Settlement

What are the three terms?

Currency. Settling in the asset received keeps you in crypto and costs nothing extra. Settling in fiat converts on receipt and carries a spread, covered in the fees guide, which is often the largest single cost in the whole relationship.

Schedule. Daily is common, some providers offer on-demand, and a few settle weekly. This decides how much of your revenue sits with the provider at any moment, which is the practical measure of your counterparty exposure, and custody decides how much that matters.

Reserve. A percentage of your balance held back against refund and dispute obligations, released after a period. Standard in card processing, present in crypto more often than merchants expect, and almost never mentioned on a pricing page.

Why does the schedule matter more than the rate?

Because it decides where your working capital lives. A provider settling weekly holds roughly a seventh of your monthly revenue on average. A provider settling daily holds a thirtieth.

If the difference between two providers is a tenth of a percent on processing and a week on settlement, the settlement term is the larger number for most businesses.

What should you get in writing?

The schedule, the reserve percentage and the hold period, as numbers. What extends the schedule, and under what conditions settlement pauses. What happens to an outstanding balance when the relationship ends. The catalogue records which providers publish settlement terms.

The question that gets skipped

What happens to an outstanding balance when the relationship ends. Not if it ends badly, simply when it ends: you switch providers, or they exit your market, or the account closes for any ordinary reason.

Ask how long funds remain accessible, how they are returned, and whether a final reserve is held beyond that. None of this appears on a pricing page anywhere in this category, and all of it decides how expensive leaving will be.