The Reserve Balance
When you first submit your credit card for billing, you will also be invoiced a $50 reserve charge to fund your reserve balance. This is your bank account for your phone call minutes, SMS messages, and acts as security deposit for your account that ensures your account does not get disabled if your credit card is ever declined.
The minutes reserve balance must be funded at the beginning of your account, whether your users are all on the unlimited minutes plan or not.
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Per-Minute Users: If you have users on the per-minute plan, they get their first 300 standard rate code minutes free (standard rate code means $0.02/min and under). After they have gone through the 300 free minutes, or whenever they make a call that costs more than $0.02/min, the cost of their calls will deduct from the minutes reserve balance.
- Per-Minute pricing by country code can be found HERE
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Unlimited Minutes Users: If you have users on the unlimited minutes plan, only calls that cost more than $0.02/minute will deduct from the minutes reserve balance.
- if a user makes more than 1 hour per business day of phone calls to rate codes under $0.02/minute, then the unlimited plan would save you money on their account
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SMS Messaging: The cost of SMS messages will deduct from the minutes reserve balance.
- For US/Canada, standard SMS rates are between $0.01 and $0.013 depending on which carrier you are sending the SMS to per outbound text, or around $10.00 to $13.00 to per 1,000 texts, while inbound texts are free. More info on SMS pricing can be found here: SMS Messaging Basics
The reserve balance amount lasts the lifetime of your account, and initially by default it is set to $50 (or more depending on activity level and plan selection).
As soon as your balance dips below $50, you will be recharged your reserve amount.
If your card fails and your minutes reserve reaches $0, your account will be automatically disabled.
- To give yourself a larger buffer against deactivation, as well as change the amount you will be recharged and when, log into kixie.com->billing.
To view the total amount that any one of your calls cost, log in to kixie.com->call history.