Payments, Refunds, and Disputes Policy

1. Activation status

Live funding and payouts are disabled during the gated private beta. The rules below describe the intended flow and do not authorize live money until Stripe eligibility, legal review, tax responsibilities, reserve rules, and end-to-end test-mode evidence are complete.

2. Advertiser funding

An approved live campaign will use Stripe Checkout to collect the creator pool and disclosed fees. A campaign opens only after a signed Stripe webhook confirms successful payment and every independent activation gate is active. If payment succeeds before another gate is active, the campaign remains on funded hold.

3. Creator rewards

Creator fees are $0. A reward moves from estimated to validated only after the measurement window, advertiser review, fraud review, platform validation, identity checks, and any required tax onboarding. A validated reward is ordinarily held for 14 days before payout eligibility, and a provider, fraud, legal, tax, security, or payment-risk hold may extend that period. Stripe Connect controls the external payout account and bank transfer.

4. Shared-pool priority

A campaign join does not reserve money. Validated eligible rewards draw from the remaining shared pool, subject to the campaign minimum and any creator cap. When the pool is exhausted, no additional rewards accrue. The platform may use partial final payment only to the extent disclosed by the campaign and supported by the remaining pool.

5. Holds and reversals

Creator Rewards may hold or delay validation or payout for suspected fraud, account compromise, identity or tax requirements, payment disputes, sanctions screening, provider review, legal process, or conflicting evidence. A transfer may be reversed or recovered when permitted by law and provider rules if it resulted from fraud, error, duplicate payment, invalid metrics, or a reversed underlying campaign payment.

6. Advertiser refunds

Unused pool funds become eligible for refund only after outstanding submissions, measurement, appeals, payouts, disputes, and lawful reserves are resolved. Fees and processing costs are refunded only when the checkout disclosure, provider rules, and applicable law require it.

7. Chargebacks and negative balances

A payment dispute pauses the associated campaign. Creator Rewards may preserve evidence, stop new joins, delay unreleased payouts, and assess the facts before allocating responsibility. An advertiser chargeback does not automatically make a compliant creator personally liable.

Creator-caused fraud, duplicate payment, invalid metrics, or payout error may create a negative creator balance and hold future payouts until recovery or documented resolution. Creator Rewards may reverse a supported transfer or offset later rewards only as permitted by law, provider rules, and this policy.

8. Taxes

Users are responsible for their own tax obligations. Stripe may collect identity and tax information and may issue information returns where required. Creator Rewards may withhold access to payouts until required information is complete.