Self-custody

Raycash is a self-custodial app. Your money is controlled by keys that live on your side. Raycash servers cannot move it without your signature.

What self-custody actually means

There's a signing key for your account. That key authorizes every transfer, every unwrap, every card issuance. Without it, no one can touch the balance.

On Raycash, that key is held in an embedded wallet (via Privy) tied to the login method you chose — email, phone, or social. You don't see a raw seed phrase by default, but the key is yours.

This is different from:

• A bank account. The bank holds the ledger. They can freeze, seize, or move your balance without asking.
• A custodial crypto exchange (Coinbase, Binance). They hold the keys. Same story.
• A classic non-custodial wallet (MetaMask). You hold the keys and the seed phrase. Lose the seed, lose the money.

Raycash is closer to MetaMask than to a bank. The difference is usability: no twelve-word seed on day one, smoother recovery paths. See Recovery & keys for how that works.

What it means in practice

If Raycash disappeared tomorrow, your money is still yours. The balance is onchain. Any wallet that supports the RaycashWrapper contract can unwrap your tokens back to cleartext USDC. We don't hold your money; we operate an app on top of it.

We cannot seize your balance, not even if we wanted to. The transfer hook can block new inbound transfers to your account if your KYC is revoked — that's policy enforcement. It cannot block you from exiting via unwrap. This is a protocol-level guarantee, not a company promise.

Regulators can compel disclosure, but not seizure. If legally required, we will cooperate with authorities to the extent the protocol technically allows — which is: we can block new transfers, we can provide KYC records, we cannot confiscate funds. The exit is always callable.

What Raycash does, then

If we don't hold your money, what do we do?

• Operate the backend — the app, the API, the KYC pipeline, the customer support
• Issue cards via our BaaS partner and settle card charges through the protocol's unwrap flow
• Connect the banking rails — SEPA/SWIFT, IBAN issuance, and FX
• Run the KYC attester that issues the on-chain KYC attestations required by the protocol's transfer hook
• Sponsor gas and run the relayer that finalizes unwraps on your behalf

We're a service provider, not a custodian.

The tradeoff

Self-custody shifts responsibility. If you lose access to your login method permanently — no email recovery, no phone recovery, nothing — we cannot give you back your balance.

Our job is to make that extremely unlikely to happen. We use login providers that have their own recovery, we support multiple sign-in methods, and we give you tools to manage devices. But the protocol itself is final: you control the keys, and that control is real.

Deep dive

• Using Raycash → Recovery & keys — what to do if you lose your device
• Security → Key management — where keys live, how they're protected
• Protocol → Hooks — why exit is always callable