Verifying your Brave Rewards wallet means linking your Brave Rewards wallet with a custodial exchange account.

💡 Custodian (custodial exchange account): A custodian is a company that holds your BAT for you. Crypto exchanges like Uphold, Gemini, and bitFlyer, for example, are custodial partners in the Brave Rewards ecosystem.

Linking your Brave Rewards wallet to a custodial exchange account allows you to:

• Withdraw any BAT you have in your Brave Rewards wallet  
• Add BAT into your Brave Rewards wallet

... and more 

When you verify your Brave Rewards wallet, your Brave Rewards wallet balance becomes the BAT balance in your custodial exchange account. That means you can deposit additional BAT into your custodial exchange account, and then use that BAT in the Brave Rewards ecosystem (for example, to tip). It also means that when you send a tip to a creator, the BAT is being sent directly from your custodial exchange account to the creator's custodial exchange account.

Limitations

• You can link up to four different Brave instances or user profiles per custodial account. 
• You cannot link 2 or more different accounts from the same custodian to a single browser instance. For example, you cannot have 2 accounts with Uphold and link them both to the same Brave browser instance. If you try signing in with a second Uphold account, you will see an error.

How to verify your wallet

1. In Brave, open your Rewards panel or go to Settings → Rewards Settings and click the “Verify wallet” link on the top left [left image]
2. Select which custodial service you'd like to use.
3. Follow the steps to sign up with the custodian (or log in if you already have an account at that custodian).
4. Make sure your account with the custodian is "verified" (i.e., that you have completed ID verification with the custodian).
5. You will be asked to authorize your Brave Browser with your custodial exchange account. Once you authorize the Brave Browser, should now see Wallet verified in your Rewards panel (see images):

Withdrawing funds

When you first verify your Brave Rewards wallet with a custodial exchange account, any existing BAT in your browser should be transferred over to your custodial exchange account. For example, if you had 14 BAT in your browser prior to verifying, then after you've successfully verified and linked a custodial exchange account to your browser, you should see that 14 BAT automatically appear inside your custodial exchange account's BAT balance. (Please allow up to 30 minutes for your BAT to appear in your custodial exchange account.)

What can I do with the BAT once it's in my custodial exchange account?

Once the BAT is inside your custodial exchange account, you can exchange it or withdraw it to an external Ethereum address as you would any other balance in your custodial exchange account. 

Additional resources

How to verify your Brave Rewards wallet with Uphold