How can you pay for a pledge?

Paying by card is the path most people take and it looks like any other checkout. The card top-up is handled by a regulated provider rather than by us, the balance appears in your account, and the pledge is made from it. We never see or store a card number.

If you already hold stablecoins — digital dollars or euros — you can transfer them in directly and skip the card step entirely. That is the cheaper route, because it avoids the card provider's cut, and it is the one people use once they have backed a few things.

Pledges are denominated in a stablecoin rather than in a national currency, which is what lets the escrow hold them without anybody choosing when to convert. In practice the number on screen behaves like the currency it is named after; the /learn course explains what that is and why it matters if you want the longer version.

Withdrawing works the same way in reverse and carries no platform fee. Money you have not pledged, or that has come back to you from a campaign that missed its goal, is yours to take out whenever you want.