How Money Movement Works

Learn how Rain money movement works and the two ways to move funds: payment routes and quotes and transfers.

Rain money movement converts and settles funds between fiat and crypto. You set up a pathway once, then Rain handles every conversion after that, delivering funds automatically to the destination you specified. To your users it can be fiat in and fiat out, but that takes two payment routes: an onramp payment route (fiat to stablecoin) and an offramp payment route (stablecoin to fiat).

Key concepts

Money movement involves three concepts:

• Payment accounts are the external bank accounts you register with Rain as payout destinations. Register one once and reuse it across offramp payment routes, quotes, and transfers.
• Payment routes are persistent pathways for fiat-to-crypto (onramp) or crypto-to-fiat (offramp) transfers. Creating a route returns a virtual account (onramp) or a deposit address (offramp) for a sender to fund.
• Rain orchestration is everything that happens after a sender funds a route: Rain converts the funds, settles them, and delivers them to the destination. You don’t manage any of these steps yourself.

Registering a payment account or creating a payment route never moves money by itself: both only define a pathway. Money moves only when a sender funds the route.

The sender or receiver does not have to be the customer. Anyone can fund a route on the customer’s behalf.

Onramp

Onramp moves fiat into crypto. A sender funds the virtual account a payment route created, and Rain converts the funds to stablecoin and delivers them to the destination the route specifies.

1. Sends fiat

   Funds arrive via ACH or wire (USD) or SPEI (MXN) from an external bank account into the virtual account.

2. Credits the virtual account

   Rain created the virtual account when you set up the payment route.

3. Converts to stablecoin

   Rain converts the fiat to stablecoin.

4. Destination

   Rain delivers the converted stablecoin to the onchain address the payment route specifies.

Offramp

Offramp moves crypto into fiat. A sender funds the deposit address a payment route created, and Rain converts the funds to fiat and delivers them to the external bank account.

1. Source

   Stablecoin arrives from any onchain address.

2. Credits the deposit address

   Rain created the deposit address when you set up the payment route.

3. Converts to fiat

   Rain converts the stablecoin to fiat.

4. Receives fiat

   Rain delivers the converted fiat via ACH or wire (USD) or SPEI (MXN) to the external bank account.

Two ways to move money

Rain supports two distinct flows: a quoteless flow built on payment routes, and a quoted flow built on quotes and transfers. Which one you use depends on whether you need a standing pathway or a one-time payment:

• Payment routes: Create a payment route. For an offramp, register a payment account first. Rain returns a virtual account (onramp) or a deposit address (offramp) that a sender can fund repeatedly. Rain determines the exchange rate at conversion time. There’s no rate locked in advance.
• Quotes and transfers: Register a payment account, request a quote, then create a transfer against that quote. Each quote locks an exchange rate and fees for a defined window before it expires. This is a one-time operation, built for cross-border payouts to fiat currencies like COP, MXN, and BRL. Preview rates before requesting a quote with exchange rates.

The following table compares the two flows side by side:

	Payment routes	Quotes and transfers
Setup	Payment route (offramps also need a payment account)	Payment account + quote
Reusable	Yes, funds the same route repeatedly	No, one quote per transfer
Exchange rate	Determined at conversion time	The quote locks the rate until the quote expires
Destinations	See the supported rails and chains on Onramps and Offramps	See the supported rails and chains on Quotes and transfers

Both flows share payment accounts. Payment routes are not part of the quotes-and-transfers flow, and quotes are not part of the payment-route flow.

What’s next

Register a payment account

Register the bank account that offramps and quotes and transfers pay out to.

Create a payment route

Set up a persistent onramp or offramp pathway.

Set up onramps

See the full onramp implementation: request format, error handling, and settlement times.

Set up offramps

See the full offramp implementation: request format, error handling, and settlement times.

Preview exchange rates

See rates and estimated destination amounts before creating a quote.

Send international payouts

Make one-time, quote-based payouts to international fiat currencies.