Short answer. Ringer never touches money. It does not collect, hold, escrow, transfer, or process a payment, and it takes no rake. Side games are private arrangements between friends. Ringer keeps the scores, works out the stakes, and tells you who owes whom.
How it works
Every money feature in Ringer is bookkeeping, nothing more:
- Stakes and pots. When the Commissioner adds a game with a buy-in, Ringer records the number so it can do the math. Nobody is charged.
- Settle-up. After the round, Ringer nets every game and contest into one figure per player and lists the fewest payments that square the group. See Who owes whom.
- Venmo links. A Venmo button only pre-fills the amount and a note. The actual payment happens in Venmo, between the two players. See Pay with Venmo.
- Mark as paid. Ticking a payment off is a record that money moved outside the app. It does not move anything itself. See Mark a payment as paid.
- Trip costs and league buy-ins. Where a Commissioner tracks who has paid a trip cost or a league entry, that is a status they set by hand. As the trip screen puts it: "Ringer tracks the status; it never moves money."
No bank account, card number, or payment credential is ever entered into Ringer. The only payment-related detail a player can add is a Venmo handle, and that is optional.
Good to know
- Ringer is not a betting operator, a money-transmission service, or a payment processor. Whether a wager is legal where you play, and any tax that follows, is between the players. Ringer does not settle disputes about a bet.
- The App Store listing says it plainly: "Ringer does not process payments or hold money — side games are private arrangements between friends, and Ringer just keeps score."
- Ringer is for players 18 and over.
- Because Ringer only records what happened, a payment marked as paid is treated as a permanent fact. If a score correction later changes what was owed, Ringer shows the difference as a new payment in the other direction rather than rewriting history.
Who can do this
Everyone. Any player can see their own net, and the Commissioner sees the whole ledger.