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Frequently asked questions

Everything merchants and subscribers ask us before connecting a wallet.

Custody & security

Does Tidepay hold or custody funds?+

No. Tidepay is non-custodial. Subscribers grant an on-chain ERC-20 allowance when they subscribe, and each charge executes as a direct transferFrom pull from the subscriber's own wallet straight to the merchant's (and, where configured, the platform's) address in a single transaction. There is no intermediate wallet holding customer balances at any point.

Can Tidepay move more than a subscriber approved?+

No. The operator wallet that executes scheduled pulls can only call transferFrom up to the allowance a subscriber explicitly granted on-chain. It cannot exceed that amount, and a subscriber can revoke the allowance at any time directly from their own wallet, independent of Tidepay.

How is the operator private key protected?+

The operator private key is held in a secrets manager, never committed to source control or written to logs, and is scoped only to the transferFrom and split operations the billing engine needs.

How do I know a webhook actually came from Tidepay?+

Every webhook is signed with HMAC-SHA256 over the request timestamp and raw body, sent as the X-Tidepay-Signature header. Verify the signature before acting on any payload — our documentation includes the exact verification steps.

Billing & subscriptions

How does recurring charging actually work?+

A subscriber connects a wallet and approves an on-chain allowance once. From then on, a cron-triggered job pulls the subscription amount on the schedule you set, splits it per your take-rate configuration, and fires a signed webhook — no manual invoicing, no waiting for a manual transfer.

What happens if a charge fails?+

A failed pull (insufficient balance, a lapsed allowance, network congestion) moves the subscription to past_due and Tidepay retries on a backoff schedule. If retries are exhausted, the subscription moves to canceled and you're notified via webhook — nothing charges silently or gets stuck without a signal.

Are there chargebacks?+

No. On-chain transactions are irreversible by design, so there's no chargeback mechanism the way there is with cards. This also means merchants aren't exposed to chargeback fraud — a settled charge is final.

Can a subscriber cancel on their own?+

A subscriber can revoke the on-chain allowance from their own wallet at any time, which stops future charges from succeeding even if the subscription itself isn't explicitly canceled in the dashboard — the next scheduled pull will simply fail and the subscription will move to past_due, then canceled.

Chains, tokens & fees

Which blockchains and tokens are supported?+

Tidepay supports Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, and BSC today, with a Base Sepolia testnet available for dry-running your integration before going live. See our documentation for the current token catalog per chain.

Who pays the network gas fee?+

Tidepay covers gas costs for scheduled pulls unless stated otherwise on your plan — merchants and subscribers don't need their own gas balance to keep a subscription running.

What does Tidepay charge?+

Fees are a percentage of successfully settled charges, shown on our pricing page. There's no fee on failed or retried charges — you're only charged when a payment actually settles.

Can I request support for a chain that isn't listed?+

Reach out at sales@tidepay.cc — we prioritize new chain support based on merchant demand, and our billing engine's internal design was built to make adding a new chain family a contained change rather than a rewrite.