Wallet & Escrow Basics
Deposit funds, pay creators safely, and understand exactly how escrow protects both sides.
Profile → Wallet shows your full wallet ledger: current balance, total spent, pending funds in escrow, total paid out, total refunded, and any Ainfluencer Credits you’ve earned. Click Add Funds to top up.
Add funds via credit/debit card, PayPal, ACH, SEPA, wire, Apple/Google Pay, or cryptocurrency. Standard top-up amounts are preset; custom amounts are rolling out. Funds are available immediately for card and Pay, slightly delayed for ACH/wire.
When you accept a creator’s offer, the agreed amount is automatically debited from your wallet balance and held in escrow. You don’t manually pay, the system does it. When verification completes (creator delivered, you approved, post is live), funds release from escrow to the creator’s wallet.
Escrow holds your money in a neutral state, it’s debited from your wallet but not yet paid to the creator. Two outcomes:
- Creator delivers per the brief → funds release to them.
- Creator fails to deliver → funds automatically refund to your wallet.
You only ever pay for verified work. If something feels wrong mid-deal, see Refunds & Disputes.
It depends on what the creator submitted, and the clock is not the same in every case.
| What the creator did | Deal is marked failed | You are refunded |
|---|---|---|
| Posted a link we could read (Instagram, TikTok or YouTube) | about 9 days after they submitted | about 10 days after they submitted |
| Uploaded content files | 9 days after upload | 10 days after upload |
| Posted a link we could not read (a story, a private post, an unsupported site) | 2 days after the agreed publish date | 3 days after the agreed publish date |
| Submitted nothing | 2 days after the agreed publish date | 3 days after the agreed publish date |
The row to watch is the third one. If the creator posts an Instagram story, or the post is private, the clock is not extended. You can have as little as two days from the agreed publish date to approve, even if the link arrived hours ago.
Payment is released only when you approve the delivery. If nobody approves it inside the window above, the system treats the deal as failed and returns the money to your wallet automatically.
This catches people out because the deal still shows as Published on your side the whole time. Neither you nor the creator gets a warning before the refund.
If the creator genuinely delivered, you can still approve the post after the refund. The price is simply taken from your wallet again.
Two parts of the original payment do not come back:
- The platform fee is not refunded.
- Any coupon or credit you used returns to Ainfluencer rather than to your wallet, because it was never your cash.
So a deal paid partly with credit refunds less cash than the headline price.
Refunds go to your Ainfluencer wallet by default, where they can be spent on the next collaboration. Card refunds are handled case by case by our finance team, so contact support if you need the money off the platform.
The approval still works, and the offer price is charged to your wallet again. The platform fee is not charged a second time.
If your wallet does not cover it you will see “You currently do not have enough funds in your wallet.” Top up and approve again.
No. Once the funds have moved to the creator’s wallet the decision is final, and you will see “You cannot disapprove this offer, the money has been transferred to the influencer’s wallet.”
If you disapprove before release, the money stays in escrow and comes back to you 14 days after the deal’s start date. That gap is deliberate: it gives the creator a chance to fix and resubmit.
Trust your wallet. If the refund appears in your wallet ledger, the money is back with you, even when the offer card has not caught up.
A small number of older offers kept a Paid label after the money returned. It is a display problem rather than a billing one, and support can confirm the real state for any deal you are unsure about.
On the offer screen, “Paid:” labels the agreed price, not a completed payment. An offer you have not funded yet will still show that line.
The reliable indicator is the status badge. “Waiting Payment” means no money has moved. Once you pay, the badge changes and the funds appear in escrow in your wallet.
Money you have paid for a collaboration moves through a short sequence:
- In your wallet. Deposited, not committed to anything.
- In escrow. Committed to a specific deal and held by Ainfluencer. Neither side can spend it.
- Released. You approved the delivery and the money is in the creator’s wallet. They withdraw it separately.
- Refunded. The deal failed or you disapproved, and the money is back in your wallet minus the platform fee.
One collaboration can go round this loop more than once, for example if it is refunded and then approved later. Your wallet ledger shows every movement, so it is the best place to reconstruct what happened.
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