Escrow Protection Policy.

When you complete a simulated secure checkout, the full amount you paid — including product subtotal, shipping fees and fabric-per-metre costs — is credited into a per-seller escrow ledger held by SA Fashion Mall (Pty) Ltd. Vendors and factories can see the balance owed to them but cannot withdraw it. The money moves only when a delivery event completes.

Our platform commission is a flat 15% on every sale — garments, fabric rolls, and custom-order commissions alike. Commission is computed server-side at the moment of payment and rounded to the nearest cent. It covers payment processing, marketplace operations, and vendor / factory / tailor verification.

• Payment successful — Escrow status is set to Held. Vendor sees the payout under Pending escrow in their studio.
• Vendor cuts, stitches and dispatches — Vendor marks the order Shipped from their Order Stream, entering the tracking number issued by their courier of choice.
• You confirm delivery — On /my-orders, tap the blue Confirm Delivery button once the parcel is in your hands. The order status becomes Delivered.
• Admin releases funds — SA Fashion Mall reviews the delivery event and pays out 85% of the garment subtotal plus 100% of the shipping fee to the vendor's Total Earnings ledger.

The fabric ledger works identically to the garment ledger, with one difference: the fabric mill is directly responsible for dispatching the roll from their warehouse, so 100% of the payout goes to the factory with no separate shipping-fee split.

Life happens. If you never open the app to press Confirm Delivery, we do not sit on your vendor's money forever. Every hour, an automated audit sweep runs across the platform. Any order that has been in the Shipped state for more than 14 calendar days is automatically transitioned to Delivered in our records — but the funds are not released to the vendor at that point. A SAFM administrator still reviews the order and either releases the payout, holds it pending investigation, or reverses the transaction to you.

You will be notified in-app when a stale order is auto-marked Delivered. If you legitimately have not received the parcel, contact us within a further 7 days and we will pause the review while we investigate the courier waybill with the vendor on your behalf.

If a garment or fabric roll never arrives, arrives damaged, or is materially different from what was listed, do NOT press Confirm Delivery. Instead, hold the escrow open and reach out to us with photographs and the SAFM order number. Because funds are still Held, we can reverse the transaction back to your original payment source without needing the vendor's co-operation.

Once funds have been released to a vendor or mill, refunds are handled at the vendor's discretion under the Consumer Protection Act — we still act as an escalation partner but the money is no longer under our custody.

Fraudulent chargebacks are the reason we hold funds at all. If a customer initiates a bank chargeback while an order is still in Held or Delivered status, we freeze the associated escrow balance immediately and stand with the vendor in the dispute — providing courier proof of delivery, digital audit trail, and the customer's Confirm Delivery event where relevant.