How payments work

When you’re charged, what’s held, and how makers get paid.

Money moves through Mosaira in one direction, on a schedule both sides can see. Here’s the whole thing.

If you’re hiring

You don’t pay anything to post a project or to get quotes. You pay once, when you accept a quote you want.

Say a maker quotes $1,000. At checkout you'll pay $1,100 — their price, plus our 10% service fee. The fee is always shown before you confirm, and it's the only thing we charge. There's no subscription and no listing cost.

Your card is charged when you accept. The money doesn’t go to the maker yet. It’s held until the work is finished and you’ve both said so. If something goes wrong before then, the money is still there.

If you’re making

You set your own price. Nothing is deducted from it.

Quote $1,000 and you receive $1,000. Our fee is added on top and paid by the client, so what you quote is what lands in your account. We never take a cut of your rate, suggest a price, or change one.

You’ll need a Stripe account to get paid, which takes a few minutes to set up. You can do that before you start quoting or after a client accepts. Either works.

What “held” means

When a client accepts a quote, the full amount is charged and held. It sits there while the work happens.

Neither side can pull it out early. The client can’t take it back on a whim, and the maker can’t be paid before the work is done. That’s the point. Both people know the money exists and neither has to trust the other about it.

Getting paid

When the work’s finished, both people mark the project complete.

That releases the payment. The maker’s full quoted amount transfers to their Stripe account, and Stripe pays it out to their bank on its normal schedule, usually a couple of days.

Nobody has to chase an invoice. The money was already there.

If a job doesn’t work out

Not every project finishes, and the money still has to go somewhere sensible.

If you both agree to stop, you agree how to split what’s held. A maker who did two weeks of work on a six-week build should be paid for two weeks. You propose a split, the other person accepts, and the money moves that way. Part to the maker, the rest back to the client.

If you can’t agree, either of you can raise it with us. We’ll look at the project, the messages, and what was actually delivered, then split the money ourselves. We’d rather not be in the middle of this, and in practice most projects don’t get here. But somebody has to be able to break a tie, and the money can’t sit frozen forever.

Our fee is waived on any project that ends early. If a job falls apart, we don’t think we should be paid for it.

Common questions

When exactly is my card charged?

The moment you accept a quote. Not when you post a project, not when you get quotes, and not when the work finishes.

Can I pay a maker directly instead?

You can, but the project isn’t covered if you do. Nothing is held, we can’t help if it goes sideways, and neither of you has a record of what was agreed.

What if the maker hasn’t set up Stripe yet?

You can still accept and pay. We’ll hold your payment method and charge it as soon as they’re set up, then the project starts normally.

Do I pay the fee too, as a maker?

No. The fee is charged to the client, on top of your price. You receive your full quoted amount.

Can I change my price after quoting?

Not on a quote that’s been sent. Withdraw it and send a new one. Once a client accepts, the price is fixed, because that’s the number that got charged and held.

How long does the money sit there?

As long as the project runs. A one-day job might be two days. A six-month fabrication is six months. It’s held the whole time either way.

What if I never get paid?

The payment released when you both marked the project complete, so it’s already on its way. If it hasn’t reached your bank within about a week of that, check your Stripe account first. An incomplete detail there is usually the cause. Get in touch if everything looks fine on your end.

Who’s actually holding my money?

Prism Foundry LLC, the company that operates Mosaira. Payments are processed by Stripe, and card details never touch our servers.

The formal version of all of this is in our terms of service, sections 4 to 7.