How your money is protected

Last reviewed 5 June 2026

The short version

Sezvo is a digital money app operated by UAB Aušra Pay, an electronic money institution (EMI) authorised and supervised by the Bank of Lithuania and passported to operate across the European Economic Area. We are not a traditional retail bank, and that distinction matters for how your money is protected. As an EMI we do not lend out the money you hold with us. Instead, the funds you place in your Sezvo account are safeguarded — held separately from our own money in dedicated accounts so that, whatever happens to us as a company, your balance remains yours and can be returned to you.

On top of safeguarding, eligible deposits may be protected up to €100,000 per person under the applicable deposit guarantee scheme. The rest of this page explains the difference between safeguarding and a deposit guarantee, when each applies, what is covered, what is not, and how you would get your money back in the unlikely event something went wrong.

We have written this page to be read by everyone, not just lawyers. Where a concept is technical — segregation, eligible deposits, per-person limits, investor compensation — we explain it in plain terms and then point you to the official sources at the end. If anything here is unclear, our support team is available around the clock in the app to talk it through with you.

Safeguarding vs. a bank deposit guarantee

These two phrases sound similar but describe different legal protections, and the difference is the single most important thing to understand on this page.

A bank deposit guarantee is the scheme that protects money held with a licensed credit institution — a traditional bank. When you deposit money at a bank, the bank takes ownership of that money and is allowed to lend it out; in return, a national deposit guarantee scheme insures your balance up to a statutory limit, in the EEA generally €100,000 per depositor per institution. If the bank fails, the scheme compensates eligible depositors directly.

Safeguarding is the protection that applies to an electronic money institution like UAB Aušra Pay. Because we are an EMI and not a bank, the law does not let us use your money for our own purposes. The funds you hold in Sezvo are not a loan to us — they remain your money at all times, and we are legally required to keep them ring-fenced from the company's own assets. The mechanics are described below, but the headline is this: safeguarding is designed to make sure your money is always there to be returned to you, rather than relying on an insurance pay-out after a failure.

How Sezvo safeguards your e-money

When you add money to your Sezvo account, we hold it in line with the safeguarding requirements that apply to electronic money institutions. In practice this means:

• Segregation. Customer funds are kept in separate, dedicated safeguarding accounts and are never mixed with the operating money UAB Aušra Pay uses to run its business.
• Held at credit institutions. Those safeguarding accounts sit with authorised credit institutions (banks) and, where applicable, at the central bank. Your e-money is backed one-for-one by funds held in these accounts.
• No lending. We do not invest, lend, or otherwise put your safeguarded balance at risk to generate returns for ourselves. A euro you hold with us is a euro safeguarded for you.
• Reconciliation. We reconcile the total of customer balances against the funds in safeguarding accounts so the two always match.

Because your money is segregated and not part of our balance sheet, if UAB Aušra Pay ever became insolvent, the safeguarded funds would not form part of the company's estate available to its general creditors. They are pooled for the benefit of customers and returned to customers ahead of other claims.

Eligible deposits and the €100,000 protection

Separately from safeguarding, eligible deposits may be protected up to €100,000 per person under the applicable deposit guarantee scheme. It is important to be precise about when this applies.

A deposit guarantee scheme protects money that qualifies as an eligible deposit held with a member credit institution. The funds you place into Sezvo are safeguarded as e-money as described above; the €100,000 deposit guarantee is the protection that attaches to eligible deposits held at a credit institution under the relevant national scheme. The two protections are not additive for the same euro — money is either safeguarded as e-money or held as an eligible deposit, depending on the product and where it sits.

The €100,000 limit applies per person, per institution. That means it is a single ceiling across all the eligible deposits one person holds with the same institution — not €100,000 per account. For a joint account, the limit generally applies to each holder separately, so a two-person joint account can be eligible for up to €200,000 of cover. If you hold money across multiple, genuinely separate institutions, each may carry its own limit.

Savings vaults and AER interest

Sezvo offers savings vaults and goals that can pay up to 5.2% AER, calculated and paid daily. We want to be clear about how the protection works here so there is no ambiguity.

Money held in a savings vault is still your money, held under the same safeguarding and — where applicable — deposit-guarantee framework that protects the rest of your balance. AER (Annual Equivalent Rate) is the standardised way of showing what the interest rate would be if interest were paid and compounded once a year, so you can compare rates fairly. Rates are variable: the headline AER can change, and the rate you actually earn depends on the product terms in force at the time. The interest you have already earned and that has been credited to your vault forms part of your protected balance in the same way as the rest of your money.

Investments are not deposit-guaranteed

Sezvo also offers commission-free investing — thousands of stocks and ETFs, fractional, from as little as £1. Investments are fundamentally different from cash and are not protected by a deposit guarantee scheme.

• Capital is at risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you put in. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
• No deposit cover. A deposit guarantee scheme does not compensate you for investment losses caused by markets moving against you. That is normal market risk, not a failure to be compensated.
• Investor compensation scope. Investments are typically held with a regulated investment partner. Where an investor compensation scheme applies, it is designed to address the failure of the firm holding your assets — for example if client assets could not be returned — rather than ordinary investment losses. Client assets are generally held separately from the firm's own assets, which is the first line of protection.

The practical takeaway: keep the distinction between savings and investing front of mind. Cash in your account and savings vaults is covered by safeguarding and, where eligible, a deposit guarantee. Invested funds carry market risk and a different, narrower form of protection. A useful rule of thumb is that protection schemes exist to cover the failure of a firm holding your money or assets — not to compensate you when a share price falls, an exchange rate moves, or an investment simply performs poorly. Those are ordinary risks you accept when you choose to invest rather than save.

Crypto assets are not covered

Sezvo includes an on-chain, self-custodial crypto wallet spanning nine networks — Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Optimism, Base, Avalanche, Bitcoin and TRON. Crypto assets sit entirely outside the protections described on this page.

• Unregulated and volatile. Crypto assets are unregulated, and their value can be extremely volatile. You should never put in more than you can afford to lose.
• Not deposit-guaranteed. No deposit guarantee scheme and no investor compensation scheme covers crypto assets. There is no €100,000 backstop for crypto.
• Self-custodial. Because the wallet is self-custodial, you — not Sezvo — control the private keys and ultimately hold the assets. We cannot reverse on-chain transactions, recover funds sent to the wrong address, or restore a lost recovery phrase. Safeguarding your recovery phrase is your responsibility.

What is and isn't covered — at a glance

To bring it together, here is a plain summary of how each type of money in Sezvo is treated.

Generally protected by safeguarding and, where eligible, the deposit guarantee:

• Cash held in your multi-currency current account.
• Balances held across the currencies your account supports, in line with how those funds are safeguarded.
• Money held in savings vaults and goals, including credited interest.

Not covered by a deposit guarantee:

• Investments — stocks, ETFs and fractional shares — which carry market risk and, where applicable, fall under an investor compensation scheme with a narrower scope.
• Crypto assets held in the self-custodial wallet, which are unregulated and uninsured.
• Any losses that result from market movements rather than the failure of an institution.

What happens in an insolvency

We hold the appropriate regulatory permissions and capital, and an insolvency is an unlikely event. But you are entitled to know what would happen to your money if UAB Aušra Pay ever failed.

Because your funds are safeguarded — segregated from our own money and held at credit institutions — they would not be available to pay the company's general creditors. An insolvency practitioner would be appointed to identify the pool of safeguarded customer funds and arrange to distribute it back to customers. The costs of distributing the safeguarded funds may, in line with the applicable rules, be met from that pool before the balance is returned, which is one reason safeguarding is described as protecting the value of your money rather than guaranteeing it to the last cent regardless of circumstances.

Where eligible deposits are protected by a deposit guarantee scheme, that scheme would step in for qualifying balances up to the €100,000 per-person limit, typically paying out without you having to do anything. Investments and crypto are handled under their own separate regimes as described above — investments through the investment firm and any applicable investor compensation scheme, and crypto through the blockchain itself, since those assets remain under your own control.

Per-person limits explained

The €100,000 deposit-guarantee figure is a per-person, not a per-account, limit. A few worked principles:

• One person, one institution. If you hold several accounts or vaults with the same institution, the eligible-deposit cover is the total across all of them, capped at €100,000 — not €100,000 each.
• Joint accounts. Each holder is generally treated separately, so two named holders on one account can each be eligible for up to €100,000, giving up to €200,000 of combined cover on that account.
• Currency. The limit is set in euro. If you hold balances in another currency, the value counted toward the limit is assessed in euro terms at the relevant point.

How to claim

You should not need to take any special steps to be protected — the protections above apply automatically to eligible balances. If UAB Aušra Pay were ever unable to meet its obligations:

• Safeguarded funds would be identified and returned to customers by the appointed insolvency practitioner from the segregated pool, without you needing to lodge a separate insurance claim.
• Eligible deposits covered by a deposit guarantee scheme are normally repaid by the scheme directly to affected customers, in many cases automatically and within a short statutory window, so most people do not need to make an application.
• Investments would be addressed through the investment firm holding your assets and any applicable investor compensation scheme, which has its own claims process.

If you are ever unsure about the status of your money, our support team is available 24/7 in the app and can explain how a specific balance is held and protected.

Where to learn more

The protections described here are governed by the rules that apply to electronic money institutions and to deposit guarantee and investor compensation schemes in the European Economic Area. UAB Aušra Pay is authorised and supervised by the Bank of Lithuania, and Sezvo accounts use Lithuanian (LT) IBANs with the BIC/SWIFT code OCENLT22.

To read the source rules and the official details of the schemes that may apply to you, see the Bank of Lithuania at lb.lt. You can also review our Terms and Privacy notice for the full contractual detail. This page is a plain-English summary intended to help you understand how Sezvo protects your money; it is not a substitute for the applicable laws and scheme rules, which prevail in the event of any difference.

Checking that your money is protected

You can confirm how your money is held at any time. Funds in your Sezvo current account and vaults are electronic money, safeguarded by UAB Aušra Pay in segregated accounts held with regulated credit institutions. Safeguarding means your money is kept separate from the company's own funds, so that if Sezvo were ever to fail, customer money would not form part of the estate available to our creditors and would be returned to customers through the safeguarding arrangement.

Eligible deposits are additionally protected up to one hundred thousand euros per person under the applicable deposit guarantee scheme. This limit applies per individual, not per account, so holding several accounts does not multiply the protected amount. Where you hold money jointly, the limit generally applies to each account holder's share. Money you have chosen to invest is not a deposit and is not covered by the deposit guarantee scheme; instead it is held under client-asset rules and may fall within the scope of an investor compensation scheme, subject to its own limits and conditions.

Crypto assets are not protected by any deposit or investor compensation scheme. When you hold crypto in your Sezvo wallet you hold it directly; its value can fall as well as rise, and you are responsible for keeping your recovery phrase safe. If you are ever unsure which protections apply to a particular balance, contact our support team and we will explain it in plain terms.