Live baccarat API: tables, variants and the wallet work behind them

What a live baccarat integration consists of

Three moving parts: a catalogue entry that identifies each table, a launch URL that opens the studio’s video client in an iframe, and a stream of balance, debit and credit calls to your wallet while the player sits at the table. Nothing about baccarat needs its own endpoint.

In our API documentation the tables come back from getGameList like any other game, with the normalised field game_type set to live. That field is the one to build a baccarat shelf from. The raw type and category labels are passed through from the studios as they send them and are not consistent, which is why the docs tell you not to rely on them.

The video, the dealer, the card recognition and the table interface all belong to the studio. Your side of the line is the lobby, the player account and the money. That division is the same for roulette and blackjack, and for every table on our live dealer API; what makes baccarat different is the pace of the round and the shape of the bets, covered below.

Baccarat variants and why they matter to the integration

Variants are not just skins. Each one changes the round length, the payout table or the number of wallet movements in a round, and those differences show up in your callback logs.

• Standard punto banco. Player, Banker and Tie, with pair side bets on most tables. Evolution describes a standard baccarat round as lasting around 48 seconds.
• Speed baccarat. The same rules, dealt faster. Evolution publishes 27 seconds per round for its Speed Baccarat, which nearly doubles the number of debits per player-hour compared with a standard table.
• No-commission baccarat. Banker wins are paid even money without the 5% commission, except a Banker win on a total of six, which typically pays half. The round is the same; the payout arithmetic is not.
• Multiplier formats. Evolution’s Lightning Baccarat applies random multipliers to between one and five cards per round and advertises up to 512x on Player and Banker and up to 262,144x on Tie. Formats like this usually carry an extra fee per bet, so the debit is larger than the chips the player sees on the felt — worth knowing before a support ticket arrives about it.
• Squeeze and VIP tables. Cards are revealed slowly, rounds run longer and limits are higher. These tables matter for high-value players and for Asian-facing audiences.
• Dragon tiger. A baccarat relative with one card per side and very short rounds. It sits naturally on the same shelf even though the rules are simpler.

The house edge your finance team will ask about

Baccarat is a low-margin game, and the margin sits mostly on the bets players choose. Under standard eight-deck rules with a 5% Banker commission, the house edge is about 1.06% on Banker, 1.24% on Player and 14.36% on a Tie paid at 8:1.

That spread explains two things you will see in reporting. First, observed return on a busy baccarat table sits much closer to 100% than on slots, so a thin gross gaming revenue line is normal rather than a warning sign. Second, a week where one high-stakes player backs Banker heavily can swing the table negative on its own. Look at a month, not a day, before drawing conclusions — the per-game bets, wins and GGR in your operator backend are the place to do it.

Bet limits: where they come from

Limits are set per table and per currency, and a well-built baccarat shelf covers the whole ladder, from low-stakes speed tables to VIP salons. The catalogue and currencies evolve continuously; the up-to-date list is always in the API.

In practice the currency you send on the launch call decides which limit set the player sees. The docs describe it plainly: the currency field sets the currency the player sees in the game, bet limits and balance included. A player created in one currency keeps it; if the same person needs another currency, the documented route is a separate username.

So when a market complains that the minimum is too high, the answers are a different table — a speed or low-limit table instead of a VIP one — or a currency whose limit ladder suits the audience. Currency support differs from studio to studio, and getCurrencies tells you what is enabled on your account before you plan the lobby.

Streaming, latency and the betting timer

The video stream is delivered by the studio straight into the iframe; your servers never carry it. What your servers do carry is the debit call, and that one is on a clock.

A baccarat round opens a betting window, closes it, deals, and settles. If your wallet takes too long to answer the debit, the window closes first and the bet is lost to the player even though they clicked in time. On a slot a slow wallet is an annoyance; at a live table it is a missed hand and, usually, a complaint.

Three habits keep this quiet. Answer debits from memory or a fast store rather than a chain of services. Keep your callback endpoint geographically close to where it is called from. And launch with the right device value: some game platforms refuse a launch that does not declare one, and on mobile the lighter client makes a visible difference to how quickly the table becomes usable.

Round history: every money movement, round by round

The round history gives your support and finance teams every money movement at the table, merged round by round, while the cards and road maps stay in the studio’s game client where players see them.

getPlayerHistory returns one entry per round for one player, newest first: round id, game, currency, total bet and total win in cents, net result, number of wallet legs merged into the round, a rollback flag, and start and end times. Paging goes up to 500 rows per call and can be filtered by date, game or round.

What it does not return is the outcome of the hand. The cards dealt, the winning side and the road maps are produced inside the game client and never reach the wallet layer, so they cannot be returned. A bet your wallet refused is not listed either, because no money moved. For dispute handling that is usually enough — the question “was I paid?” is answered by the round record — but a lobby that shows live road maps on table tiles needs a data feed from the studio itself.

Wallet callbacks during a baccarat round

A baccarat round produces one or more debits and, if anything wins, one or more credits, all sharing a round id. Every call has its own call_id, and that is the only thing to de-duplicate on.

• Several debits in one round are normal. A main bet plus pair side bets can arrive as separate debits. Do not assume one debit per round.
• A tie returns stakes. Player and Banker bets push on a tie, so a credit equal to the stake is expected and the round nets to zero on those bets.
• Branch on action, not type. The documentation is explicit that type is informational and its values grow over time. A credit is a credit.
• Rollbacks arrive flagged. rb=1 marks a reversal, processed like an ordinary debit or credit. A cancelled shoe or a dealer error is where you will see them.
• Insufficient funds is an answer, not an error. Return error: 1 with the current balance and the table refuses the bet cleanly.

The full callback contract, including the signature check on timestamp and key, is on our seamless wallet page.

How to plan a baccarat shelf in your lobby

Start small and let the data decide. Three tables — standard, speed and no-commission — cover most players in most markets. Add a multiplier format for entertainment-led audiences, dragon tiger for short sessions, and squeeze or VIP tables once you have players whose stakes justify them.

Group tables by limit rather than by studio: a player looking for a low-limit table does not care which studio runs it. And show only the tables that open in the player’s currency. If you want to put table metadata on the tiles, our guide to game metadata and lobby navigation explains what the game list carries and what you would need to add.

How this page fits with the rest of our live documentation

This page covers baccarat specifically. The general picture of live dealer content through one integration is on our live casino API page. For the two other table games operators ask about most, see the live roulette API and live blackjack API pages, which deal with the wheel and the seat model respectively.

Live baccarat API — questions operators ask

Sources and last update

Studio figures on this page — round times and multipliers — come from Evolution’s own published game descriptions. House-edge figures are the standard mathematics of eight-deck punto banco. Everything said about the SoftAggregator API is taken from our public documentation.

• Evolution, published pages for Speed Baccarat, Lightning Baccarat and its live baccarat range (games.evolution.com). Checked 24 September 2026.
• SoftAggregator API documentation — getGameList, getCurrencies, getGame, getPlayerHistory and wallet callbacks. Checked 24 September 2026.

Last reviewed: 24 September 2026. Studios change formats and figures; if something here is out of date, write to [email protected] and we will correct it.

Explore more