Terms of Service

1. What TrustDeal does

TrustDeal is a protected-payment service for two-person digital deals. A buyer and a seller agree on terms in writing. The buyer authorizes payment through our payments provider (Stripe) using a manual-capture authorization, meaning the funds are reserved on the buyer's payment method but not yet transferred. The seller submits a delivery. An automated checking system compares the delivery against the agreed terms and, depending on the outcome and the deal's risk profile, either captures the funds to the seller, returns the authorization to the buyer, or routes the deal to a buyer review window.

Funds at all times are handled by Stripe under their licensed payments infrastructure. TrustDeal never takes custody of your money and does not operate as a regulated escrow agent. Our role is limited to running the agreed checks, computing a release decision based on the recorded evidence, and instructing Stripe whether to capture or void the authorization.

The automated checks are based on the available evidence (the file or URL the seller submitted, the agreed terms, and metadata produced by deterministic and AI-assisted analysis). Their results are probabilistic, not absolute, and cannot certify subjective quality. Both parties accept this limitation when creating the deal.

2. Creating a deal

By creating or joining a deal you confirm that you are at least 18 years old, are legally able to enter into a binding contract, and are transacting for yourself (not a sanctioned person or prohibited third party).

Before payment, both sides must actively approve a deal draft showing product, price, delivery conditions, and format. Once both sides approve, the terms are final — they can no longer be edited unilaterally.

3. Verification and release decision

After the seller submits a delivery, TrustDeal runs the checks recorded on the deal. These checks fall into three explicit categories:

• Deterministic checks. Read the file directly: SHA-256 hash, format, resolution, duration, codec, ZIP contents, dependency manifest, link reachability, HTTPS, and similar. Each one passes or fails on hard evidence and carries the highest weight in the release decision.
• AI-assisted checks. Cover specific qualitative aspects of the agreed terms (e.g., "image contains a logo graphic" via vision models). They produce a verdict with a confidence score; low-confidence verdicts in either direction are routed to manual review and never auto-decide a deal.
• Manual confirmations. The buyer ticks subjective items the seller committed to (license terms, "tests are included", "source file included"). TrustDeal does not grade these. Until every manual confirmation has a verdict, funds do not auto-release regardless of the AI score.

The release decision combines the deterministic + AI-assisted weighted match, the buyer's manual confirmations, whether any deterministic check failed outright, the deal amount, and any flagged risk signals. It produces one of four outcomes:

• Automatic release. All deterministic checks passed, the weighted match is at or above the auto-release threshold currently configured by TrustDeal, every manual confirmation has been ticked by the buyer, and the deal does not exceed the amount and risk thresholds for unattended release. Funds are captured to the seller.
• Buyer review window. The result is borderline, the amount or risk warrants buyer confirmation, or one or more manual confirmations are still pending. The buyer has a defined window (typically 48 hours) to accept or refund. If the buyer takes no action within the window, the default outcome depends on the recorded evidence and is described to the buyer at the start of the window.
• Manual review. The amount, the risk profile, or specific signals (such as a file-integrity mismatch or an AI-provider outage during verification) warrant a human review before any release.
• Blocked. The deal is outside the categories TrustDeal currently supports, or contains other signals that prevent verification from being meaningful. Funds are not released, and the buyer is refunded.

If the seller believes the result was wrong, they can formally request release. This opens a shorter window during which the buyer must actively refund or the funds release to the seller.

You accept that the verification is based on the recorded evidence and the buyer's confirmations, and is not a certification of subjective quality, fitness for any particular purpose, or compliance with anything other than the agreed terms recorded on the deal. TrustDeal does not grade creative taste, certify the work as "good", or guarantee that a delivery will satisfy needs not written into the agreed terms. You agree that the outcomes above, including automatic resolution after a review window expires, are final for the purposes of the deal, subject only to the refund rights and operator interventions described below.

4. Fees

TrustDeal charges a platform fee of 5% on completed deals. The fee is deducted from the seller's payout — the buyer pays the agreed price, nothing more. Stripe may add its own processing fee on top of the price; this is shown to the buyer before payment. No fee is charged on deals that refund or never fund.

5. Disputes and operator intervention

TrustDeal is not a court, an arbitrator, or an arbitration service. We prevent most disputes by making the spec explicit up front, running deterministic checks against it, and asking the buyer to confirm anything subjective — rather than asking either side to trust an opaque AI verdict.

In exceptional cases (suspected fraud, technical error, repeated policy violations), TrustDeal may use operator tools to force a release or refund, block an email address, or suspend an account. Operator actions are logged and available to either party on request.

6. Prohibited and out-of-scope deals

You may not use TrustDeal for deals involving: illegal goods or services, weapons, drugs, counterfeit items, stolen property, child sexual abuse material, human trafficking, or any transaction that violates applicable law or Stripe's Acceptable Use Policy. TrustDeal may block or refund such deals at any time and report them to relevant authorities.

In addition, the following categories are explicitly out of scope for TrustDeal's verification engine and may not be transacted through the platform: account transfers (game, social, streaming, software), follower/like/review services, software license keys and activation codes, gift cards and stored-value items, crypto, NFTs, custom-built websites and e-commerce stores, landing-page builds, blog post and article writing, consulting and coaching, and any deal whose deliverable is subjective creative judgement (e.g., "make me something beautiful"). These categories are not blocked because they are illegal — they are blocked because TrustDeal cannot prove the spec deterministically, and we will not pretend to.

As of 2026-05-13, TrustDeal verifies uploaded digital deliverables only. The following are also out of scope under this rule because verifying them would require external account access — which breaks our "objective from the bytes alone" principle: delivery via GitHub repository link, domain transfers, hosting transfers, Discord server or bot ownership transfers, live access to Shopify / Webflow / Notion / Figma workspaces, and any deal requiring TrustDeal or the buyer to log into a third-party platform to confirm delivery. If a deal can only be checked by trusting a login, it does not belong on TrustDeal.

7. Refunds and chargebacks

Refunds through TrustDeal's standard flow land in your original payment method within 5–10 business days, depending on your bank.

Initiating a chargeback directly with your card issuer instead of using TrustDeal's refund flow may result in the suspension of your account and liability for chargeback fees.

8. Data

Our use of your personal data is described in our Privacy Policy. GDPR-style data export and deletion are available on request.

9. Warranties

TrustDeal is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind. We don't guarantee uninterrupted service, specific uptime, or that AI verification will always match a human's judgment. To the fullest extent allowed by law, TrustDeal's liability to you is limited to the platform fee we collected on the specific deal in question.

10. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes will be announced by email to the address on your most recent deal. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised terms.

11. Contact

Questions about these terms: support@trustdealapp.com.