How this works, in plain language

Where is my money right now?

Money on a contract is in one of three states, and they never get added together. Held means your card was charged and the amount is sitting in escrow: it has left your account, and the person doing the work cannot take it until you approve. Agreed — unsecured means it is written into the payment schedule but nothing has been charged: it is a promise, not protection, and nothing about it is safe for either side. Paid means it has been released to the person who did the work, and it is gone.

Two more states exist and deliberately count toward none of the three totals. Refunded is money that came back to you. Not funded is a scheduled payment on a contract that is over — nothing is owed and nothing will be charged.

Money in an open dispute is still held. It has left the brand and sits in escrow, frozen while the case is looked at. It is never quietly counted as paid and never dropped.

Binding wording: Terms of Use §6 Payments, Escrow, Milestones and Refunds

Why is there escrow at all?

It does two jobs, and it is only worth having if it does both: it stops a brand paying for work that never arrives, and it makes sure a professional is paid for work they actually did.

That is why money does not simply come back when a brand changes its mind, and why it does not simply stay with the platform when a professional goes quiet. Every rule below is that one principle applied to a specific moment.

Binding wording: Marketplace Terms §3 Milestone protection

I pressed approve — what just happened?

Approving releases the milestones whose work actually arrived, and only those. A milestone counts as arrived if the professional handed it in and the hand-in was recorded, or if the work for that part of the brief is sitting in your queue waiting on you.

At the same moment, everything that was handed in becomes your data: measurements, bills of materials, tech packs, patterns, samples and colourways move out of "proposed" and into your PLM. Work still in draft was never handed in and does not move.

Anything with no evidence of delivery stays held. It is not released and it is not cancelled — it sits in escrow with the decision recorded, so neither side loses it while the work is outstanding.

If a release fails — most often because the person being paid has not finished their payout setup — you are told which milestone failed and why, rather than being shown a success message over a payment that did not move.

Binding wording: Marketplace Terms §3 Milestone protection

What does Weavae charge?

On money that moves between a brand and a maker, Weavae takes a commission out of the maker's payout. It is deducted from what they receive; it is not added on top of what the brand pays.

The commission is 10% on professional work and 8% on production through a vendor. If the brand brought that professional or that vendor onto the platform themselves, the rate drops to 7% and 5%. The rate is stamped onto the contract when it is created and that stamped rate is what gets charged at payout, so a later change to our pricing cannot reach a contract already running.

There is one charge that goes the other way. If a brand pays in a currency we do not settle in, or from a card issued outside our home country, a surcharge is added on top of the milestone — about 2% for the currency conversion and about 1% for the international card. It is shown before the payment is confirmed. If we cannot confirm which country the card was issued in, the international rate is applied and the reason says so.

Subscription and seat prices are separate from all of this and are shown to you at the point of purchase.

Binding wording: Terms of Use §5 Subscriptions, Fees, Trials and Marketplace Take-Rate

I want to cancel and it will not let me

A contract cannot be closed over money that has not been settled. If your card has been charged for work that was never handed in, cancelling would leave that amount with nowhere to go, so the cancellation is refused and the exact amount is named.

There are two ways out, and the refusal points at both. Approve the work if it has in fact arrived — that pays it out. Or open a dispute and have the amount decided by a person.

The same refusal happens for two other reasons. Money already in dispute stops a cancellation, because the dispute is deciding where that money goes and closing the contract underneath it would settle a live case by accident. And a milestone marked funded with no payment we can point at also stops it, because absorbing that would quietly keep your money.

When a cancellation does go through: money already released stays paid; money for work that was handed in is still paid out to the professional afterwards; scheduled payments that were never charged are never charged, because closing the contract shuts the funding door.

What this costs you: We considered refunding held money automatically and decided against it, because a brand could then take three days of work that had not been handed in yet and be made whole by pressing a button. The cost of that decision is real and we would rather name it: if your professional has gone silent, you have to open a dispute to get out, and that is friction on someone who may well be the wronged party.

Binding wording: Marketplace Terms §4 Ending a contract

The other side has gone silent

Open a dispute on the milestone. Either side can do it, and it needs one sentence saying what went wrong.

Opening one freezes that milestone immediately — it can no longer be released or auto-released while the case is open — tells the other side what was said, and opens a support conversation addressed to the party the case is against, so nobody's money is frozen without an explanation and a way to reply. Both sides can add evidence at any point.

A Weavae administrator then decides one of three things: release the money to the maker, refund it to the brand, or split it, in which case the maker is paid the agreed share and the rest is refunded. Our commission is charged only on the share the maker is actually paid.

What this costs you: What we cannot promise is speed. A dispute is decided by a person, there is no service-level commitment behind it yet, and we are not going to invent one on this page. If a case is sitting too long, say so in the support thread that was opened with it.

Binding wording: Marketplace Terms §5 Disputes

How long do I have to check work that was handed in?

3 days from the moment a milestone is marked delivered. Inside that window you can approve it, or dispute it if something is wrong.

After the window closes, that milestone releases to the professional on its own and can no longer be disputed. This is deliberate protection for the person who did the work: it means the money cannot be clawed back indefinitely after the job is done. If something genuinely went wrong after the window, contact support — but it is no longer a self-serve reversal.

Binding wording: Marketplace Terms §3 Milestone protection

Is Chimæra World a party to my contract?

No. The contract is between you and the other business. We provide the place you find each other, agree terms, hand work over and move money, and we are not a party to what you agree.

That means the price, the scope, the deadline, the warranty and the quality are between the two of you. We do not manufacture, design, guarantee an outcome, or act as anybody's employer or agent.

The one place we do step in is a dispute over held money, and there we decide only where that specific milestone goes — not who was right about the work.

Binding wording: Terms of Use §3 Description of the Service and §7 Marketplace Transactions

I hired an agency — who actually gets paid?

The agency. When the quote is accepted, whoever the brief was assigned to becomes the payee on the contract, permanently, and for an agency that is the agency itself.

An agency then hands the work to one of its own people internally. Doing that gives that person access to the styles and the work for that brief; it does not change who the contract is with and it does not change who is paid. Re-assigning the work to a different person takes the first person's access away.

A seat at an agency is paid by their agency, on whatever terms they have between them. Weavae does not pay them and has no view of that arrangement.

Binding wording: Marketplace Terms §2 Who the parties are

What do you actually store?

The account itself — your name, email address, the role you signed up as, and the workspaces you belong to. If you signed in with Google, the name and email address Google gave us.

The work — everything you or your collaborators put into the product: styles, bills of materials, measurements, tech packs, patterns, samples, colourways, files, briefs, quotes and messages.

The money trail — contracts, payment schedules, what was charged, released or refunded, and the events behind each. Card details are never stored by us; they go straight to the payment processor.

The record of what you agreed to — every acceptance, opt-in and withdrawal, with when it happened and which version of the document it was for. Your IP address at the moment of consent is stored as evidence of that consent, and for nothing else.

Binding wording: Privacy Policy §2 What we collect

Can I take my data with me?

Yes. A workspace can be exported from Settings, and the export covers the work in it rather than a screenshot of a dashboard.

Binding wording: Privacy Policy §5 Your choices

How do I see or withdraw what I agreed to?

Settings shows every document, the version currently in force, and whether you have accepted it and when. The record is append-only — withdrawing does not erase the earlier acceptance, it adds a withdrawal on top, so the history stays honest in both directions.

Optional things can be withdrawn there, including the separate opt-in that lets your completed work be used to train AI features. The Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy cannot: withdrawing them while still using the product would not mean anything. Closing your account is how you withdraw from those.

Binding wording: Privacy Policy §5 Your choices

What happens if I delete my account?

You can delete it yourself, from Settings. Because it cannot be undone, you have to type your own email address to confirm, and you are shown first which workspaces would be destroyed and which would survive.

A workspace where you are the only member is deleted with you, and its data goes with it. A workspace with other people in it survives — only your access to it is removed. One person leaving never destroys a shared workspace.

One refusal exists: if you are the last platform operator, deletion is refused until somebody else is made one.

What this costs you: We are not stating a retention period, because we do not have one a lawyer has approved. Some financial records almost certainly have to survive an account deletion for tax reasons; exactly which, and for how long, is on the open-questions list below.

Binding wording: Privacy Policy §6 Deleting your account

Is AI reading my work?

There are AI-assisted features in the product, and using one sends the relevant content to the model provider to produce that answer.

Using your completed work to train anything is separate, off unless you turn it on, and can be turned back off. It is not bundled into the Terms of Use and it never will be — deliberately, because burying it there was considered and rejected.

Anything an AI feature produces can be wrong. It is a draft for you to check, not advice, and every consequence of acting on it is yours.

What this costs you: AI-generated output does not yet carry a machine-readable marker saying it is AI-generated. Transparency rules are expected to require one. This is on the open-questions list rather than quietly missing.

Binding wording: Terms of Use §12 Artificial-Intelligence Features