# 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](/blog/case-opening-site-payment-methods).

## What the integration looks like

1. The user hits "deposit skins" on your site and signs in with Steam, still on
   your domain. No handoff to a provider page.
2. AssetPay prices their eligible inventory live and renders it in your checkout.
3. They choose items, a bot sends one trade offer, they confirm in the Steam
   mobile app.
4. 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](/blog/case-study-150k-skin-cashouts) 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](/docs/guides/instant-credit) |
| 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](/blog/cs2-trade-protection-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](/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](/pricing).

## 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](/privacy)
and [sub-processors](/subprocessors) 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](/docs) is open, there's a public
[integration walkthrough in code](/blog/integrate-skin-deposits), and you can
create a merchant account and API keys yourself.

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[Read the docs](/docs) or [ask the team on Discord](/contact).