The balance in your Anchor Wallet is the combination of money you’ve made from Listener Support and Sponsorships since you last cashed out (vs the “total earned” number, which tells you how much you’ve made since you activated these features). If you’re only using one or the other, you’ll just see the balance from that source.

In the case of Listener Support, each supporting listener’s donation will be processed monthly. For Sponsorships, you’ll make money as your podcast gets new plays. But no matter when your money is coming in, you can cash out your Anchor balance any time you want. Just click the 'Cash Out' button in your Wallet at anchor.fm or in the Anchor app for iOS or Android. There is a $0.25 processing fee any time you cash out, so you must have at least $0.26 in your Wallet before you can withdraw your balance.

Note that if you haven’t yet set up your payment information, you’ll need to do that first. We use Stripe (the leading online payment processing company) to process and protect your money, so your payment information will all go through them, and some account details may need to be changed with Stripe's help. 

For security purposes, if you ever leave a balance in your Wallet for more than 30 days, we will automatically cash out the total balance for you. We’ll send an email notifying you if this happens.

Pending funds

When you first start to earn money with Sponsorships or collect Listener Support, initial payments may take up to 7 days to appear in your Wallet. After that brief validation period, all new payments should be available for you to cash out within 1-2 days. As soon as they’re available to cash out, you’ll see them reflected in your total Wallet amount.

Anchor payouts process very quickly, and by default should be available in your bank account within 3 business days. If you have a debit card associated with your account (vs a bank account), you can also toggle on Instant Pay; for a small additional fee this’ll let you cash out immediately instead of waiting the standard 3 days.

 Sponsorships payments always have a 7 day pending window to help avoid fraud.

Until new payments are available to cash out, they’ll be reflected in a pending state underneath your current Wallet total:

Sponsorships Fees

Two fees are deducted from a Sponsorship payment before it hits your bank account:

1. Anchor fee (our only cut of the transaction): 30%
2. Payout processing fee (to cover the cost of moving money to your bank account through Stripe, the third-party platform we use to help process secure payments)

• Standard 7 day payout if you’ve never activated Stripe: $.25
• Instant payout:
• If you have less than $40 in your Wallet: $.50
• If you have more than $40 in your Wallet: 1.25% of the amount in your wallet  (e.g. if you’re cashing out $100, you would pay $1.25)

Example of how it works:

• You get one sponsor, who offers a $20CPM (cost per thousand impressions), and you get 1,000 total plays during the course of the campaign.
• $6.00 ([30%*$20.00]) is deducted for the Anchor fee
• $.25 is deducted to cover the cost of processing the transaction
  • $13.75 appears in your wallet!
• Cashing out options:
• Option A. You’re okay waiting 2-3 business days to receive your money and select standard cashout. $.25 is deducted to cover the cost of processing the payout
• Option B. You want your payout instantly and select instant payout. $.50 is deducted to cover the cost of processing the payout