What is buyer-protected payment (and how does it work)?

The idea in one sentence

Buyer-protected payment puts a neutral hold between you and the seller: you pay in, the money waits, and the seller is only paid once you confirm you received what you ordered.

Why it exists

The biggest problem in Nigerian online shopping is not bad products — it is the order of events. Buyers pay first and hope. Buyer protection reverses the leverage: the seller now has to deliver before they see the money, so "collect payment and disappear" and "what I ordered vs what I got" both stop working.

How the flow works

1. You pay the agreed amount into a protected hold (on BuyChat, via Paystack).
2. The money is held — it is not in the seller's account yet.
3. The seller ships / delivers the item or performs the service.
4. You confirm the item arrived as described.
5. The seller is paid, automatically, at that moment.
6. If something is wrong, you open a dispute instead of confirming, and your money is protected while it is resolved.

What it costs

Protection itself has no separate charge. Your order total may include a small service fee shown transparently at checkout, and sellers pay a category-based commission when a sale completes — but you are never charged extra just to have your money protected.

Where you have it

On BuyChat, buyer protection is built into every purchase — products, services, rides and stays — and into Pay with BuyChat payment links that any seller can send. You can shop by chatting with Aisha, the AI shopping assistant, and the protection applies automatically.

Some people call this concept "escrow." On BuyChat we simply call it buyer-protected checkout — same principle, plain language: your money is safe until you say the item arrived.