Owing Money
Almost nothing on Onflow Ads can put your wallet below zero. Every ordinary purchase — a boost order, a promotion booking, a plan, an add-on — is refused outright when the money is not there, and that has not changed.
Two things can, and both are money you owe someone else rather than something you chose to buy:
| What | Who is paid | Where it is set |
|---|---|---|
| A pin removed early | The advertiser who paid for it | The pin |
| Cross-promotion insurance forfeited | Your campaign partner | Campaign insurance |
Both are promises you made to another member and then broke. The platform collects them whether or not the balance is there, because a promise that only holds when you happen to be in funds is not a promise.
Each also carries its own reliability mark, priced by the website — −0.75 for the pin, and the cross-promotion breach that triggered the cover (−1.50 for a removed post, −1.00 for leaving the partner's channel). The money and the mark are separate: clearing the debt does not remove the mark, and a successful appeal against the mark does not undo a settlement already paid to the other member.
When a paid pin comes down early, the advertiser is refunded the whole $6.00 pin charge at once, and you owe that $6 — the $4 you did not earn plus the $2 the platform refunded on your behalf. Because the breach is caught while the order is still running, your payout is still sitting in escrow, so the $6 is withheld from that payout rather than taken from your wallet. Only if the payout is too small to cover it does the shortfall land on your balance and put you here. A forfeited cross-promotion cover has no escrow behind it, so it lands on the balance directly.
What a negative balance means​
You are in debt exactly when your wallet balance is below zero. There is no separate debt figure to reconcile against, and nothing else to check — the amount you owe is the number on your wallet, with a minus in front of it.
That has one consequence worth internalising:
A top-up, a refund, a payout you earn on another placement — all of it lands on the same balance and reduces the same debt, in the order it arrives. You do not "pay a debt off" as a separate action. Put $2 into a wallet showing −$6 and it shows −$4.
What you cannot do until it is clear​
While your balance is below zero you cannot start anything:
- book a paid promotion, or accept a booking as an owner
- bid in an auction
- create, join or confirm a cross-promotion
- place a boost order
- submit an ad to the Subscriber Exchange
Work already in flight is untouched. A campaign that is running keeps running, a booking already accepted still delivers, and anything you are owed still arrives — and comes off the debt when it does.
Topping up, reading your own account, and contacting support. A gate over the repayment path would not collect a debt, it would manufacture a permanent one. If you can reach your wallet you can always clear it.
The 14 days​
The moment your balance first goes below zero, a 14-day clock starts, and the deadline is shown on your wallet.
It does not restart. A second charge inside an existing debt keeps the original deadline — the clock is attached to the debt, not to the most recent thing that added to it.
What the deadline changes is not the block; that applies from the first cent. It is the point at which an unpaid debt stops being treated as an oversight:
- your account is flagged, and
- the device it was used from is flagged with it.
Debt does not end with the account​
This is the part to read carefully.
A debt is attached to the device, not only to the login. Abandoning an account with an unpaid balance and opening a new one does not clear it: a new account opened on a flagged device inherits the outstanding amount and starts blocked.
Your device is identity. A new account opened on a device that owes money starts blocked, and the balance has to be cleared before either account can start anything. The check is not a single fingerprint that a browser update would erase — each characteristic of the machine is compared separately, and a match is graded:
| Confidence | What matched | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Certain | The same device signature exactly | Blocked |
| Strong | The same machine — GPU, platform, CPU cores, colour depth — plus at least three other characteristics | Blocked |
| Probable | The same machine plus one or two others | Not blocked. Raised for a human to look at |
| Weak | Anything less | Ignored |
Only the top two block anyone, and every blocking decision records exactly which characteristics agreed — so if you ask support why, there is a real answer rather than "the system says so".
An IP address on its own is never identity. Most people share one: mobile networks put thousands of subscribers behind a handful of addresses, and so do offices, universities and public Wi-Fi. Inheriting a stranger's debt because you opened the app on the same mobile network would be indefensible, so an IP match alone never carries a debt.
If you believe a device has been flagged in error, contact support. It is reversible by a human, and nothing is taken from you while it is being looked at.
The device check is not a tracking identifier. It is not sold, not shared, and not joined to anything outside Onflow Ads. The only question it is ever asked is whether the device owes money.
Where you see it​
| Surface | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Your wallet | The negative balance, the deadline, and every obligation that makes it up — what it was for, who was paid, and when it was incurred |
| The refusal itself | Any blocked action names the amount and the deadline rather than saying "not allowed" |
| The other party | Whoever is owed the money sees that it was paid to them, and when |
Every figure on both sides comes from the same ledger entry, so the two accounts can never be shown different numbers for the same event.
Related​
- Frozen and held funds — the five things that make money unspendable without taking it
- Adding funds — how to clear a balance
- Campaign insurance — the cross-promotion promise that can create one