The wallet is the single source of truth for spendable funds. It holds a balance in **US dollars** ($X.XX), and every verification you run debits dollars from it. This page explains how that works.

## One wallet per organization

Your organization has exactly one wallet, denominated in US dollars. Subscription grants, top-up funds, auto-recharge funds, goodwill credit from support, and your trial balance all land in the same wallet: there is one balance, shown as dollars. The wallet itself moves between three lifecycle states: `active`, `locked` (when a card dispute or our staff manually halts spending), and `closed` (terminal).

## Two buckets, one balance

Inside the single wallet, funds sit in two logical buckets with different lifecycles. The total balance is the sum of both; the buckets only change _how long the money lasts_ and _which money is spent first_.

- **Grant Bucket (subscription).** A subscription drops a monthly (or annual) grant into this bucket. It is **use-it-or-lose-it**: a monthly grant expires at the end of its billing cycle, and an annual grant expires 365 days after it is granted. Unspent grant funds do not roll over to the next cycle.
- **Top-Up Bucket (prepaid).** Money you add with a one-time [top-up](/guides/billing/top-up), an [auto-recharge](/guides/billing/auto-recharge), an out-of-band wire, or goodwill credit lands here. It **rolls over** and expires 365 days after it is added (oldest funds first).

Your trial balance is a third, short-lived grant that spends before either bucket (see [Spend order](#spend-order-trial-then-grant-then-top-up) and [Expiry](#expiry)).

## How funds are spent

Each verification SKU costs a fixed dollar amount (for example, identity $0.75, address verification $0.50). When a verification runs, dollars are debited from your wallet **before** the check runs, so an insufficient balance fails the check recoverably and never produces an unbilled check. The debit is idempotent, which keeps a retry safe.

Most debits are per-check, but a verification can also carry a once-per-applicant charge: [fraud detection](/guides/workflows/workflow-templates-fraud-rules#what-fraud-detection-costs) is the first applicant-level debit ($0.45, charged once per applicant when a workflow has fraud detection enabled), billed alongside the per-check SKUs. All of this is **live mode only**. Test mode does not debit a wallet (see below).

## Spend order: trial, then grant, then top-up

Debits drain your funds in a fixed priority so the right money is used first:

1. **Trial** funds drain first, while the trial window is still open.
2. **Grant Bucket** (subscription) funds next — use them before they expire at cycle end.
3. **Top-Up Bucket** (prepaid) funds last, oldest top-up first.

A single check whose price spans a bucket boundary draws partly from each. For example, a $1.00 check with $0.40 left in the grant bucket takes $0.40 from the grant bucket and $0.60 from your oldest top-up funds — exactly the right order, with no action needed from you.

## Expiry

Funds expire on a schedule that depends on the bucket:

- **Trial** — expires 14 days after sign-up. Unspent trial dollars are forfeited.
- **Grant Bucket** — monthly grants expire at the end of each billing cycle; annual grants expire 365 days after they are granted.
- **Top-Up Bucket** — each top-up expires 365 days after it is added.

Unconsumed funds at expiry are written off the wallet and recognized as breakage revenue (trial dollars and goodwill credit are not, because no cash backed them).

## Access is balance-first

You can run verifications **whenever your wallet has a positive spendable balance** — from the trial, a subscription grant, or prepaid top-up funds. You do **not** need a subscription to spend prepaid funds: an organization funded only by top-ups (or goodwill, or a wire payment) can verify with no subscription at all.

A subscription is a **feature gate, not an access gate**. It unlocks premium features and funds the monthly grant bucket — but it is not required to spend money already in your wallet.

The one exception is **freeze-on-cancel**: if you subscribe and then cancel (or lapse past the dunning grace), your remaining balance is **frozen** — preserved, never forfeited, and not spendable until you re-subscribe. See [Subscription](/guides/billing/subscription) and [Payment required](/guides/billing/payment-required).

## Where funds come from

There are several ways money lands in your wallet:

1. **Trial credit** — a $10 grant on sign-up, valid 14 days.
2. **Subscription grant** — granted on each successful billing cycle (monthly) or up front (annual). Lands in the Grant Bucket.
3. **Top-up** — a one-time purchase through Stripe Checkout. Preset amounts carry a [checkout discount](/guides/billing/top-up) (you pay less than face value); custom amounts fund 1:1. Lands in the Top-Up Bucket.
4. **Auto-recharge**: an automatic top-up that fires when your balance dips below your threshold. Lands in the Top-Up Bucket, 1:1 (no discount).

## Read the wallet balance

The current balance, the per-bucket split, recent activity, and the auto-recharge form are on the **Billing** page in the console. The full per-row history is on the [Transactions](/guides/billing/transactions) tab. The same balance is exposed in your [Activity log](/guides/activity/activity-log) audit trail.

See also: [Glossary](/glossary), [Test mode and live mode](/developers/modes-and-regions) — the wallet is **live mode only**. Test-mode runs are free: they touch no wallet and run no checks against a balance, so you can build and test without funding anything.