May 15, 2026
· by The Snapitup team
How payments work on Snapitup
You pay Snapitup. Snapitup pays the seller after the courier confirms delivery. Here's the legal shape behind that, and why it matters in Belize.
If you've sold anything online in Belize, you know the rhythm: agree on the price, agree on a place to meet, hope the buyer shows, hope they're not flaky, hope the cash is real.
The meeting part is the dangerous part. The cash part is the avoidable part. So we started with the cash part — but we did it in a specifically Belizean shape, not the generic "escrow" pattern you'll see on US marketplaces.
Here's how it actually works. On Facebook Marketplace, you wire money to a stranger and hope. On Snapitup, you pay **us** — Stripe, DigiWallet, Atlantic Bank transfer, or Ekyash — and we settle with the seller after the courier confirms delivery. The buyer's contract is with Snapitup; the seller's counterparty is Snapitup. If the buyer never gets the item, the refund comes from us. If the seller is delivered against a fake card, the chargeback hits us, not them.
Why not just call it escrow? Because in Belize, escrow is a regulated banking activity — running an escrow service legally requires a licence and a substantial deposit with the Central Bank. Snapitup doesn't hold that licence. Instead, we use a different legal shape: Snapitup buys from the seller and resells to the buyer in the same transaction. Same buyer protection, same seller protection, different legal structure.
That's the difference between a managed marketplace and a Facebook group: we sit on the other side of every transaction, both sides. We're the buyer's counterparty and the seller's counterparty. Browsing, search, ratings — all of that matters too. But it's the easy half.
The meeting part is the dangerous part. The cash part is the avoidable part. So we started with the cash part — but we did it in a specifically Belizean shape, not the generic "escrow" pattern you'll see on US marketplaces.
Here's how it actually works. On Facebook Marketplace, you wire money to a stranger and hope. On Snapitup, you pay **us** — Stripe, DigiWallet, Atlantic Bank transfer, or Ekyash — and we settle with the seller after the courier confirms delivery. The buyer's contract is with Snapitup; the seller's counterparty is Snapitup. If the buyer never gets the item, the refund comes from us. If the seller is delivered against a fake card, the chargeback hits us, not them.
Why not just call it escrow? Because in Belize, escrow is a regulated banking activity — running an escrow service legally requires a licence and a substantial deposit with the Central Bank. Snapitup doesn't hold that licence. Instead, we use a different legal shape: Snapitup buys from the seller and resells to the buyer in the same transaction. Same buyer protection, same seller protection, different legal structure.
That's the difference between a managed marketplace and a Facebook group: we sit on the other side of every transaction, both sides. We're the buyer's counterparty and the seller's counterparty. Browsing, search, ratings — all of that matters too. But it's the easy half.