Transparent payments. Held in escrow.
Every bounty is funded up-front and held by TradeSafe until validation and explicit brand approval clear the work for automatic release. No agencies, no middlemen, no funds sitting with us.
Four steps from deposit to payout.
Four steps from deposit to payout.
Brand funds the bounty
Brand pays the per-claim reward × number of claims, plus fees, at TradeSafe's hosted checkout. The funds leave the brand's account and settle into TradeSafe escrow — not into Social Bounty.
Worked example on a single-claim R500 bounty.
Current rates under our Free plan. Multi-claim bounties multiply this through — a 5-claim bounty escrows 5× this total at checkout. Pro rates are coming soon and will be published here before launch.
Brand pays
Hunter earns
Multi-claim bounties multiply this through — a 5-claim bounty escrows 5× this total.
Multiply by your claim count at checkout: 5 claims = R2,962.50; 10 claims = R5,925.00. Each approved submission earns the hunter R382.50 — brands can approve up to the bounty’s claim count.
Amounts stored as integer cents. No rounding drift. Full numeric example in the Terms of Service.
Safer than a handshake. Cleaner than a wallet.
Regulated escrow partner
TradeSafe is a registered digital-escrow service supervised under South African law. Your money is held under rules we do not write.
Funds never sit with us
Social Bounty is not a bank. We never hold, store, or re-transmit bounty funds. The money flows brand → TradeSafe → hunter.
Reversible before payout
Rejected submissions and cancelled bounties refund automatically. Post-payout removals are handled via recovery and account action — see the escrow terms for the full policy.
Double-entry audit trail
Every rand is booked into an append-only ledger with matched debits and credits, tied to a TradeSafe transaction and an audit-log row.
Read TradeSafe's own service terms and fee schedule at tradesafe.co.za.
Pay however you like.
Inbound payments captured through TradeSafe's hosted checkout. The list at checkout is controlled by TradeSafe and may change without notice.
- Card checkout
- Debit or credit card via TradeSafe's hosted checkout.
- Bank transfer
- Bank-transfer funding where TradeSafe presents that option.
- Mobile checkout
- Mobile-first payment approval where TradeSafe enables it.
- Manual deposit
- Bank-deposit references generated inside TradeSafe checkout.
- Instalment option
- Instalment funding where TradeSafe presents and approves it.
- In-person card
- Card-present funding where TradeSafe enables it for the transaction.
Hunter payouts settle by EFT to a South African bank account only.
The short version.
The full story lives in the legal docs — but these are the rules that shape every transaction.
- Platform custody
- All bounty funds flow through TradeSafe escrow — Social Bounty never holds your balance. See the Payout & Escrow Terms.
- Fees snapshotted at approval
- The fee rates in force at approval are the ones that apply — even if plans change later. Full schedule in the Terms of Service.
- Integer minor units
- All amounts are stored as integer cents — never as floating-point — to eliminate rounding drift. You see the same number we bill.
- Refunds & post-removal liability
- Cancelled bounties refund less non-recoverable TradeSafe fees. Post-payout EFTs cannot be reversed — we pursue recovery via account action. See the refunds clause.
- South African banking only
- Hunter payouts settle by EFT to a South African bank account. No mobile-money wallets, no foreign accounts, no crypto.
- Tax is yours
- Hunter payouts are payments for services — not employment income. No PAYE is withheld. See the tax section.
Frequently asked questions
TradeSafe Escrow (Pty) Ltd holds every rand from the moment a brand deposits it to the moment it releases to a hunter. Social Bounty is the AGENT on the transaction — we instruct release but we do not take custody.
On a single-claim R500 bounty: R500 reward + R75 brand admin fee (15%) + R17.50 global platform fee (3.5%) = R592.50 at checkout. For multi-claim bounties, the per-claim total multiplies through — a 10-claim R500 bounty escrows R5,925.00 up front so all 10 approved hunters can be paid. Each hunter receives R500 minus 20% commission and 3.5% global platform fee = R382.50 net per approved submission.
TradeSafe escrows the full pot at funding time so each approved hunter is guaranteed payable. Reducing claim count after funding is not supported — to change capacity, the brand cancels the bounty (refund follows TradeSafe's refund channel) and creates a new one. We made this trade-off for ledger integrity: every approved submission must have escrowed funds waiting.
After validation is complete and the brand explicitly approves the submission, the automatic payout process instructs TradeSafe to release. TradeSafe typically settles to the hunter's bank the same business day. Weekends and public holidays push to the next business day.
The escrowed funds refund to the brand's original payment method, less any non-recoverable payment-method fees charged by TradeSafe or the paying bank. Refunds follow TradeSafe's refund channel and typically take 2–7 business days.
Not yet. Our turnover is below the R1 million compulsory-registration threshold under the Value-Added Tax Act 89 of 1991, so no VAT is charged on our fees. We will display a VAT number and give 30 days' notice before adding VAT if we register.
Once TradeSafe releases a payout to a hunter's bank account, that EFT cannot be reversed — it is a push-only transfer. If a hunter removes a post in breach of a visibility requirement after payout, they become liable to Social Bounty for the amount they were paid. We will ask them to restore the post within 7 days, withhold their future bounty earnings toward the debt, and suspend or permanently ban their account if they don't comply. A brand is reimbursed only to the extent we actually recover funds from the hunter. Platform fees are not recoverable, so a brand may not be repaid in full. We do not provide a platform-funded backstop. Full details in the Terms of Service.
Yes. Every approval, reversal, and super-admin correction is audit-logged. Raise a dispute through the in-app flow or our Complaints & Dispute Resolution process and we investigate on a defined response window.
Funded up-front.
Paid after approval.
- No agencies or middlemen
- Automatic EFT to your bank
- 72h clearance on Free plan
Pay only for
approved work.
- TradeSafe escrow holds your funds
- Review before any payout releases
- Full refund if no submission approved