Getting started

Wallet & billing

Fund your prepaid wallet, manage auto-refill, and understand daily campaign charges, creation costs, and automatic credits.

Where your campaign budget goes

1. 01Fund your wallet

   Review the deposit and any card fee at checkout.

2. 02Run your campaign

   Your daily budget is charged once per active day.

3. 03Check delivery

   Undelivered spend is credited to the wallet.

Pausing stops future daily charges. Any charge for today is settled against delivery.

On this page

Funding the wallet

Each organization has its own wallet. Top-ups, campaign charges, starter credit, and optional extra-ad charges apply to the organization you have active in the sidebar (Individual and Team workspaces do not share a balance).

• Top up any amount from $30 to $50,000 (presets: $100, $250, $1,000).
• Payments run through Stripe Checkout; your card details never touch Adwave's servers. Agents and API clients use wallet checkout on the API or MCP create_wallet_checkout and open the returned URL. See MCP.
• Card top-ups add the card processing fee on top of the amount you enter, so your wallet is credited the full amount you chose. The same applies through the API and MCP: amountCents is what the wallet receives. Bank (ACH) top-ups have no added fee.
• Every movement appears in the wallet ledger: deposits, campaign days, refunds, and delivery credits. Before you leave for checkout, the top-up form shows what your wallet is credited and what your card is charged, processing fee included. The API returns the same split (requestedCents and grossCents).

Daily charges

Each live campaign charges its daily budget once per active day, billed in US Eastern time. Repeated billing attempts use the same daily charge, preventing duplicate charges for that campaign day.

If the wallet can't cover a campaign's day, that campaign pauses automatically and you get an email. Top up and the campaign starts back up on its own within the hour, or press Resume to restart it right away. Campaign charges do not overdraw your prepaid wallet. A payment dispute can make the balance negative; see Disputed payments below.

A live campaign with nothing left that can serve ads is also paused before the next daily charge. If interest audiences are missing, open the campaign and press Rebuild reach; delivery relaunches when that finishes. You are not charged while paused.

Auto-refill

Runway is your balance divided by the daily budget of every live campaign: the wallet page, Home and each campaign's Billing tab all read the same sentence, "Runway: about 14 days at $65.00/day", and it turns into a Signal when it drops under three days.

Auto-refill is opt-in. When enabled, Adwave tops up your wallet when the balance drops below roughly 3 days of live campaign spend, charging your saved card for the amount you chose (default $100, minimum $100).

• Like card top-ups, each refill charges your card the refill amount plus the card processing fee, and your wallet is credited the refill amount you chose. The wallet page shows both numbers.
• 3 consecutive failed charges disable auto-refill until you re-enable it.
• You can turn it off at any time in the wallet.

Agencies

Agencies pay a license. Creative generation is billed to the agency at published unit prices. Managed client media is billed at cost from one agency wallet. Self-serve clients pay for their own ads. An insufficient paying-wallet balance pauses campaigns. License spend bands do not stop delivery; other launch and delivery requirements still apply. See Agencies.

Refunds and credits

• Total launch failure: if no channel goes live on launch day, the full day’s charge is refunded automatically.
• Under-delivery credits: when channels deliver less than your daily budget authorized, the undelivered amount is credited back to your wallet automatically. You only pay for ads that ran. Credits appear in your wallet activity.
• Partial launches: if some channels go live and others don’t, the day’s charge stands and the live channels keep running.
• Why each refund happened: every refund, credit, or clawback in your wallet activity carries a one-line reason (the launch did not happen, ads ran less than planned, an ad could not be finished, a mail piece could not print, and so on). The API returns the same as reasonCode and reason.
• Monthly caps: if a campaign has a monthly cap (or your agency set one for the workspace), the campaign’s Billing tab shows this month’s charges against the cap and the date it resets: the first of the next month, Eastern time. Days pause at the cap and pick up again after the reset.
• Budget edits: no proration; today’s charge stands and the new budget applies from the next day.
• Pausing or ending: stops all future charges immediately.

The campaign’s Billing tab draws each day as one bar against the daily cap: dark is what you were charged, amber marks a day that ran under the cap, and green appears only on days that credited money back to your wallet. The header counts how many days delivered in full.

Disputed payments

If your bank reverses a wallet payment (a chargeback), the disputed amount is removed from your wallet (the one case where a balance can dip below zero). Auto-refill turns off, live campaigns pause if the balance goes negative, and you get an email explaining what happened. If the disputed funds are recovered, the wallet credit is restored automatically. The Wallet page lists every disputed payment and where it stands: withdrawn while the bank reviews it, or returned.