How Escrow on ClicknDone Works: Pay Safely, Get Paid Reliably
When you book a job on ClicknDone, you pay upfront — but the Pro does not receive your money until you confirm the work is done to your satisfaction. Funds are held in escrow through ClicknDone's payment partner in the meantime. The Pro sees the booking is funded, which is why they show up; you keep control of the money, which is why you can hire confidently. ClicknDone takes a 15% commission from the total when the job completes successfully. This page explains the full flow, the refund rules, and why both sides actually want escrow.
The default South African home-services arrangement has two failure modes. Customer pays deposit → Pro disappears: the customer is out the deposit with no recourse short of a Hellopeter post. Pro completes work → Customer ghosts on payment: the Pro chases an invoice for weeks, sometimes never gets paid. Escrow solves both. The customer's money is locked away from the Pro until the job is done. The Pro's payment is locked in by the customer's booking before they even start. Nobody can take what isn't theirs.
If you've used TradeSafe for a private transaction, the principle is identical. The difference: ClicknDone bakes escrow into the marketplace, so you don't have to coordinate it separately.
- You post the job. Describe the work, location, urgency, preferred timing.
- Verified Pros respond with offers. Each offer includes a price, timeline, and the Pro's verified profile.
- You choose a Pro and pay through ClicknDone. Funds are debited from your card or EFT and held through our payment partner until completion is confirmed or a dispute is resolved.
- Pro completes the work. You inspect.
- You confirm completion in the app. The Pro's payout, less ClicknDone's 15% commission, is released through the payment partner, typically within 24 hours of your confirmation, subject to payment-partner and bank processing times.
If something is wrong at step 5, you do not confirm. Instead you open a dispute. Our team aims to review evidence within 48 business hours.
- Verification infrastructure — accredited KYC-provider identity checks, PIRB and Department of Employment and Labour registration checks, POPIA-compliant criminal record screening
- Payment processing — payment-partner integrations for hold-and-release flow
- Customer support — human response on both sides
- Dispute resolution — independent review with a 48-business-hour target
- Platform operations — app, profiles, ratings, audit trail
We earn the commission only when the job completes successfully. If you refund, we refund our share. This aligns us with both sides of the marketplace, not just whoever paid us first.
The escrow can resolve four ways after a dispute:
- Full refund to customer. Work not done, or substantially defective. Pro receives nothing.
- Partial refund to customer. Work partly done or partly defective. Pro receives a proportional payment.
- Release to Pro. Work done to standard, customer's complaint not supported by the evidence.
- Rework. Pro returns to fix the issue. Escrow remains held until rework is complete.
The arbitrator considers the original job description, the offer the Pro made, photos and chat logs from the app, evidence submitted by both sides, and the relevant standards (SANS for plumbing and electrical, BCEA for domestic work, Consumer Protection Act for everything).
After you confirm completion, the Pro's 85% is released to the bank account they registered during onboarding, typically within 24 hours of your confirmation, subject to payment-partner and bank processing times. Payouts go only to accounts accepted by our payment partner's verification process.
ClicknDone works with a selected South African payment partner to process customer payments and Pro payouts. Personal information is processed under POPIA. Customer rights to refund and rework follow the Consumer Protection Act. Customer funds processed through our payment partner are not used by ClicknDone for any other purpose. The National Consumer Commission is the external authority you can escalate to if you believe ClicknDone's process has failed you.
Trust marketplaces work everywhere, but in South Africa they solve a specific problem: the gap left by informal-economy services and weak recourse for either side. Escrow is the smallest piece of infrastructure that closes that gap. For customers: you can hire a stranger without losing your deposit if they don't show up. For Pros: you can do work for a stranger without writing off another R3,200 unpaid invoice. It is the most boring feature on this site and it is the reason ClicknDone exists.
