Altitude combines personal signing controls, workspace approval rules and controls for its platform and operations. Each member uses a personal account to authorize actions. Your workspace determines who can propose, approve and submit proposals. Onchain programs enforce those permissions and the approval threshold your company chooses.
Your business owns the stablecoins held in its Altitude account. The account is self-custodial: under the deployed account rules, customer signing factors and workspace permissions govern transaction authorization. Altitude provides the application, signing integrations and account controls that support this model.
Altitude is a financial technology platform, not a bank. Balances are held in stablecoins, are not bank deposits and are not protected by deposit insurance.
What you control and what you rely on
Model | What you control | What you rely on |
Full self-custody | Your business directly manages signing keys, account permissions and transaction authorization. | Your own arrangements for key storage, signing, recovery and payment review, plus the wallet software and networks you choose. |
Altitude | Your members authorize actions under your workspace rules, and your business owns the stablecoins held in its account. | Altitude's application, signing integrations, account controls and operational infrastructure, together with your team's signing security and payment review. |
Commercial bank or fintech | You manage users, permissions and payment instructions through the provider's available controls. | The provider's security, financial position and decisions, in exchange for having it manage custody and operations. |
Altitude is intended to sit between the two models: it gives your business a managed application and the controls needed for day-to-day operations without making Altitude the custodian of your assets. Holdings and approval rules are independently verifiable onchain, rather than depending solely on a provider's private ledger.
This model also requires controls on your side. Your company must choose appropriate permissions and approval thresholds, protect signing and recovery access, and review payments. Altitude provides the platform and operational controls; your team remains responsible for the authorizations it gives.
Where partners take over
The rules for stablecoins in your workspace account do not govern every part of a card purchase or bank transfer. Understanding where authority changes helps you set appropriate limits.
Automatic card top-ups
Auto top-up gives Altitude standing authority to fund a card account. Altitude operates the delegated execution key and can make permitted top-ups without a new workspace approval for each transfer.
The onchain delegation limits the funding account's vault, token, destination card account and cumulative top-up amount. The customer-facing setting is the 30-day limit. Creating or changing this authority requires workspace approval.
Under the deployed rules, the executor cannot expand its authority. It can use the available allowance, and the 30-day limit can renew after a reset.
This delegation does not let Altitude supply a member's approval. Your workspace has authorized a specific category of execution in advance. Set the allowance to your card-funding needs and review it as spending changes.
Card balances and spending
Topping up a card account moves USDC from the funding account's vault to a Rain-controlled onchain program. Rain has authority to use or sell those funds, known as the card account's collateral, to settle card spending.
Card purchases and spending limits follow a different control path from workspace approvals. Rain enforces spending limits offchain. Card admins can issue cards and change spending limits without a new workspace approval.
Assigning or revoking Card admin access requires workspace approval. Card account top-ups and withdrawals still follow their applicable onchain authorization rules. Under the deployed Rain program, customers can withdraw eligible collateral through an onchain action authorized by the workspace.
Limit Card admin access and review card spending limits separately from workspace approvals and auto top-up limits.
Sending and receiving bank transfers
Bank transfers use partners including Bridge and MoonPay. In the Bridge flow, your workspace authorizes a stablecoin transfer to a deposit address created for that payment. Bridge and its banking partners then deliver the bank transfer.
The onchain approval identifies the stablecoin destination. The recipient's bank instructions, their connection to that destination and delivery of the bank transfer are handled through the partner integration. Verify new or changed bank instructions through an established independent contact channel.
Incoming bank deposits automatically convert into stablecoins for delivery to your account's underlying onchain vault. Before the funds arrive there, conversion and delivery instructions are handled through Altitude's partner integration. Workspace signing rules govern stablecoins held in the onchain account; they do not govern every step of an incoming bank transfer.
See Receive funds.