Legal · Money
Escrow & refunds
Last updated 25 July 2026
The short version
When you pay for an order, the money goes to NepalCanWork — never to the freelancer. It sits there for the whole life of the order. You decide when it is released; if you go quiet, an auto-approval releases it for you so nobody can be held hostage by silence. Opening a dispute stops it moving at all. Refunds land in your NepalCanWork wallet, which you can withdraw. And payouts are queued by us but settled by the payment gateway on its own clock.
This document is a working draft
It describes how the NepalCanWork platform handles money today, read directly from the code that moves it, and it has not yet been reviewed by a lawyer. Amber markers show where a commitment still has to be decided rather than guessed.
The mechanics
Where a rupee actually goes
Eight stops, in order. Each one is a real state the order moves through, not a description of intent.
Step 01
You pay NepalCanWork
Checkout creates a payment session with the gateway for the order amount plus the client service fee. The money is collected by the platform. At no point in this flow is anything sent to the freelancer's account.
Step 02
The order waits — paying does not start the work
A confirmed payment moves the order to awaiting requirements, not in progress. You write the requirements; they become a numbered list of contract items.
Step 03
The freelancer accepts the scope
They accept the numbered list, or bounce it back once with questions. Acceptance freezes and hashes the list onto the order and starts the delivery clock. Until then, the clock has not started and the money has not moved.
Step 04
Delivery, and any revisions
The freelancer delivers. You can request the revisions the gig includes, which returns the order to the freelancer. The escrow has still not moved.
Step 05
You approve — or the clock approves for you
Release is yours to trigger. Nobody at NepalCanWork can push the escrow out on a freelancer's behalf while the order is waiting on you.
If you never respond, the delivery auto-approves after from the last delivery, with a warning email beforehand. Silence is not a way to keep the money and the work.
Step 06
The hold window
Approval does not immediately queue a payout. The funds sit for a further — room to open a dispute over something you spotted a minute too late.
Step 07
The payout is queued
When the hold elapses with no dispute, a background sweeper completes the order, unlocks the final files, and creates a payout record with the gross amount, the freelancer commission and the net. “Queued” means recorded and waiting for the next sweep — not yet sent.
Step 08
The gateway settles it, on the gateway's clock
We hand the transfer to Hamro Pay with an idempotency key and then poll it. Until the gateway reports the transfer complete, the payout sits as pending or processing. That last leg is not ours to hurry — see the timing section.
Fees
What is charged, and to whom
Both rates are set in platform configuration and read live onto this page, so what you see here is what the system is applying right now.
Client service fee
Added on top of the order amount at checkout, and shown as a breakdown before you are sent to the gateway. The rate in force when you check out is stored on the order, so a later change to the platform rate cannot alter an order you already placed. The escrowed amount — the figure a refund, release or split is calculated from — is the order amount, not the total charged.
Freelancer commission
Deducted from the order amount when the payout is queued. The payout record stores the gross, the fee and the net side by side, so the arithmetic is always visible.
When something goes wrong
A dispute stops the money where it stands
This is the point of holding it in the first place.
A disputed order cannot pay out
A verdict is issued by a person, not by software, and it must cite the frozen scope contract in writing. It resolves to one of three outcomes, all of which execute against the escrowed order amount: release to the freelancer, refund to the client, or a split. The full process is in the dispute and anti-scam policy.
Refunds
A refund goes to your NepalCanWork wallet
Not back to the card or wallet you paid from. Understanding this one detail avoids most of the surprise.
Where the money lands
Every refund on the platform is posted as a credit to your NepalCanWork wallet balance, with a matching entry in your wallet ledger naming the order it came from. The balance is never adjusted without a ledger row, so a refund can always be traced. You can spend that balance on another order, or withdraw it — withdrawals have a minimum of and go out through the same payout rails described below.
The amount posted is the order amount — the sum held in escrow. The client service fee charged on top at checkout is not part of that posting.[REVIEW: whether the client service fee is refundable when an order is cancelled or refunded, and if so by what route — the code refunds only the escrowed order amount]
Why a wallet, not a reversal
A gateway reversal is slow, sometimes impossible after settlement, and cannot express a partial outcome. A ledger credit is immediate, exact to the rupee, and works identically for a full refund, a dispute split and a negotiated settlement.
When an order can be cancelled, and what happens
| Order state | Who can cancel | Money |
|---|---|---|
| Paid, not yet confirmed | Nobody has to. An unpaid order expires by itself after the configured payment window and the client request reopens. | Nothing was collected. |
| Awaiting requirements | Either party proposes and the other confirms. If requirements were never submitted at all, either party may cancel alone after 7 days. | Full order amount credited to the client's wallet. |
| In progress | Either party proposes and the other confirms. One side cannot cancel unilaterally. | Full order amount credited to the client's wallet. |
| Delivered, in revision, or approved | Not cancellable. Use the Resolution Center to settle, or open a dispute. | Escrow stays held until settled or decided. |
| Disputed | Only a verdict closes it, issued by an administrator with a written rationale. | Release, refund or split, executed from escrow. |
Administrators can force an order into another state, but only with a mandatory written note, and the action is written to an append-only audit log.
Settling without a verdict
A settlement executes on the ledger, with no staff member in the middle
Either side can propose a division of the escrow — release 70% and refund 30%, or any other split. The other party accepts in one tap.
The arithmetic is exact
The freelancer's share is rounded down and the client takes the remainder, so the two shares always sum to the escrowed amount to the rupee. Neither share is ever estimated.
Both sides are credited on acceptance
Acceptance posts the two wallet credits and closes the order as settled. The ledger references are recorded on the offer itself, so the execution is auditable.
Negotiation cannot stall the money
Up to three rounds of offer and counter-offer. Every offer expires after 72 hours and is swept automatically. Settling records a positive trust event for both parties — it is never penalised.
Getting paid
Three ways money leaves the platform
Which one is used depends on the payout method set on the freelancer's account.
| Rail | How it works | Checks before it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Hamro Pay transfer | The platform sends the net amount to your payout number with an idempotency key, then polls the gateway until it reports a final status. A failed attempt is retried on the next sweep, up to three attempts, after which the payout is marked failed, the operations team is alerted and you are notified with the reason. | The number must be one the gateway has verified for your account; the same number must not be verified on any other account; and a number changed in the last 24 hours is deferred until the cooldown ends. |
| NepalCanWork wallet | The net amount is credited to your wallet balance with a ledger entry, and the order is completed. You withdraw from the wallet separately, which sends it out through one of the other two rails. | None beyond the payout itself — the money stays inside the platform. |
| Western Union | A staff-operated rail. The payout is created with a status of awaiting staff rather than queued, and a person carries out the transfer. It carries a flat fee plus a percentage of the amount and has a higher minimum than a standard withdrawal. | Your Western Union details — receiver legal name, country, city, phone and an uploaded government ID document — must have been reviewed and marked verified by staff first. |
One consequence worth stating: if your trust ledger has triggered a payout delay, a queued payout is held back until that delay has elapsed and then picked up by a later sweep. The delay is recorded on the payout's own timeline, so you can see why it waited.
[REVIEW: publish the Western Union fee schedule and minimum, which today are operational settings rather than published terms]
Timing
How long a payout really takes
Three of these four legs are ours. The last one is not, and pretending otherwise would just make the wait feel worse.
| Leg | Who controls it | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Approval to hold expiry | The platform. | from approval, exactly. |
| Hold expiry to payout queued | The platform. | Picked up by the next run of the background sweeper, which runs on a schedule rather than firing the moment the hold expires. |
| Payout queued to transfer sent | The platform. | The next sweep, unless a trust-based payout delay or a payout-number cooldown applies. |
| Transfer sent to money received | Hamro Pay. | Not ours. The transfer is reported as pending or processing until the gateway marks it complete, which in practice can run to the next business day. Western Union payouts are carried out by a person and are slower still. |
We do not promise a settlement time we cannot keep
[REVIEW: a published payout target — for example a committed time from approval to transfer sent, and a support escalation path when a transfer stays pending beyond it]
The edges
What escrow does not cover
Being clear about the boundary is part of the protection.
Anything agreed off the platform
If money moves outside NepalCanWork, there is no escrow to release, no scope contract to judge against and no record to decide from. We cannot refund or recover what never passed through us.
Work quality as a matter of taste
A dispute is decided against the numbered items both sides accepted. Escrow protects you from not receiving what was agreed. It is not a satisfaction guarantee.
Amending a frozen scope
Once accepted, a scope contract cannot be edited. Changing what was agreed means settling the order and placing a new one, or agreeing a split in the Resolution Center.
Money questions are answered on the order itself.
Every order page shows the escrow state, the hold clock and the Resolution Center. Your wallet page shows every credit, debit and payout with the order it belongs to.
Dispute & anti-scam policy
How a frozen scope contract, a self-service settlement and a written verdict fit together.
Financial crime controls
The closed money loop, and which party checks a payout destination on each rail.
Terms of service
The marketplace relationship, account rules and the on-platform rule.
Privacy policy
What we collect, who else receives it, and how uploaded files are stored.
Hold window, auto-approval window, commission rates and the withdrawal minimum on this page are read live from the platform's public configuration, so they always match what the system is enforcing.