> You don't pay, you just deposit money. If you show up to court, you get the money back. If you don't have that money on hand, its common to take out a loan.

> You don't pay, you just deposit money. If you show up to court, you get the money back. If you don't have that money on hand, its common to take out a loan. If you're rich, yes. In practice, poor people can't round up enough money, so they must rely on a bondsman. So they'll pay something like 10% of the bail, and the bondsman will post the rest of the loan. The bondsman keeps the 10% at the end though. Often people can't even round up the 10% and have to just stay in jail.