Credits and your account
Credits
Section titled “Credits”Rentals draw down a prepaid balance: phone time per started minute at the phone’s hourly rate, and bandwidth per GB. Billing shows your balance and its history: each credit added, refunds, and one line per rental with what it cost.
Top up
Section titled “Top up”Choose an amount ($5, $10, $20, $50 or $100) and Pay. You finish the payment on a Stripe-hosted page; PocketShare never sees your card. Back on Billing, your balance updates as soon as Stripe confirms the payment, usually within seconds. A payment method that takes longer to clear (a bank debit, for example) adds the credit when it clears.
A new account starts with $1 of credit (for at most three accounts per device), enough to try a phone before you pay anything. Promo code on Billing adds credit from a code PocketShare gave you. Credit you were given can’t be refunded to a card.
Receipts
Section titled “Receipts”Every top-up gets a numbered receipt (for example PS-2026-000001) under Receipts. Open
it to print it or save it as a PDF, or download its data as JSON. To show a business name,
tax ID or address, fill in Business details for receipts; they appear on receipts issued
after you save them. Where sales tax applies, the receipt shows it separately from the credit.
Spending caps
Section titled “Spending caps”Every rental has a spending cap. Billing never goes past it: phone time stops at the last whole minute the cap covers and the rental ends, and bandwidth fills at most what the cap has left. Data carried after that point isn’t charged. Your balance is the other limit: when it can’t cover the next minute, the rental ends. Bandwidth already carried within the cap is always charged, so a rental can end a few cents below zero; the difference is settled with your next top-up.
About a minute before a rental ends because of its cap, your spending limit, your balance or
the longest rental your account allows, the session page shows a warning with the time and
the reason, pocketshare status and the MCP session_status tool report it, and you get an
email (with your rental update emails).
Spending limits
Section titled “Spending limits”Under Account › Settings › Spending limits you can set an optional daily and monthly limit
on what your rentals cost (UTC calendar day and month). A rental counts toward the day and
month it starts in: open rentals at their spending cap, ended ones at what they cost. A
rental whose cap doesn’t fit in what is left can’t start. If you lower a limit while
rentals run, they end when they reach what is left, at the last whole minute that fits.
Leave a field empty for no limit; $0 stops new rentals. API keys can set them too
(PUT /v2/spending-limits); an agent key can only lower them.
Monthly statements
Section titled “Monthly statements”Billing › Statements shows, for any month, your opening balance, every top-up, refund and adjustment, one line per rental, and the closing balance. Download it as CSV (amounts in dollars with six decimals, as the ledger keeps them) or JSON for your bookkeeping. Hosts find the same for their earnings and payouts under Earnings.
Refunds
Section titled “Refunds”- A rental the host’s side ended (the hub lost its connection or the host stopped hosting) is refunded to your credit in full, automatically.
- A phone that goes offline during your rental (unplugged, Wi-Fi off) isn’t billed while it’s down, and the rental stays yours until it’s back or you end it. Time you used before the outage is charged as usual. A Wi-Fi phone offline for an hour ends the rental.
- Unused credit can be refunded to the card that paid for it: ask support. Credit you were given (not paid for) isn’t refundable to a card.
- Card disputes: a chargeback takes the disputed credit back and suspends the account until it is resolved. Contact support first; it is usually faster.
Account limits
Section titled “Account limits”New accounts start with lower limits: the largest spending cap per rental, how many rentals can be open at once, and the longest rental. Settings shows yours. They rise with a payment history without disputes.
Choose which emails you get: rental started and ended with receipts, low balance, availability alerts for phones you asked about, and occasional product news. Sign-in emails and messages about your account are always sent.
Export your data
Section titled “Export your data”Export my data downloads a JSON file with your account, rentals, per-minute charges, credit, API key names (never the keys), model requests and availability alerts.
Delete your account
Section titled “Delete your account”Delete my account first lists anything to resolve: open rentals, a negative balance, host earnings not yet paid out, hubs still enrolled, or an open card dispute. Then it warns you what happens and schedules deletion 14 days later. Until that date you can cancel from the same page; we email you when it is scheduled and again three days before the date.
When the account is deactivated, your name, email, sign-in methods and API keys are removed and you can no longer sign in. Remaining credit is refunded to your original payment method first. Rental, payment and audit records are kept for accounting, tax and disputes, for up to seven years, linked only to a random ID.