Contents
What escrow is
Escrow is a payment held by someone other than the buyer or the seller until an agreed condition is met. The buyer pays in full up front, so the seller knows the money exists. The seller is only paid once the condition is met, so the buyer is not paying for something that never arrives.
On a wholesale order the condition is delivery: the money moves to the supplier once the goods have reached the address on the order and there has been time to raise a problem with them.
Why wholesale needs it
Without a third party holding the payment, one side of every order carries the risk:
- Pro-forma — the reseller pays first. The supplier is protected, but the reseller has paid for stock they have not seen, and has to chase a refund if it never ships.
- Credit terms — the supplier ships first. The reseller is protected, but the supplier has handed over goods and waits to be paid, which is why credit is usually only offered to accounts with a trading history.
Escrow removes the choice between the two. The reseller has paid, and the supplier can see that before packing anything; neither of them can touch the money until the order has been delivered. That is what lets a reseller order from a supplier they have never traded with, on the first day, without either side having to trust the other.
Who holds the money on Feed API
Payments run through Stripe and are held by the platform — not by the supplier — from the moment the reseller pays until the order has been delivered and the return window has closed. Neither side can touch it in between.
Held, not spent
The supplier sees an order only once it has been paid, so there is nothing to invoice and nothing to chase. The reseller pays the price they saw when they ordered: the platform fee comes out of the supplier's payout, not off the top of what the reseller pays.
The timeline
Every stage has a deadline, and the platform applies each one on its own — nobody has to remember them, and nobody can quietly miss them. The one exception is dispatch, which is a condition of listing rather than a timer.
Stage
Deadline
What happens
Reseller pays
24 hours
The order expires and the stock returns to the supplier.
Supplier confirms
48 hours from payment
The order is cancelled and the reseller refunded.
Supplier dispatches
2 business days from confirming
Expected, with tracking entered in the same action — a standard of conduct, not an automatic action.
Return window
14 days from delivery
Return requests close, in the dashboard and over the API.
Escrow releases
21 days from delivery
The supplier is paid automatically, less the platform fee and any refunds already agreed.
The 21 days exist so that the 14-day return window has closed before the money moves. If a payment dispute is opened on an order, it is held rather than released and stays held until the dispute is decided — the one case where the 21-day clock stops.
A worked example
A reseller places a £125.99 order with a supplier and pays for it.
- The £125.99 is taken and held by the platform. The supplier now sees a paid order.
- The supplier confirms within 48 hours of payment, then dispatches and enters tracking.
- The parcel is delivered. The 14-day return window opens.
- 21 days after delivery, with no dispute open, the payout is released automatically: £125.99 less the platform fee of 6% plus 25p — £7.56 + £0.25 = £7.81 — so the supplier receives £118.18.
The reseller paid £125.99 and nothing more; the fee was the supplier's. More examples are on the pricing page.
When the money goes back
What happens to the money on an order that does not complete depends on how far it got. No platform fee is taken on any of them.
- Never paid. The order expires after 24 hours, the stock goes back to the supplier, and no money has moved.
- Paid, but not confirmed in time. The order is cancelled automatically after 48 hours and the reseller is refunded. The funds never left the platform, so nothing is clawed back from the supplier.
- Cancelled after payment. The reseller is refunded the order total less the payment processing fee that card networks charge on the original payment, which is not returned when a payment is refunded. The amount is stated in the refund reason and on the order.
What escrow does not do
Escrow protects the payment. It is not a quality inspection, and it does not make every standard a timer:
- Dispatch within 2 business days is expected of suppliers as a condition of listing, but it is not enforced by software the way the payment and confirmation deadlines are.
- A problem with the goods has to be raised within the 14-day return window. After that, return requests close.
- This guide describes how the platform works. The Terms of Service remain the binding agreement, and the Service Standards set out every deadline in full.
To trade with escrow on every order, create a reseller account or list your catalogue as a supplier.