably did not read.

That is why this desk exists as a separate site rather than a paragraph. Everything a person knows about their gambling money turns out to be true of only half of it.

seam 02

Two balances, two rulebooks

After a deposit through a wallet you hold two balances in two systems. The operator’s balance is the one you play with, and the terms you accepted at sign-up govern it. The wallet’s balance is whatever the wallet is holding for you between hops, and a different contract governs that. The two contracts have different complaint routes, different limits, different closure rights and different retention periods.

See the two balances for what each one actually is, and the dispute route for what happens when you disagree with one of them.

seam 03

Each hop is priced separately

A wallet is not free to run, so it charges. A top-up fee on the way in, a withdrawal fee on the way out, a retained spread on any conversion, and a fee for leaving a balance untouched. The operator’s promise to absorb deposit fees is made about the operator’s own charge, and it cannot absorb a fee the wallet takes before the money arrives.

On the sample account below, the wallet’s two fees come to 2.92 against the 3.94 the game itself takes.

seam 04

Nothing puts the two ledgers side by side

The wallet sees a transfer to a merchant and an amount. The operator sees a credit from a wallet, not from a bank account. Neither one sees the whole picture, and this is deliberate in both directions: the wallet is not told what you staked, on what, or what you won, and the operator is not told which bank account funded the wallet.

It also means that when something goes wrong, no single party can explain the whole path. That is what makes the seam a subject rather than a detail: see the fees and the controls.

What each side of the seam can see

What the wallet can see

That a payment to a named merchant left, how much, when, and what your balance was either side of it. It cannot see a stake, a market, a game round or a win, and it is not told your in-account history.

What the operator can see

That a credit arrived from a wallet, with an identifier for it. It cannot see the bank account, the card or the salary behind it - and it does not need to, which is the reason a wallet is popular with players who want the two halves of their financial life kept apart.

The five moments money crosses a seam

What each hop costs on the sample account funded 100.00 wallet top-up fee 1.50 charged on the money going in staked 98.50 returned at 96% 94.56 wallet withdrawal fee 1.42 charged on the money coming back received 93.14 total cost 6.86 the game 3.94 57.4% of it the wallet 2.92 42.6% of it the same money sent directly 4.00 the game alone what the second company adds 2.92 paid whatever the stake does

You fund the wallet from your bank: 100.00 leaves your account and a fee is charged on it.
A balance appears in the wallet: 98.50 of spendable value that is a claim on the wallet, under the wallet’s terms.
You tell the wallet to pay the operator: a second transfer crosses the second seam, and the operator credits its own balance.
You play: the operator’s balance moves with stakes and returns, and the wallet is told nothing about any of it.
You withdraw: the money crosses the second seam again on the way back, and the wallet charges a second time.

What this desk does not do. It rates no wallet and no operator, recommends none, and quotes no real company’s fees. Every number here is illustrative, derived from the sample account, and shown with its arithmetic so it can be re-derived. It describes the mechanism, not a product, and it is not advice on where to keep money.

two balances wallet fees the game the inactivity fee illustrative only

What the account actually is

The licensed middle, and the three things it is not.

Two balances, two contracts

A claim on the wallet and a claim on the operator.

The cost of the extra hop

1.50 in, 1.42 out, and what that does to a 100.00 round trip.

The round trip - one 100.00 deposit through a wallet, one stake at a 96% return, one withdrawal, every hop charged to its own base
The step	Amount	Share of its base	What it is
Funded from the bank	100.00	100.0%	one movement, before anything is charged on it
Wallet top-up fee	-1.50	1.5% of funded	charged on the largest base in the whole journey
Credited and staked	98.50	98.5% of funded	what the operator receives, and what is staked
Lost to the game at 96%	-3.94	4.0% of the stake	the margin is charged on the stake, not on the deposit
Wallet withdrawal fee	-1.42	1.5% of the return	the same rate applied to a smaller base
Received back in the bank	93.14	93.1% of funded	what actually arrives back
The cost of the round trip	6.86	3.94 game / 2.92 wallet	The same money sent directly costs 4.00, because only the game charges. The extra hop therefore adds 2.92 to a 100.00 round trip, and the wallet takes 42.6% of everything that goes missing.

100.00 funded, 93.14 received, 6.86 paid for the journey. The wallet’s two fees come to 2.92 and the game’s margin to 3.94 - so on this sample the seam is 42.6% of the cost of a single round trip, and it is paid on the movement of the money rather than on the result of the stake.

The second file - eight papers across two companies, ten holdings, and two sheets that exist twice
The paper	At the wallet	At the operator	Why it is asked for
Photo identity document	held	held	the shared paper: both companies must know who the customer is
Proof of address	held	held	the second shared paper, re-checked when it changes
Liveness check	held	not held	proving the person, not only the document
The funding instrument’s record	held	not held	where the money in the wallet came from
Source of wealth	held	not held	the wallet’s own threshold, at a different level from the operator’s
Tax residence	held	not held	the wallet’s own reporting duty to its regulator
Affordability evidence	not held	held	the operator’s stake-threshold question
Third-party funding declaration	not held	held	whether anyone else has an interest in the stake
Counted	6 held	4 held	8 distinct papers, 10 holdings, 2 held twice. Four papers sit with the wallet alone and two with the operator alone, so the two files are largely different documents that happen to share a cover.

Ten holdings of eight papers. The two files overlap in exactly 2 places - identity and address - and the wallet keeps 4 papers the operator never asks for, while the operator keeps 2 the wallet does not. Being verified twice means two files with two retention periods, not the same file kept twice.