Skin payments for casinos and case-opening sites
Your users play Counter-Strike and Rust. They are already sitting on inventory worth real money, and Steam keeps that value locked in — the Community Market pays into a Steam Wallet and nowhere else. AssetPay turns those inventories into a way to deposit and a way to cash out on your site, through a branded checkout and one documented API, with no bots, price feeds or custody on your side.
This page is written for gambling, case-opening and other chance-mechanic platforms: why this audience deposits skins more readily than cards or crypto, what you actually integrate, and how the risks particular to the vertical get handled.
Why skins fit this audience
To a card processor, a chance-mechanic platform is high risk. Applications get declined. Accounts that were approved get frozen once volume arrives. Reserves sit on your revenue for months. And "I didn't authorise this" is a chargeback you will usually lose. Crypto solves reversibility and costs you conversion instead, since every user without a wallet has an exchange to get through first.
Skin deposits aren't a better version of those — they're a different thing. No bank can unwind a completed Steam trade, and you aren't fighting a card for the same dollar; you're giving stranded value somewhere to go. That's why a case site adding skin deposits often sees them out-convert everything else it offers. The full comparison is in payment methods for case-opening sites.
What the integration looks like
- The user hits "deposit skins" on your site and signs in with Steam, still on your domain. No handoff to a provider page.
- AssetPay prices their eligible inventory live and renders it in your checkout.
- They choose items, a bot sends one trade offer, they confirm in the Steam mobile app.
- An HMAC-signed webhook reaches your backend and you credit the balance.
Cashouts are the same path backwards: the user picks from AssetPay inventory, your backend approves the withdrawal over a callback, the items go out. Nothing leaves your platform until your system agrees. One CS2 platform moved $150k of cashouts in ten days this way without running deposits at all.
The risks this vertical actually has, and what AssetPay does
| Risk | What happens without a gateway | What AssetPay does |
|---|---|---|
| CS2 trade protection | A deposit you credited in full is reversed a week later | Splits credit into an immediate part and a part paid when the 7-day window closes; collateral and caps are documented in the instant credit guide |
| Trade holds and item locks | Failed trades, support tickets, mispriced locked items | Eligibility check before any offer exists, with the reason surfaced to the user |
| Mispriced items | Users deposit overvalued skins and cash out the difference | Live pricing across marketplaces, float and pattern aware for CS2, supply aware for Rust |
| Overdrawn cashouts | Items leave before your ledger agrees | Withdrawal approval callback; a double-entry ledger behind every balance change |
| Bot bans and Valve rule changes | A bad week for your in-house bot fleet | Absorbed on AssetPay's side; your webhooks keep meaning what they meant |
Ask every provider you evaluate who absorbs the loss during the CS2 protection window. The questions to put to them are in who bears CS2 reversal risk.
Rust and CS2 in one integration
Case sites skew Rust-heavy, and a Rust deposit looks nothing like a CS2 one: lots of cheap items, no float, no protection window. Both games run through the same API here, and Rust credits instantly and in full. The Rust specifics are on the Rust skin payment gateway page.
Pricing
One fee per cleared trade. No setup cost, no monthly minimum, no withdrawal fee, and nothing billable for a trade that fails or gets cancelled. Rates are agreed per merchant on game mix, the ratio of deposits to cashouts, and volume; the structure is on the pricing page.
Compliance note
AssetPay runs the trading, pricing and settlement layer. Your licensing, geographic restrictions, age checks and responsible-gambling obligations stay with you, and they're worth confirming market by market. AssetPay is operated by AssetPay Oy, Finland; data processing is covered in the privacy policy and sub-processors pages.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a card acquirer at all?
Not for skin deposits. A completed Steam trade settles without touching a bank, and your merchant balance withdraws with no fee attached.
Can users cash out to skins they did not deposit?
Yes — cashouts are stocked from AssetPay inventory rather than from what your users put in, so a withdrawals-only integration works on its own. That's exactly the case study linked above.
How fast is a deposit credited?
Rust: immediately, in full. CS2: an immediate credit plus the balance when Steam's 7-day protection window closes, with the two parts always summing to the quoted price.
Can we evaluate without a sales call?
Yes. The API reference is open, there's a public integration walkthrough in code, and you can create a merchant account and API keys yourself.