Fee Structure

Silo charges a single per-transaction fee called the privacy fee. This is Silo’s only source of revenue. The rate depends on the user’s account tier: The privacy fee covers the cost of privacy routing, compliance screening, encrypted record storage, and platform infrastructure. It is an all-in fee, with no separate line item for privacy, compliance, or platform access.

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What’s Included in the Privacy Fee

The privacy fee is the only fee Silo charges on payments. It covers: transaction routing, ZK commitment and proof generation, Payment Instruction encryption and storage, sanctions screening and KYT checks, and redacted receipt generation. There are no subscription fees, no account fees, no withdrawal fees, and no monthly minimums. Cashing out to a bank account carries a separate exchange fee, shown on the review screen before confirmation (see Cash Out).

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Pass-Through Costs

In addition to the Silo privacy fee, some transactions incur pass-through costs that Silo does not mark up or profit from. Network fees (gas): the cost of executing transactions on-chain. These vary by chain and network conditions. Silo passes these through at cost. Swap fees: if a payment requires an asset conversion (e.g., the sender pays in ETH but the receiver wants USDC), the swap is routed through available DEX liquidity (Curve, Uniswap, DeepBook, Jupiter, depending on the chain). Swap fees and slippage are passed through at cost with no Silo markup. The party whose asset choice triggered the swap bears the cost (see Three-Tier System for the full swap fee rule). Bridge fees (CCTP): cross-chain transfers routed through Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol carry a $0 Silo fee. CCTP is the primary bridge used for cross-chain USDC delivery.

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The Lowest-Cost Path

The cheapest possible transaction on Silo is a USDC-to-USDC payment on the same chain. In this scenario, the user pays only the Silo privacy fee (20-30 bps depending on tier) and the network gas cost. There is no swap fee and no bridge fee. As the transaction involves more complexity (asset conversion, cross-chain routing), pass-through costs increase accordingly, but the Silo privacy fee remains the same regardless of routing complexity.

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Fee Responsibility

Who pays the Silo privacy fee depends on the payment context. In peer-to-peer payments, the receiver absorbs the fee by default, with an optional Cover fee toggle for the sender. In commerce payments, the merchant always absorbs the fee. In payroll payments, the employer always pays the fee. Full details on fee responsibility, the Cover fee toggle, and swap cost allocation are covered on the Three-Tier System page.