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How payments work

Overview

This section outlines how payments are processed for UnoLock’s four-tier pricing model, Free, Inheritance, Sovereign, and HighRisk, ensuring uninterrupted access to your zero-knowledge, post-quantum secure vault. Whether you’re a free-tier user storing seed phrases or a HighRisk-tier professional under pressure, understanding the payment process helps maintain privacy, predict costs, and manage upgrades or downgrades. Payments are accepted via credit card or Bitcoin, with monthly subscriptions or discounted annual plans, and billing data is fully isolated from vault contents to preserve anonymity. Access keys are capped at 10 maximum per vault, with charges for additional keys beyond the included limit in paid tiers.

Who Is This For?

This section is relevant for all UnoLock users, from free-tier seed phrase holders to HighRisk-tier journalists under pressure. It applies to individuals, families, or professionals choosing monthly subscriptions, annual prepayments, or prepaid credits, ensuring clarity on how payments maintain access and align with privacy needs.

What Does It Explain?

This section covers: - How subscription payments (monthly or yearly) are processed and adjusted for storage or key overages. - How Bitcoin payments are validated and credited, ensuring privacy. - How users manage upgrades, downgrades, and storage/key expansion, with a cap of 10 access keys per vault. - The full isolation of billing data from encrypted vault contents, preserving zero-knowledge guarantees.

Why Is This Important?

Understanding how payments work is critical to: - Prevent service interruptions from lapsed payments, ensuring continuous vault access. - Preserve anonymity through Bitcoin payments, with no identity tied to your vault. - Manage upgrades and downgrades effectively, aligning with your evolving security needs. - Predict cost increases from storage overages ($1/GB/month) or additional access keys (up to 10 maximum). - Maintain compliance with your threat model or estate plan, leveraging UnoLock’s privacy-first billing. This streamlined payment process supports the four-tier model’s accessibility, fostering user adoption in a privacy-conscious market.

How Does the Payment Process Work?

Subscription Model

  • Billing: Charged at the start of each billing cycle (monthly: $3 for Inheritance, $8 for Sovereign, $14 for HighRisk; yearly: $36 for Inheritance, $86.40 for Sovereign, $151.20 for HighRisk with 10% discount on Sovereign and HighRisk).
  • Overages: Additional storage beyond the base tier (1GB for Inheritance, 5GB for Sovereign/HighRisk) is billed at $1/GB/month, added to the next cycle. Additional access keys (beyond 1 for Inheritance, 3 for Sovereign/HighRisk, capped at 10) incur charges, applied in the next cycle.
  • Upgrade Anytime: Tier upgrades are immediate and seamless, with prorated adjustments for remaining time.
  • Downgrade Requires Vault Reset: To maintain zero-knowledge guarantees, downgrades require creating a new vault. Unused balances are returned as promotional codes for future use.

Bitcoin Payments

  • Users receive a vault-bound session key and payment amount for Bitcoin transactions.
  • Once the transaction is detected and confirmed, credit is instantly applied to the vault.
  • Bitcoin payments are available for monthly subscriptions, annual plans, or adding credits for storage/key expansion (e.g., up to 10 keys maximum).
  • No user data is tied to the Bitcoin address, ensuring anonymity, even UnoLock cannot correlate your vault with your payment unless you opt-in.

Prepaid Credit Model

  • Available for Bitcoin users to pre-load credits for long-term use, covering tier costs, storage overages, or additional keys (capped at 10).
  • Credits are consumed based on the tier, time, and storage usage (e.g., $1/GB/month for overages).
  • If credits run out, the vault gracefully reverts to the Free tier (1MB storage, 1 key) with no data loss.
  • Promotional codes from refunds or downgrades can be applied toward future plans.

Tier Transition Rules

  • Upgrades: Immediate, with prorated adjustments for the remaining billing period. For example, upgrading from Inheritance ($3/month) to Sovereign ($8/month) adjusts the cost based on time left.
  • Downgrades: Require new vault creation to prevent privilege loss or unsafe state rollback. Unused balances are issued as promotional codes.
  • Access Key Expansion: Inheritance includes 1 key, Sovereign and HighRisk include 3 keys, with expansion up to 10 keys maximum across all paid tiers. Additional keys incur charges, reflected in the next billing cycle or deducted from prepaid credits.

Privacy by Design

  • Billing data and vault contents are fully isolated, with no usernames, emails, or metadata collected.
  • Bitcoin payments use one-time session keys, ensuring no traceability to your vault or device.
  • The payment process supports UnoLock’s zero-knowledge architecture, maintaining user sovereignty and privacy throughout the billing lifecycle.