Trading with someone you have never met

Every trade between two people who have never met contains the same standoff.

If the buyer pays first, the seller can keep the money. If the seller delivers first, the buyer can keep the goods. Somebody has to go first, and whoever it is carries all of the risk.

The usual resolution is an argument in a chat window followed by one party giving up, which systematically favours whoever is most comfortable behaving badly.

Escrow removes the standoff

The buyer’s money moves into escrow when the trade opens. It is held on the ledger — genuinely held, not promised — and both sides can see it is there.

The seller is no longer being asked to trust the buyer. They can see the money. So they deliver.

The buyer confirms, and escrow releases.

Neither side can take it unilaterally, which is the property that makes the whole thing work.

Silence is not a strategy

The obvious attack: the buyer takes delivery and simply never confirms.

Escrow does not release on silence. It goes to a dispute, where a person reviews it.

So a buyer in that position is not quietly walking away with goods and money. They are making a case, in front of somebody, that they have to win. That changes the arithmetic of trying it.

Disputes with the evidence already there

A dispute carries the trade’s own history and the evidence attached to it. A reviewer is not reassembling events from screenshots sent by two people with opposite interests.

It is decided by a person, on that evidence and on the history of both parties. Not by an algorithm, and not by whoever complains most persistently.

History is visible before you trade

You can see a counterparty’s trading history, including disputes.

A pattern is apparent before you trade. Most bad actors are not clever; they are repetitive, and repetition is visible when history is.

When to use it

Any trade with somebody you do not know and have no way to pursue if it goes wrong — currency, goods, services, anything arranged between two individuals.

For a trade with your cousin, this is overhead. For one arranged in a group chat with a stranger, it is the difference between a trade and a hope.

What it costs

The fee for a completed trade is shown before you open it. A trade cancelled before delivery returns the escrowed money.

What you can check

These are facts about the running platform, not adjectives. Each one is visible in the product, in the API reference or in the ledger.

• Escrowed money is held on the ledger, not held as a promise — both sides can see it is there.
• Release requires the buyer’s confirmation or a dispute decision; neither side can take it unilaterally.
• A dispute carries the trade’s own evidence and history, so a reviewer is not reconstructing it from screenshots.
• Counterparty history is visible, so a pattern of disputes is apparent before a trade rather than after.

What it costs

The fee for a completed trade is shown before you open it. A trade that is cancelled before delivery returns the escrowed money.

Is it switched on?

Whether this is available depends on the authorisations in place and on what the administrator of a given deployment has switched on. That changes, and an article does not — so the live answer lives on the feature page, which reads it from the platform itself: P2P marketplace on the features page.

Read next

• Refunds and disputes — A promise you can actually keep.
• Wallets and transfers — Money that arrives the moment it leaves.
• Identity and tiers — Start with a phone. Grow into the limits.