Your wallet is prepaid credit on your account for buying phones and time. It is spent before a card is, unless a phone is set to use the card alone, and on Android it is the way everything is paid for.
Adding to it
- By card: any amount from $1 to $500 per top-up, charged to your default card at once. The balance cannot exceed $2,000.
- Through Google Play on Android: fixed amounts of $5, $10, $25 and $50, priced in your own currency by Google. The balance is credited when Google confirms the purchase, which is usually immediate. If the app is closed before that, the credit is claimed the next time it opens; you never lose a purchase.
Your email address has to be verified before you can top up.
Spending it
A purchase, an extension or a renewal takes from the wallet first and puts only the remainder on your card, unless you have chosen otherwise for that phone. Under the wallet-only choice, and on Android where there is no card, the balance has to cover the whole price: a partial balance does not part-pay, so the app tells you the exact shortfall to top up.
The wallet screen shows your balance and the most recent movements in and out, each tied to the invoice it paid.
What the balance is, and is not
- It is credit for use on this service. It is not money on deposit, it earns nothing, and it cannot be moved to another account.
- It is not paid out as cash, and it is set to zero when you delete your account. Spend it, or write to us about it, first.
- A top-up that was charged but never arrived is a failed payment, and we refund it.
A balance can go below zero. If Google refunds a Play top-up after the balance it bought has been spent, the honest record is a wallet that owes, and the app shows it that way. The next renewal fails until the balance is topped up past zero.
Still stuck? Write to us and we will answer.