The first question almost every new freelancer asks is "how do I know I will actually get paid?" And the first question every new client asks is "what if I pay and nothing arrives?" GigNepal answers both with the same mechanism: escrow.

What escrow means here

When a client hires you, they do not pay you directly. They fund the order, or the first milestone, into a GigNepal escrow balance. The money leaves the client's card or wallet, so you know it is real, but it does not reach you until the agreed work is delivered and accepted. Neither side has to trust the other blindly; both sides trust the platform to hold the money in the middle.

The flow, step by step

• Agreement. The client accepts your proposal or buys your service. The price, delivery time and scope are locked into the order.
• Funding. The client pays into escrow using a Nepali gateway such as eSewa or Khalti, or an Australian card or PayPal. Only funded orders start the clock.
• Delivery. You upload the work through the order page, not through email or chat, so there is a timestamped record.
• Acceptance. The client reviews and accepts, or requests a revision within the agreed revision count. If they do nothing, the order auto-completes after the review window.
• Release. The funds move to your GigNepal wallet, minus the platform fee, and you can withdraw to your Nepali bank, eSewa, Khalti or an international payout method.

What happens when something goes wrong

Most orders complete without a hitch. When they do not, either side can open a dispute from the order page before the funds are released. A GigNepal staff member reviews the brief, the deliveries and the conversation, then decides whether the money is released, refunded or split. Because everything happened on the platform, there is evidence to look at instead of two people's memories.

Three habits that protect you

• Never start work on an order that is not funded yet. The order page tells you clearly.
• Keep the conversation and the files on GigNepal. Work agreed on WhatsApp cannot be enforced.
• For larger projects, use milestones so that each stage is funded and released separately. We cover that in a separate article on milestones.

Escrow is not exciting, which is exactly the point. It turns "I hope they pay" into "the money is already here."