A refundable-credit deposit is money held by a supplier at account opening that is applied against your future invoices as credit rather than kept as a fee. It behaves as working capital sitting on your account, not as a cost of starting.
Deposit, setup fee, or reserve
Three things get called a deposit and only one of them comes back to you as value. A setup fee is spent, and you are buying onboarding work. A security reserve is held against the risk you stop paying, and it is returned when the relationship ends rather than consumed. A refundable-credit deposit is drawn down by your own invoices, which means you are prepaying for product you were going to buy anyway.
The question worth asking about any of them is what happens at the end. Does an unused balance come back, on what notice, and is there a condition attached such as clearing outstanding invoices first? A deposit with a clean exit is working capital. A deposit that becomes non-refundable after a period is a setup fee with a longer name.
For a new brand the practical effect is that a credit deposit is the only upfront number that does not reduce your runway; the money moved location rather than disappeared. Pair it with the weekly net-7 billing cycle and you can work out exactly what a launch needs in the bank, which the fulfillment pricing guide sets out in full.
How the drawdown works
The $1,000 deposit here is applied against your first invoices as credit. Say your first week of orders invoices at $340: the deposit covers it and $660 stays on account for the following week. It is not a setup fee and it is not spent on onboarding.
Related terms
Per-vial pricing, no pack fees, shipped blind under your brand
Product at wholesale, $1 per vial to label it, postage at carrier cost, weekly invoicing on net-7. No setup fees, no monthly minimums, no minimum order quantities.
See the full pricing More definitions in the peptide fulfillment glossary, or read what peptide dropshipping is. FOR RESEARCH USE ONLY — NOT FOR HUMAN OR ANIMAL USE