Crypto mass payouts: pay thousands of recipients from one CSV
Affiliates, winners, contractors, creators, sellers. Upload the list, approve the quote, fund once — and every recipient gets paid straight to their own wallet, anywhere in the world.
One CSV · One deposit · Recipients paid to their own wallets · No bank files
Key takeaways
- One file, one deposit. A CSV of
address,amountand an optionallabelbecomes a priced run you fund in a single transfer. - You see the bill before you commit. The quote splits recipient sum, network fees and the service fee, then tells you exactly what to deposit.
- Two rails. UTXO for Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin; stablecoins in USDC or USDT across six EVM networks.
- Recipients need no account. A wallet address is enough — no onboarding, no KYC queue on their side, no country blocking the transfer.
- Every state is visible. Quoted, pending deposit, executing, completed, underfunded, expired — plus signed webhooks and a settlement CSV.
Paying a lot of people is where banking rails fall apart
One payment to one supplier is easy. Two thousand payments of eleven dollars each, to people in forty countries, is a different job entirely — and it is the job that breaks the tooling. A bank file has a format your bank insists on and your finance team maintains by hand. A wire has a flat fee that can be larger than the payment itself. A payout provider needs every recipient to open an account, pass a check, and live in a supported country.
So the work moves sideways: minimum payout thresholds so you send fewer transfers, monthly batching so you touch it less often, and a spreadsheet of failures to chase at the end of it. Meanwhile the recipients — affiliates, creators, contractors, players — are the ones waiting.
The cost of leaving it alone
Per-recipient fees eat the small payments. Rejected transfers turn into support tickets. FX spread quietly taxes every cross-border line. And the people you pay learn that your programme pays slowly, which is precisely the thing you do not want an affiliate or a creator telling their peers.
Two payout rails, one workflow
The flow is identical either way — upload, quote, fund, distribute. What changes is the chain underneath and, with it, what your recipients end up holding.
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin
Bulk distributions on the classic UTXO chains. Best when your recipients already think in BTC or LTC, or when you are paying out of coin you already hold. Testnet is available for a dry run before anything real moves.
USDC and USDT on six networks
Pay in dollars that stay dollars. A creator or contractor receiving USDC does not have to think about the price of anything between the moment you send and the moment they spend — and low-fee networks keep small payments viable.
One run equals one chain: every address in a single CSV has to belong to the same network. Paying the same list on two chains is simply two runs.
How a crypto mass payout actually runs
Four steps in the dashboard, then the platform does the tedious part: splitting, broadcasting and reporting.
Choose the chain, and rehearse on testnet
Start a run by picking the network it belongs to. On the UTXO rail you choose between Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin, and you can point the whole run at testnet first — test coins, real mechanics — before repeating it on mainnet with real money. It is the cheapest way to find out that a column in your export was formatted wrong.
A CSV your finance export can already produce
Three columns, one header row. address and amount are required; label is optional and travels with the recipient into your audit trail, which is what makes reconciliation bearable a month later. Payzum validates every address on the way in, so a typo fails at upload instead of on-chain.
The whole bill, before you move any money
Payzum prices the run and shows you the arithmetic: what the recipients receive, what the network will charge to broadcast every batch, and the service fee — quoted in basis points of the recipient sum. Add them up and you get the single number to deposit. Fund the deposit address with exactly that amount and the run starts itself.
Batched, broadcast and accounted for
Once the deposit confirms on-chain, Payzum splits the recipients into batches and broadcasts each one as its own transaction. You watch the order move through its states in the list — and when it lands on completed there is a settlement CSV to hand to whoever asks how the money was spent.
- Filter the orders list by status and by chain
- Batch counter shows how far a run has progressed
- Settlement report CSV for accounting and disputes
Every run tells you exactly where it is
A payout system that fails quietly is worse than one that fails loudly. Each order carries a state you can see in the list and receive as a signed webhook.
The states, in plain language
A run is quoted once it is priced, pending deposit while it waits for your funding, and executing while the batches go out. It ends completed, or flags partial failed if some batches did not settle. If your deposit falls short it becomes underfunded rather than paying an arbitrary slice of your list; if the funding window closes first it is expired. Nothing half-pays by accident.
Where the money sits while the batch runs
Worth being precise about, because it differs from the rest of Payzum. Accepting payments is non-custodial end to end — the customer pays into a wallet you control. A mass payout is a deposit-and-distribute operation, so for the length of the run the funds do sit somewhere: on UTXO chains you fund a derived deposit address that Payzum can sign from while the batches execute, and on EVM chains you deposit into an on-chain escrow contract while Payzum's operator wallet covers the gas. The deposit exists to be spent on your list, and the run is over when it has been.
Have a payout list you are not sure how to run?
Send us the shape of it — how many recipients, which countries, what you pay them in today — and we will tell you which rail fits, what the run would cost, and whether it is worth moving at all.
No commitment · We will tell you if your current rail is already fine
Or skip the dashboard entirely
Everything the wizard does is available over the REST API, so a payout run can be something your own software triggers on a schedule.
Upload and quote
Send the CSV to the chain's endpoint with your API key. Payzum validates the addresses and returns the fee quote.
Advance to funding
Confirm the quote and the order moves to pending deposit with the address and the exact amount to send.
Track it without polling
Signed events fire as the run progresses: deposit detected, batch broadcasted, batch confirmed, completed.
Idempotency built in
An idempotency key stops a retried request from creating a second run — a duplicate returns a conflict instead of paying twice.
What a mass payout looks like in practice
Different businesses, same shape: many recipients, small amounts, too many borders for a bank file.
Monthly commissions without the threshold
Minimum payout thresholds exist because per-transfer fees make small commissions uneconomic. On a low-fee network that constraint softens, so you can pay the long tail of small affiliates on the same schedule as the big ones — which is usually what keeps them promoting.
Winnings that land the same day
Licensed operators paying out winnings compete on how fast the money arrives. One CSV per settlement run pays every winner directly, with a settlement report that reconciles against your own ledger line by line.
Payroll across forty passports
A distributed team is an accounts-payable problem disguised as a hiring win. Paying in USDC removes the correspondent-bank lottery: the contractor's address works the same whether they are in Lisbon, Lagos or Lima.
Revenue splits that don't need an account
Creators churn when payouts are slow or when they have to onboard to yet another wallet product. A wallet address is the entire requirement here, so a new creator can be paid on the first cycle after they join.
Seller payouts on your own schedule
Batch every seller's balance into one run, daily or weekly. The batch counter and the per-order status mean support can answer "where is my payout" from the dashboard instead of asking finance to check a bank portal.
Rebates, cashback, grants and claims
Any programme that pays a long list of individuals small amounts on a cadence — cashback, rebates, NGO grants, insurance claims — is the same CSV with different labels in the third column.
Regulated verticals such as gaming are for licensed operators only. Nothing here is legal or financial advice — confirm the rules that apply in your jurisdiction.
Crypto mass payouts vs bank transfers vs payout platforms
| Paying 2,000 people | Payzum mass payouts | Bank file / wires | Traditional payout platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the recipient needs | A wallet address | A bank account that accepts the corridor | An account plus verification on the platform |
| Cost of a small payment | Network fee, shown in the quote up front | Flat wire fee, often larger than the payment | Per-payout fee plus FX spread |
| Cross-border | The same operation everywhere | Correspondent banks, cut-off times, rejections | Supported-country list |
| Time to arrive | As fast as the chain confirms | 1–5 business days | Depends on the rail underneath |
| Visibility | Per-order status, batch progress, webhooks | A return file, later | Varies |
| Custody | One deposit, held only while the run executes | Your bank holds the balance | Provider holds a funded balance |
| Reconciliation | Settlement CSV plus your own labels | Bank statement matching | Provider report |
The objections we hear most
"My recipients don't have crypto wallets."
Some will not, and those keep getting paid however they are paid today. In most affiliate, creator and contractor programmes a meaningful share already do — and they are usually the ones most annoyed by the current payout speed.
"I can't hand a volatile asset to a contractor."
Then use the stablecoin rail. USDC and USDT track the dollar, so what you owe and what they receive are the same number regardless of when they move it.
"What if I send the wrong file?"
That is what the quote step and testnet are for: you see the recipient count and the totals before any money moves, and on the UTXO rail you can execute the whole run against test coins first.
"Who is holding the money mid-run?"
The deposit you fund — a derived address on UTXO chains, an escrow contract on EVM — and only until the batches finish. We would rather say that plainly than call the payouts product non-custodial, which it is not while a run is executing.
Crypto mass payouts: frequently asked questions
What are crypto mass payouts?
Crypto mass payouts are bulk distributions that pay many recipients from a single funded deposit. You upload a CSV of addresses and amounts, Payzum prices the run and gives you a quote, you fund one deposit address with the exact total, and the platform splits the list into batches and broadcasts them on-chain. Each recipient receives the money in their own wallet.
Which chains and coins can I pay out in?
Two rails. UTXO mass payouts cover Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin. EVM mass payouts send stablecoins — USDC and USDT — across Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BNB Chain and Avalanche. Every address in a single CSV has to belong to the same chain, so one run equals one chain.
What does the payout CSV look like?
A header row and three columns: address (required, a chain-native recipient
address), amount (required, in decimal form such as 0.001 for BTC or 10.00 for
USDC) and label (optional, an annotation that follows the recipient into your
audit trail). Payzum validates every address before it quotes the run.
How much does a mass payout cost?
You see the whole bill before you commit. The quote breaks the run into the sum of recipient amounts, the estimated network fees across all batches, and the Payzum service fee expressed in basis points of the recipient sum. Those three add up to the total you deposit, so there is no surprise after the fact.
Does Payzum hold my money during a mass payout?
For the length of the run, yes — and only for that. A mass payout is a deposit-and-distribute operation: on UTXO chains you fund a derived deposit address that Payzum can sign from while the batches execute, and on EVM chains you deposit into an on-chain escrow contract while Payzum's operator wallet covers gas. This is different from Payzum payments, which are non-custodial end to end.
What happens if I underfund the deposit?
The order lands in the underfunded state rather than paying part of your list at random. Funding windows also expire, in which case the order is marked expired. Both states are visible in the orders list alongside completed and executing runs, so you always know which batch needs attention.
Can I run payouts from my own software?
Yes. The whole flow is available over the REST API with an API key: post the CSV, read the quote, confirm, then track progress through signed webhooks such as deposit detected, batch broadcasted, batch confirmed and completed. Idempotency keys stop a retried request from creating a duplicate run.
Let's look at your payout run
Twenty minutes on your actual list: how many recipients, which countries, what it costs you today and which rail would fit. If your current setup is already the right one, we will say so.
Crypto-only · Recipients paid to their own wallets · Settlement report on every run
More on moving money with Payzum: the crypto POS for in-person sales, the payouts overview on our homepage, the networks we support, guides by business type on the blog, and the mass payouts documentation.