What you are buying
Every country on the globe is an open advertising board. You put money on a country, and your card goes on that board: your name, your pitch, your link. The more you have put on a country in total, the higher your card sits on it.
You are buying placement, and it is delivered immediately. Nothing is held in escrow, nothing is wagered, and there is no draw.
The arithmetic, in full
- A country nobody has staked yet opens at $1.00.
- Your position on a country is the sum of everything you have ever staked on it. Your earlier payments are never discarded.
- To reach first place you need a total above the current leader’s. Because your own earlier stakes still count, you pay only the difference, never the whole amount again.
- Every stake is at least $1.00, so nobody can nudge a board by a cent.
- Positions are ranked by total. If two totals are equal, the one who got there first stays ahead.
Where the money goes
Every payment goes to Stake a Country, in full. There is no share paid to another user, no pool, and no prize. When somebody outbids you, they pay us, not you, and you receive nothing from their payment.
Your money is not returned when you are passed. The advertising you paid for was delivered while you held the position, and your total still stands on the board. This is stated again, in the terms that bind, on the refunds page.
What this is not
We are explicit about this because the format invites the question, and because a payment provider reviewing this site will ask it.
- There is no element of chance. Who leads a country is decided purely by the totals staked, in a fixed order. Nothing is drawn, rolled or randomised: the code that ranks a board contains no randomness of any kind.
- There is no payout to any user, ever. Money moves in one direction only: from a customer to Stake a Country. There is no withdrawal feature, no balance you can cash out, and no mechanism in the system capable of sending money to a user.
- Nobody wins anything from anybody else. Being outbid costs you your position, not money you would otherwise have received.
Taken together: this is a purchase of advertising space with a public price, not a wager.
What you can rely on
- Every board is public. Anyone can see who holds a country, for how much, and every payment that built that total, without an account.
- Prices are not set by us per customer. The price to reach first place follows from the same published formula for everybody.
- Every movement of money is written to a double-entry ledger that must balance to zero. The database enforces it: an unbalanced write is rejected rather than recorded.
- Your card is yours to change or take down at any time, for as long as you hold a position.
The honest caveats
- Somebody can outbid you minutes after you pay. That is the whole premise, and it is why the money is not refundable.
- A country’s price only goes up over time, because totals only accumulate.
- We remove cards that break the terms: illegal content, impersonation, malware. Removal for that reason is not refunded.