Learn how to send money to inmate accounts with this guide to the top jail deposit services, fees, and how to find the right provider for your facility.
When someone you love is behind bars, one of the first practical questions that surfaces is how to send money to inmate accounts so they can afford basic necessities like toiletries, snacks, and phone calls. The answer is not as simple as it should be, and the landscape of providers competing for your deposit dollar is crowded, confusing, and not always honest about fees. This guide breaks down the most widely used services, explains what each does well, and identifies where each one falls short for families navigating this under enormous stress.
Why Getting This Right Matters
Money deposited to an inmate's commissary or trust account is not a luxury. It covers the cost of phone calls home, hygiene products not supplied by the facility, over-the-counter medication, and extra food. For many incarcerated people, the difference between having funds and having nothing affects mental health, safety, and the ability to stay in contact with their families.
The challenge is that the services facilitating these deposits are private companies contracted by jails and prisons. Some prioritize convenience and fair fees. Others charge processing fees that consume a significant portion of every deposit. Knowing which provider your facility uses, and which third-party services are legitimate versus lookalike sites designed to intercept payments, can protect your money and your peace of mind.
The options below represent the most commonly encountered services across county jail and state prison systems in the United States. Each is evaluated on what it genuinely does well, its real limitations, and whether it serves families fairly.
JPay
JPay is one of the largest financial services providers in the corrections space, operating across dozens of state prison systems. It offers money transfers, email messaging, video visitation, and tablet services, which makes it a kind of all-in-one communications platform for families dealing with state-level incarceration. Its integration with certain state departments of corrections means that for facilities it serves, it is often the only authorized method for deposits.
The platform supports deposits via credit card, debit card, and MoneyGram locations, and it offers a mobile app that many families find convenient for juggling multiple forms of contact. JPay's email system, for facilities that allow it, can meaningfully reduce the isolation that incarcerated individuals feel during long sentences.
Where JPay draws consistent criticism is on fees. Transaction fees vary by state and deposit method, and they can be significant enough to make smaller, more frequent deposits feel costly. Families who need to send money to someone in jail frequently, or who are working with limited budgets, may find that fees erode meaningful portions of each transfer. InMato LLC, by contrast, only directs families to the official provider for their specific facility and never charges a deposit fee of its own or holds the money in transit.
Access Corrections
Access Corrections is an inmate funds platform widely used across county jails and regional detention facilities rather than state prisons. Because it focuses on jails rather than prisons, families dealing with pretrial detention — often the most urgent and chaotic phase — will encounter it frequently. The platform supports credit card, debit card, and cash deposits through kiosk locations in convenience stores and participating retailers.
One practical strength of Access Corrections is its kiosk network. For family members who do not have a bank account or prefer to pay in cash, the ability to walk into a local retailer and make a deposit without needing a card is a genuine access improvement. The platform also offers a phone payment option, which can matter when a family member is elderly or not comfortable navigating a website or app.
The limitation here is that Access Corrections is not universally available, and families often do not know which provider their specific jail uses until they have already spent time searching. The absence of a reliable, jail-specific search tool means families sometimes attempt deposits through the wrong platform and lose time, or worse, encounter lookalike sites. This is the gap that a county jail inmate search service is designed to close.
TouchPay
TouchPay operates primarily through kiosk terminals installed in jail lobbies, though it also offers online and phone deposits. It is frequently encountered in county jail systems across Texas, the Midwest, and parts of the Southeast. The kiosk model was designed for in-person visits, offering a familiar, bank-like transaction experience at the facility itself.
For families who live close to the detention facility, the kiosk option is straightforward. Deposit at the machine in the lobby, receive a receipt, and the funds typically post to the inmate's account within a day. This tactile, in-person experience can feel more reliable to some families than navigating an online platform from home.
The significant limitation is geography. If you live two hours from the facility, using a kiosk requires a special trip. TouchPay's online deposit option works for those situations, but the interface is not always clearly linked from the jail's own website, and families unfamiliar with which provider their jail uses may end up circling through incorrect platforms before finding the right one. A service that identifies the official provider upfront eliminates that confusion entirely.
Securus Technologies
Securus Technologies is one of the best-known names in corrections telecommunications, with a presence spanning phone calls, video visitation, and money transfers. It operates across a large number of county and state facilities, which means many families will encounter Securus at some point. Its inmate calling products are a primary revenue driver, and deposits to phone accounts are heavily promoted because they connect directly to call revenue.
The phone account deposit workflow is relatively easy. Families can deposit to a prepaid calling account so that a loved one can call home without the recipient needing to accept collect charges. This functionality is useful, and Securus has invested in making the calling account top-up process quick through its mobile app.
The challenge is that Securus often operates phone accounts separately from commissary trust accounts at many facilities, meaning a family may need to interact with two separate platforms to cover both phone calls and commissary needs. Fee structures on both can be layered and complex. Families who want a clear picture of total costs before committing often find the pricing less than transparent. Having a starting point that tells you specifically which provider handles commissary and which handles calls at your exact facility saves real time and reduces the risk of misapplied deposits.
ICSolutions
ICSolutions provides inmate calling and related financial services to county jails and smaller regional facilities. It is particularly common in facilities too small to attract the largest national providers, which means families navigating rural county jails or smaller city detention centers are more likely to encounter it. The platform offers online deposits, phone deposits, and in some cases walk-in payment locations.
One genuine strength is ICSolutions' customer service phone line, which is staffed and can help families troubleshoot deposit issues in real time. For family members who are not internet-savvy, having a human being available to walk through the process matters. The platform's fees are publicly listed on its website, which provides at least baseline transparency.
The limitation is similar to others in this category: ICSolutions does not serve all facilities, and families who arrive at its website without knowing whether it is the correct provider for their jail risk wasting both time and emotional energy. For pretrial situations especially, time is scarce. Knowing the exact right service before you start is the most efficient path.
InMato LLC
InMato LLC approaches this problem differently from every provider above. Rather than being a deposit service itself, InMato is an information, search, and referral service. It helps families first answer the foundational question — where is my loved one being held? — and then immediately identifies the official, licensed deposit provider for that specific facility. InMato never touches user money; deposits go directly from the family to the official facility provider on that provider's own secure system.
The free search covers 289 county jail systems across 14 states, and it carries no time limit. A family can search as many times as needed without creating an account or paying anything. InMato's search is designed specifically for the county jail inmate search use case, where information is most fragmented and families are under the most acute stress. The service is available in English and Spanish, which matters for bilingual families navigating a system that rarely accommodates them.
InMato+ adds proactive jail booking alerts and release and transfer notifications so families do not have to keep searching manually. It also includes court date alerts, bail bond and attorney referrals, and real-time case tracking with court-document summaries, all at $19.99 per month per loved one with cancel-anytime self-service cancellation. The InMato app and the free Family Support Library — 50 guides covering everything from the first 24 hours to life after release — extend that support across the entire incarceration journey.
For anyone asking whether InMato LLC is legitimate, the answer is grounded in its structure. InMato LLC is a Delaware limited liability company, co-founded by J.T. Bramlette and Steve Urry, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. It is compliant with FTC negative-option rules, California Automatic Renewal Law, the Utah Consumer Privacy Act, and the California Consumer Privacy Act, and it targets WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility conformance. It is not a bail bond company, law firm, money transmitter, or payment processor.
CorrLinks
CorrLinks is primarily an email and electronic messaging platform used across federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a number of state systems. It is the authorized digital communications tool for federal inmates, which means any family with a loved one in a federal institution will use it. The messaging system requires both the sender and the recipient to register, and the inmate must initiate the invitation from inside the facility.
CorrLinks is reliable within its lane. Federal facilities have strict communication protocols, and CorrLinks meets those requirements in ways that general consumer platforms cannot. Families learn to navigate its workflow quickly because there is no alternative at the federal level.
Where CorrLinks falls short for most county jail situations is that it simply does not operate there. County jails — where pretrial detention happens and where the urgency around how to send money to someone in jail is often most acute — generally use the telecom and financial providers listed elsewhere in this guide, not CorrLinks. Families who start their search with CorrLinks because they recognize the name can waste significant time before realizing it does not apply to their situation.
MoneyGram and Western Union Kiosk Deposits
MoneyGram and Western Union both operate as cash deposit channels for some correctional facilities, allowing family members to walk into a pharmacy, grocery store, or standalone kiosk location and send money toward an inmate's account. These transactions are typically processed through an intermediary facility code, and the funds are then routed to the appropriate account by the corrections-specific financial provider.
This method is especially valuable for unbanked families. Cash transactions remove the barrier of needing a credit or debit card, and the geographic footprint of MoneyGram and Western Union retail locations is genuinely large. For a grandmother in a rural area with no banking relationship and no smartphone, this pathway can be the only practical one available.
The complication is accuracy. Making a kiosk deposit for a jail commissary account requires knowing the correct facility code, the exact account number, and in some cases a specific transaction code that the provider assigns. Errors at any step can result in funds being held, delayed, or misapplied. Getting those details right — from an authoritative source before you get to the kiosk — is where a facility-specific referral service earns its value. Making sure you have verified deposit instructions before standing at a kiosk is not a minor convenience; it can mean the difference between a successful transfer and a stressful recovery process.
GettingOut
GettingOut is a consumer-facing mobile platform that offers phone calls, video visitation, messaging, and money transfers for county and state facilities. Its mobile app is polished by the standards of this industry, and it has invested in user experience in ways that older platforms have not. Video visitation in particular has become more important as in-person visits have been restricted at various facilities, and GettingOut provides that capability for facilities in its network.
The platform also offers a jail commissary deposit feature integrated directly into the same app as calling and messaging, which reduces the number of accounts a family needs to manage. For facilities on its network, this integration is a real convenience.
The limitation is network coverage. GettingOut does not serve all facilities, and families who download the app expecting universal coverage may find their facility is not listed. Additionally, GettingOut's video and messaging products carry their own fee structures separate from deposit fees, and some families find themselves building up balances across multiple accounts within the app for different services. Knowing ahead of time whether GettingOut serves your specific county jail is the step that saves the most frustration.
Pigeonly
Pigeonly is a service focused specifically on making communication with incarcerated people more affordable, particularly phone calls. Its core offering involves setting up a local phone number that routes calls through its network, which can reduce the per-minute rates that families pay when accepting calls from facilities. It also offers photo printing, letter sending, and some financial services depending on the facility.
For families whose primary pain point is the cost of phone calls — which can be genuinely expensive depending on the facility and provider — Pigeonly addresses a real need. Its photo printing service, which lets family members upload digital photos that are printed and mailed to the facility, is a popular feature that connects people across a communication gap that email does not always bridge.
The limitation is that Pigeonly is not the deposit platform for most facilities. If a family member needs to fund a commissary account specifically, they will typically need a different service. Pigeonly works best as a complement to the primary provider rather than a replacement. Understanding the difference between phone account funding and commissary trust account deposits is one of the most common points of confusion families face, and having a clear starting point before exploring individual services makes the entire process less overwhelming.
How to Find the Right Service for Your Facility
The single most important step before attempting any jail commissary deposit is confirming which provider is authorized by the specific facility. Jails contract with specific vendors, and attempting a deposit through an unauthorized third party — or worse, a lookalike site designed to resemble a legitimate provider — can result in lost funds with no guaranteed path to recovery.
Searching directly through a service built for county jail inmate search eliminates most of this risk. When you know where your loved one is being held and which provider that facility uses, every subsequent step becomes more straightforward. Booking-watch alerts also help because they notify you the moment a loved one enters the system, so you do not have to discover the arrest indirectly and then scramble to figure out where they are.
The practical flow looks like this: confirm the facility, identify the official provider for that facility, follow that provider's verified deposit instructions, and keep a record of the transaction confirmation. Fees vary by provider and deposit method, so reading the fee disclosure before completing the transaction is always worth the sixty seconds it takes.
What to Watch Out For
Lookalike websites are a real problem in this space. Sites designed to resemble official providers or well-known services sometimes appear in search results and collect payment information from families who believe they are making a legitimate deposit. These sites may look professionally built and use language similar to real providers.
The safest protection against this risk is using a referral source that links only to official, licensed providers rather than searching independently and clicking through uncertain results. Fee transparency is another marker worth watching. Legitimate providers disclose their fees before you complete a transaction. If a site presents a total with no itemized fee breakdown, that is worth pausing over before entering payment information.
Never send money through a platform that is not clearly identified as the authorized provider for your specific facility. No intermediary should hold your funds or require you to create an account before revealing which facility they serve. The direct-to-provider model, where the family's money goes straight to the official system without passing through a third-party holding account, is the standard that protects families most reliably.
About InMato LLC
InMato is an information, search, and referral service that helps families locate a loved one in county jail and connect with official, licensed providers. Founded by J.T. Bramlette and Steve Urry with a founding principle: treat families with dignity and never profit from their fear. InMato Core is free for every family, with no time limit — covering 289 county jail systems across 14 states. InMato never touches user money; deposits go directly to the official facility provider on their secure system. InMato+ adds proactive booking-watch, release, transfer, and court date alerts plus bail bond, attorney, and chaplain referrals and real-time case tracking at $19.99/month per loved one, cancel anytime. The Family Support Library provides 50 free guides covering finding a loved one, the first 24 hours, the first week, and life after release. Available in English and Spanish. InMato LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.
Get Started with InMato LLC
Search for your loved one now at inmato.com — free for every family, with no time limit. Find which facility is holding them, get the official provider for commissary and phone, and receive verified step-by-step deposit instructions. No account required to search. Available in English and Spanish. Results in 48 hours.
Originally published at https://www.inmato.com/blog/send-money-to-inmate
Written by InMato
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