Escrow and Getting Paid
Every booking is escrow-backed: the advertiser pays at checkout and Onflow Ads holds the money until delivery is verified. Your payout — the booking price minus the platform commission, exactly the amount shown on the booking card — releases to your wallet on a schedule, and from the wallet you can withdraw.
This page is the whole money path, from the moment a booking is accepted to the moment cash leaves the platform.
The payouts panel
The top of your bookings queue shows the Payouts panel — "what you're owed, dated":
- Available now — delivered placements whose hold has cleared. When there is money here the tile says "claim in Delivered"; when there is not, "nothing cleared".
- Next 30 days — everything scheduled to release within a month.
- Earned to date — your lifetime completed payouts.
- Scheduled releases — a chart and a dated list of every held payout. Green entries clear to your wallet; blue entries are retention holds releasing after their extended window. The key under the chart names both.
- Forecast — accepted but not yet delivered bookings, with the note "Estimated release once each post goes live — not a committed date." Estimates are always flagged as estimates.
With nothing held yet, the panel reads "No held payouts yet — delivered placements will show their release dates here."
What you are actually paid
Your payout is fixed when the booking is priced, and shown on every card as "you receive $X after N% fee".
- The commission rate comes from your subscription plan and falls as the plan rises. It is charged to both sides: the advertiser pays your price plus the fee, you receive your price minus it.
- A reliability surcharge can be added to your side of the fee while your score sits below the healthy band. At the default score of 8.0 it is exactly zero. Whatever rate applies is printed on the booking card, so a fee that differs from your plan's headline rate is never silent.
- If you counter a request at a different price, your payout scales with the new price at the same ratio.
When escrow releases
After a booking is marked delivered, three clocks matter:
- The advertiser's review window — the ad's promised duration, capped at 48 hours. During it the advertiser can confirm the post, which releases your payout immediately, or raise a concern, which holds it. Letting it lapse counts as delivered.
- Your plan's payout schedule. The release date is computed at the moment you deliver, from your plan at that moment, and written onto the booking. It never moves afterwards, even if your subscription changes later. On the Free plan, funds hold for the ad's full promised duration. Paid plans cap that hold at progressively shorter times, and the higher plans release once the advertiser's review window has lapsed uncontested — without waiting out the rest of a long placement. The exact date for each booking is always shown on its card and in the payouts panel.
- The advertiser confirming early — at any point they can confirm the post went live, which releases your payout on the spot.
On the entry plan the hold tracks the format: a 1h top · 24h feed placement holds for 24 hours, a native placement for a week, a monthly placement for 30 days. If long formats are tying your money up, either move up a plan or lean on instant payout.
Claiming
When the date arrives — or the advertiser confirms — the card in the Delivered tab shows "Delivery verified — the hold has cleared." with a Claim $X payout button.
Press it once to arm ("Tap again — claim $X") and again to confirm. The money is credited to your wallet immediately and the booking moves to Completed, with a "Payout released" notification.
You never have to remember: releases also happen automatically on the scheduled date, so an unclaimed payout is never lost. Claiming simply takes it the moment it is available.
Before the date, the card explains itself: "Funds release automatically on [date and time] UTC, once the verification window has passed. The advertiser can release it sooner by confirming the post."
Instant payout
On a delivered booking whose release date has not arrived yet, you can release early for a fee — once the advertiser's review window has passed.
- The card shows Get it now · $X with the fee named next to it: "$Y early-release fee (N%)". The net amount is what you see on the button.
- It takes a second confirming tap ("Confirm · $X now ($Y fee)").
- Funds go to your wallet only; withdrawal still goes through the normal withdrawal queue.
Before the review window has passed, the card shows the date instant payout opens instead ("Instant payout opens [date]."). If the payout has already cleared, instant payout refuses with "This payout is already available — claim it free from the booking."
The same guards apply as a normal claim: no open dispute, no monitor flag, no frozen wallet, no unmet verification threshold.
The good-faith deposit comes back
If accepting the booking staked a refundable good-faith deposit from your wallet, it is returned as its own wallet line at the same time your payout is credited. It is never silently netted against the payout, so your statement shows both.
The deposit is returned on clean delivery, returned if the advertiser cancels, and returned when a missed window was caused by a platform failure rather than by you. It is forfeited to the advertiser only when the failure was yours.
Retention escrow
Some bookings — an option on higher advertiser plans — carry a retention hold: a slice of your payout stays in escrow past delivery and releases after an extended window. It appears in your payouts panel as a blue entry tagged "retention hold", with its own release date.
The slice is released to you when, at the end of the window:
- the placement was never flagged by the monitor, and was not refunded or disputed; and
- your channel has not shrunk below the subscriber count recorded when the booking was accepted.
If Onflow Ads cannot read your channel's live subscriber count at that moment, that half of the test is simply not applied — an unreadable count is never treated as a fall. On a clean release you get a "Retention escrow released" notification: the amount "held back on [channel] has been added to your wallet — the post survived its retention window." If the terms were not held, that slice goes back to the advertiser instead.
What blocks a release
A payout is held — never lost — while any of these is true. Each names itself on the booking:
| Block | What you see | How it clears |
|---|---|---|
| Open dispute | "A fraud concern on this booking is under review — the payout is on hold until our team resolves it." | The review is decided; see Disputes |
| Monitor flag | "We've flagged a problem with this placement — the payout is paused until it's resolved. Re-post the ad or contact support." | The problem is resolved; see Delivery monitoring |
| Frozen wallet | "Your wallet is temporarily on hold while a concern is reviewed. Payouts resume once it's cleared." | The concern is decided, in either direction |
| Verification threshold | "This payout crosses a verification threshold ... your funds are held safely until then." | You complete the matching verification level; see Identity verification |
More than one can apply at once, which is why a booking sometimes stays held after you clear the reason you knew about.
Withdrawing your earnings
Withdraw from the wallet page at https://onflowads.com/telegram/dashboard/wallet, on the Withdraw tab.
Your wallet. The Withdrawable tile — labelled "Paid-Promotions earnings" — is the figure a withdrawal can actually draw on; the total above it includes credit that is spendable but not cashable.
- Choose a Withdrawal method — Telegram Stars (to your username), UPI ID, or USDT on BEP-20.
- Enter the Destination for that method.
- Enter the Amount (USD). The panel shows your withdrawable balance, the minimum (currently $5.00), and "You receive $X after fees" as you type.
- Press Request Withdrawal.
The gross amount is held from your balance immediately and the request enters the review queue as pending, visible in My withdrawals. Every withdrawal is reviewed before it is sent; a rejected request refunds the held amount in full.
Things to know:
- Only your withdrawable balance can be cashed out. Placement earnings, returned deposits and referral commissions are withdrawable; promotional credit and refund credit are spendable on Onflow Ads but not cashable. The wallet page shows the withdrawable figure separately.
- Each plan allows a set number of withdrawal requests per calendar month. Your balance stays spendable in the meantime.
- Withdrawals are blocked while your wallet is frozen for a review, and resume as soon as it clears.
Full detail on methods, fees and timing lives in Withdrawing earnings.
FAQ
My payout says "Funds release automatically on ..." with a date. Can I have it sooner?
Three ways: ask the advertiser to confirm the post (free, immediate), use Get it now once their review window has passed (a percentage fee, shown on the button), or move to a plan with a shorter hold — though a plan change only affects bookings delivered after it.
The date on an old booking is longer than my current plan's hold.
Release dates are pinned at delivery from the plan you had at that moment, on purpose: the date you earned by delivering must not slide because a subscription changed weeks later. New deliveries use your new plan.
Part of my payout shows as a "retention hold".
That booking carried retention escrow: a slice stays held past delivery and releases after an extended window provided the post survived and the channel did not shrink. Its release date is in your payouts panel, as a blue entry.
Why is my fee different on two bookings?
The commission is your plan's rate at the time each booking was priced, and it can include a small reliability surcharge while your score is below the healthy band. Each card shows the exact rate applied to it.
I have balance but cannot withdraw.
Check three things: the amount meets the minimum shown on the page; the balance is withdrawable rather than promotional or refund credit; and your wallet is not frozen for a review. Also check whether you have used your plan's withdrawal requests for the month.
Does an unclaimed payout expire?
No. Releases happen automatically on the scheduled date whether or not you press anything.
Next: Identity verification (KYC) — the one thing that can hold a payout once your earnings add up.