How payments work

You add the ways you already accept money, and customers use them to pay you directly. Set them up under Dashboard → Payment Methods.

• PayPal (PayPal.me link or email)
• Stripe payment link
• Square payment link
• Interac e-Transfer (Canada)
• Bank transfer
• Anything else, your call

This is deliberate, and it is to protect you:

• Every major processor (Stripe, PayPal, Square, Shopify) classifies knives as "weapons" and can freeze or seize funds, often without warning.
• If BladeOS sat in the middle as the merchant of record, a single platform-level dispute could put every smith’s money at risk at once, and the whole marketplace could be cut off.
• Keeping money on your own merchant relationship keeps you in control. You choose your processor and carry that relationship directly.
• No transaction cut. BladeOS earns from its subscription, not from your sales. Your sales are 100% yours.

For commissions with a deposit/milestone plan:

1. The customer opens their commission and sees your active payment methods and any instructions you added.
2. They pay you directly (off-platform), then tap "I’ve sent payment."
3. You confirm receipt, and can attach a progress photo at that stage.
4. The milestone is marked paid and the build moves forward.

This gives both sides a shared, timestamped record of the build, a substitute for escrow backed by progress photos and the trust system below.

Your payment values (links, emails, account details) are private. They are revealed to a customer only once they have an active commission with you. Public pages may show an "Accepts: PayPal · Interac" badge, showing the payment types you accept, never the values. You can hide any method at any time.

Because money moves off-platform, BladeOS does not hold funds in escrow, so there is no platform-run buyer/seller protection. That tradeoff is the price of keeping payments safe from processor seizure. It is mitigated by the deposit/milestone structure with progress-photo proof and the two-sided trust system.