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A wallet payout sends USDC from one of your USDC accounts to an address on a public chain. It uses the same destinations, quotes and transfers as a bank payout. What differs is the route, the one field that identifies the payee, and what can go wrong.
A payout that reaches the chain cannot be recalled. Check the address and the chain before you send: USDC sent to an address on the wrong chain, or to an address nobody controls, is gone.

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What you need

  • A USDC account whose deposit addresses Sakawave issued. Not every USDC account can pay a wallet. If yours cannot, the preview refuses it before anything is debited, with 409 transfer_source_account_ineligible.
  • Tier 3. Crypto withdrawals are gated at tier 3; below it the transfer is refused with 403, reason: "feature_not_available".
  • The route for the chain. Each chain is its own route, with paymentMethod: "stablecoin-transfer" and the chain as its scheme.
List the routes with GET /v1/currencies/USDC/routes. A wallet route has no country, so always send its routeId: without one, a destination is resolved as a bank transfer and needs a country.

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Order of operations

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1. Create the destination

accountName is the person or business that holds the wallet. It is kept with the payout for your records and ours; it is not checked against the chain, because a chain does not know who holds an address. Before the destination is created, the address is checked against the route’s chain, and screened against sanctions lists. A saved recipient works the same way: its payment detail takes walletAddress in fields, and it is checked and screened on creation.

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2. Quote and send

Quote and send as for any same-currency transfer, from the USDC account, in USDC. The preview shows the fee before you commit.
USDC is held at 8 decimals, like every crypto balance, but carries 6 on chain. An amount must therefore be a whole number of millionths: a multiple of 100 in minor units. Anything finer cannot be sent, and the transfer fails with the debit returned.

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3. Follow the transfer

The account is debited when you create the transfer, and the transfer stays pending until the chain confirms it, usually within a few minutes. Webhooks report each change, as for any transfer. A transfer stays pending, rather than failing, while something on our side holds it up: for example, the sanctions lists being refreshed. It is sent as soon as that clears, and you do not need to send it again.

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Errors

An address that is screened clear when you save it is screened again when it is paid. A transfer to an address listed in between fails, and the debit is returned.