▣The Closed Loop Open the partner account
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The Closed Loop / The split
Allocating one request

One request, several rails, and two ways to divide it

When more than one rail is open, the operator has to decide how much of the request each one carries. Two rules are in common use, they produce different payments for the same request, and the difference is <strong>18.00</strong> on the desk’s second sample.

Rail stub
Waterfall
fill one rail, then the next
Proportional
each rail pays its share
The difference on S2
18.00 moves
The sample’s default
waterfall, oldest first
the railA payment method that has carried a completed deposit - not a method saved on the account
the capWhat a rail paid in, less what it has already returned, and never below zero
released moneyThe part of a balance above every cap: payable, and travelling by the operator’s own route
Direct answerA waterfall fills one rail’s cap before touching the next; a proportional rule makes each rail pay its share of the request. Both respect the caps and both add up to the same total, but they move money between rails - 18.00 of a 40.00 request on the desk’s sample, depending only on which rule applies.

The two rules

Both rules are bounded by the caps and both are published somewhere in the operator’s terms, usually in one sentence that most readers pass over. The difference only appears when a request is smaller than the total cap and more than one rail is open.

Waterfall - fill one, then the next

The first rail in the published order is paid up to its cap, then the next, and so on until the request is met. Most requests touch one rail. A rail that is first in the order is retired fastest, and a rail that is last may never be reached.

Proportional - each rail pays its share

Every rail pays the same fraction of the request as its share of the deposits. Every rail is touched on every withdrawal, every rail’s cap falls together, and no rail is retired before the others - which spreads the closures rather than concentrating them.

S2, worked: the same 40.00 request under both rulespaid in 30.00 card (30.0%) + 70.00 wallet (70.0%) = 100.00 requested = 40.00 caps 30.00 card, 70.00 wallet; total = 100.00 waterfall, oldest first card 30.00 of 40.00 needed; pays 30.00, cap -> 0.00 wallet remaining 10.00; pays 10.00, cap -> 60.00 proportional card 30.0% x 40.00 = 12.00, cap -> 18.00 wallet 70.0% x 40.00 = 28.00, cap -> 42.00 difference 30.00 - 12.00 = 18.00 moved between two rails payments two either way; the amounts and the rails that close differ

Both columns total 40.00 and both respect every cap, so neither is wrong. What differs is which rail is left with capacity afterwards. Under the waterfall the card is spent and the wallet keeps 60.00; under the proportional rule the card keeps 18.00 and the wallet keeps 42.00. On a request this small the difference is 18.00; on a request near the total cap the two rules converge, because there is only one way to spend every rail completely.

Which numbers the rule changes

Three things move when the rule changes, and all three are things a reader notices.

The payments

A waterfall tends to produce one payment for most requests and several only on large ones. A proportional rule produces one payment per open rail on nearly every request, so a reader with four rails who ever withdraws a modest amount sees four credits each time.

The speed

An e-wallet can complete in hours where a card takes working days, so a proportional rule multiplies the slowest rail’s timeline across every withdrawal instead of confining it to the requests that reach it. Under a waterfall, a slow rail that sits last is rarely used at all.

The two Nostr-scale effects worth knowing. First, a proportional rule makes every rail’s cap fall on every withdrawal, so all the rails tend to be spent at the same time and a reader with a growing balance can reach a state where no rail has capacity and every payment is released money. Second, a waterfall retires rails from the front, so the rail used at sign-up is systematically the first to go, and a reader who later wants to withdraw to that original rail cannot.

Finding out which rule applies

The rule is written in the withdrawal section of the terms and it is usually one sentence. Where it is not written at all, the payments themselves are the evidence, and the test is simple.