Hey fellow devs.
Before you drop $99 on a Garmin Connect IQ developer account, you might want to hear about the absolute payout nightmare I’ve been stuck in for the past year.
I wrote the code, published the app, and users actually bought it. But when it came time to withdraw my earnings, Garmin hit me with an absolute joke of a situation. Long story short: Their payment system has a bug, and their official solution is to tell developers to go open a new bank account.
1. The Misleading Adyen Setup
Here is the background: We are a UK-registered company, and we linked a UK bank account via Wise to receive payouts.
In Garmin’s Adyen payment portal, the system clearly states that our account can receive payouts in GBP. Based on this official prompt, we completed all our configuration.
As I pointed out in my feedback email to them:
"On the Adyen 'Add a bank account for payouts' page, when I enter our UK sort code and account number, Adyen explicitly shows the message: 'Payouts to this account can be done in GBP.' We followed the platform guidance..."
The reality? Garmin’s system forcibly attempts to send USD to our GBP account behind the scenes. Naturally, every single transfer gets ruthlessly rejected by the bank due to a "currency mismatch."
2. A Six-Month Loop of Failed Transfers
Since September 2025, we’ve been stuck in an endless loop: Garmin initiates transfer -> Bank rejects it -> Funds bounce back to Adyen. The hard-earned money just sits there, visible but untouchable.
The funniest part is how Garmin Support handles this. Knowing full well there’s a currency conflict, they tried a manual transfer in March, openly admitting in their email that it probably wouldn't work:
From Garmin Support (March 3, 2026):
"We attempted to transfer all your funds today via manual transfer... It is likely that the manual transfers made today will fail due to the currency mismatch between your Adyen accounts and your account with Wise, but if this works, it will be a straight-forward solution."
Relying on pure luck? Shocker: the April email confirmed the money bounced right back again.
3. The "Genius" Solution: Go open a new bank account
Faced with this obvious configuration error on their end (the portal says GBP is fine, but they force USD), Garmin didn't try to fix the Adyen routing. They didn't help us change the default currency setting.
Instead, they offered an incredibly arrogant final solution: They passed the buck to us.
From Garmin Support (March 16 / April 1):
"At this point, we still have two main options:
You tell us when your local USD account becomes available on Wise and we transfer the funds there...
You open a new bank account that will accept USD transfers."
It’s like going to a restaurant, finding out their card reader is broken, and the owner telling you to go to the bank and issue a new credit card that their broken machine might read.
For a small indie dev team, going through the massive hassle and strict AML (Anti-Money Laundering) compliance checks to open a traditional USD bank account in the UK just to receive our platform revenue is completely absurd.
4. Is this how a multinational tech giant operates?
We paid the $99 entry fee, only to find out that while the UK is a "supported region," they can't even process payouts in the local fiat currency. Instead of fixing their flawed system, they demand the developer adapt to their rigid, broken configuration.
I’ve made my bottom line clear to them:
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We cannot and will not open a local USD bank account just to bypass their bug.
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Since the Adyen portal explicitly says GBP payouts are supported, they need to pay us in GBP.
Is shifting the responsibility to the user really Garmin's standard way of doing things?
I’m posting this partly to document this ridiculous experience, but mostly as a warning to other indie devs: Earning money on Connect IQ isn't the hard part. The hard part is getting the money into your own pocket.
Has anyone else run into this payout dead-end? How did you finally get your money out? Let me know below.
