is poplin safe
Your money answers to you — by design, not by policy.
Poplin is built so that you keep control of your money. Your funds sit in your own account. Poplin is a service of Maash Inc., which is registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business. Licensed banking partners move money in and out.
Reviewed · by Joyce Chin, Chief Operating Officer & Compliance Officer
Your money, at a glance
- Can Poplin spend or move your funds?
- Never
- Are your funds mixed with company money?
- No
- Can Poplin freeze or hold your balance?
- No
- Held in an account only you control?
- Yes
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How your money is held
Is my money safe?
Your funds sit in your own account — not pooled, and never in Poplin’s hands. Poplin can’t spend, move, or freeze your balance; your account is secured with a passkey. Poplin is a service of Maash Inc., which is registered with FinCEN as a Money Services Business.
Poplin never freezes your balance, holds it, or places a compliance hold on it. Compliance reviews belong to the licensed banking partners, and a review delays a transfer — it never takes your balance. Your funds sit in your own account — not pooled with other customers, and never in Poplin’s hands.
You
Hold the account and are the only one who can move it.
Licensed banks
Provide the networks money moves in and out on.
Poplin
Builds the app. Never takes custody of your funds.
Fully reserved
The dollars behind that balance are fully reserved — backed one-for-one by highly liquid cash and cash-equivalent assets, held separately. Your balance is redeemable for US dollars through Poplin. That’s the difference from a bank’s fractional-reserve model, where only a fraction of deposits is held against your balance and the rest is lent out long-term: here the backing is held in full, in assets that can be turned into cash quickly.
The short answers
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can Poplin spend or move your funds? | Never |
| Are your funds mixed with company money? | No |
| Can Poplin freeze or hold your balance? | No |
| Held in an account only you control? | Yes |
| Fully reserved, not fractional-reserve? | Yes |
In plain terms: Only your passkey can authorize a transfer, so Poplin cannot spend, move, or lend your balance. You are the only one who can move the money in your account — that is what self-custodial means. Poplin will refuse a send to a sanctioned destination — a block, not a hold, and your balance stays yours either way.
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If Poplin is ever unavailable
Your access is secured with a passkey that you can set up across your devices, plus one-time recovery codes. Losing a single device does not mean losing access to your money. Because your funds sit in your own account, they exist independently of Poplin itself. If you lose every passkey and every recovery code, restoring access takes an identity-verified process with our wallet-infrastructure provider, and is not guaranteed. No recovery process gives Poplin the ability to move or spend your funds — so keep a recovery code somewhere you will still have it.
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How we’re regulated
Poplin is a service of Maash Inc., which is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as a Money Services Business.
FinCEN registration · Money Services Business
Registered to Maash Inc., the company behind Poplin.
Registered activities: dealer in foreign exchange and money transmitter, across all US states and territories.
Registration is a filing Maash Inc. is required to make, not a licence or an approval — it records the activities the business conducts. It does not mean Poplin takes custody of your money to move it. Your balance stays in your own self-custodial account, so you authorize and move your own funds rather than handing them to Poplin to transmit on your behalf. That filing is deliberately conservative: Maash Inc. registered on the broadest reading of what must be filed, which is why the registry names money transmission while our Terms of Use carry a section headed “No Money Transmission”.
Licensed banking partners
Poplin is a service of Maash Inc., a financial technology company, not a bank. Money moves in and out through licensed banking partners, which provide the payment networks. Your balance at rest, between those transfers, sits in your own account and is controlled only by you. Balances are not bank deposits, and Poplin is not an FDIC-insured bank — FDIC deposit insurance covers only the failure of an insured bank. Your protection comes from holding your own funds rather than from deposit insurance.
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Why a transfer may be screened or reviewed
Screening runs on every send, before it leaves your balance: Poplin checks the destination against sanctions lists and blocks any payment to a destination on the OFAC/SDN sanctions list — keeping you clear of exposure to sanctioned entities.
Money moves in and out through our licensed banking partners, and they — not Poplin — may flag a transfer for compliance review. In most cases that simply means the transaction needs a document showing its purpose, such as an invoice or contract; the same can apply to funds arriving into a virtual account, which the partner may hold until the review clears.
A review delays a transfer — it never takes your money.Your self-custodial balance stays under your control, and incoming funds are released once the check passes.
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Protecting your account
Passwordless sign-in
An email code plus a passkey secured by your device biometrics — Face ID, Touch ID, or fingerprint.
Biometric on every payment
Every payment is confirmed with your biometrics on your own device.
Multi-device recovery
Recover access on any device you set up, or with a one-time recovery code — using one replaces all your passkeys and codes, which you set up again.
Encrypted & verified
Personal information is encrypted at rest; identity verification (KYC) is handled by Sumsub under its own privacy policy.
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Contact
Questions about security or compliance? Email support@poplinmoney.com.
Technical detail
A Poplin account is self-custodial, secured by a multi-signature arrangement on a public blockchain, and your balance is held as USDC (a US-dollar stablecoin backed one-for-one by cash and cash-equivalent assets, with reserves attested monthly by an independent accounting firm (opens in a new tab)) on the Solana network. Redemption runs through the payout rather than a separate process: you pay out through Poplin, in US dollars or in the destination’s own currency depending on what we support there, and the conversion out of USDC happens as part of that payout. You do not need a Circle Mint account — that is Circle’s own direct channel, not the route your money takes. The signing configuration follows the people on the account: a personal account has one signer — you — with as many passkeys as you care to register, while shared accounts add signers and approval thresholds. By default Poplin holds no signing slot on your account at all; even where you opt into a feature that needs one, Poplin’s credentials can never propose, approve, or redirect a movement of your funds. You never handle seed phrases, network fees, or tokens — the account behaves like an ordinary US-dollar account, and this layer stays out of your way.
This page is informational and is not legal or financial advice.
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