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Legal
Where a customer's payment sits between paying and delivery, when it reaches the merchant, and what happens when an order is refunded or disputed.
Last updated 8 August 2026 · Version 3
This policy explains where a customer's money sits between paying and receiving, when it reaches the merchant, and what happens when an order goes wrong.
It applies to money moving through EzStaw. It does not replace a merchant's own returns policy, which is the merchant's to write and to honour.
Each section starts with a one-line summary. The summary helps you read faster; the section under it is the actual policy.
What this means: the shop does not get paid until the customer has the goods.
Buying from someone you have not met is the hardest part of selling online. The customer worries about paying for nothing. The merchant worries about shipping for nothing.
So we sit in the middle. The customer pays us, we hold it, and we pass it on once the goods have arrived. The merchant knows the money is real before packing. The customer knows it is recoverable until the parcel is in their hands.
We are not a bank and we are not lending anyone anything. We are holding a payment that already belongs to one of the two of you until it is settled which one.
What this means: paid, held, delivered, released. Four steps.
Paid. The customer authorises the payment on their phone with Orange Money or Afrimoney. We never see their PIN.
Held. The money goes into an escrow account. It is not in the merchant's balance and the merchant cannot withdraw it. The order shows as paid so the merchant can pack it with confidence.
Delivered. On handover the customer gives a one-time code, which confirms the order arrived. This is the step that moves the money, so it matters that it is done at the door and not before.
Released. The money is sent to the merchant's payout account. EzStaw takes no fee from it; the merchant pays a plan subscription instead.
Every one of those steps is written to a double-entry ledger. Entries are added, never edited, so the history of a payment cannot be quietly rewritten by us or by anyone else.
What this means: two things hold a payout up. Neither of them loses your money.
Identity not verified. A merchant has to complete verification before we can send money to them. Until then, released funds stay in the account with the merchant's name against them. They are not lost. They go out once verification is done.
The mobile-money network is down. Transfers are retried. A network outage delays a payout, it does not cancel it.
If a payout has not arrived and neither of these applies, contact support and we will trace it.
What this means: the money is still in escrow, so it goes straight back.
Until an order is confirmed delivered, the payment is still sitting in escrow. A refund at this point returns it to the mobile-money account that paid.
The full amount goes back. EzStaw charges no transaction fee on any order, refunded or not.
A refund can be for the full order or for part of it, for example when one item of three is out of stock. Partial refunds add up: the total refunded on an order can never exceed what was paid for it.
What this means: the customer still gets the whole amount back, including our fee.
Once an order is confirmed delivered, the payment may already have been released to the merchant.
If a refund is approved after that point, the customer gets back the amount being refunded. For a full refund, that means the full amount the customer paid for the order.
EzStaw does not charge a transaction fee on the order, so there is no EzStaw transaction fee deducted from the customer's refund.
If the merchant has already withdrawn the money, we cannot simply take it back from an empty balance. The refund is recorded as an amount the merchant owes us, and we may recover it from future payouts or arrange another way for the merchant to settle it.
Where we have approved the customer's refund, we do not make the customer wait for us to finish recovering the money from the merchant.
What this means: talk to the merchant first. We step in when that does not work.
Start with the merchant. They have the order, they know what they shipped, and most disputes are a delivery mix-up that they can fix faster than we can.
If that does not resolve it, contact us with the order number and what happened. We can see the payment, the delivery confirmation and the message history, and we will decide based on what the records actually show.
We can refund from escrow while an order is still held. Once the money has been released and withdrawn, resolving it takes longer, because it becomes a matter of recovering funds from the merchant rather than releasing funds we still have.
A customer should raise a dispute as soon as they know something has gone wrong.
For an order that has not been delivered, a dispute can be raised at any time while the payment remains in escrow.
For an order that has been confirmed delivered, ask EzStaw to review the dispute within 7 calendar days of receiving the goods. A merchant's own returns policy may allow a longer period, and nothing in this policy removes any longer cancellation, refund, replacement or other right that Sierra Leonean law gives a customer.
When a dispute is escalated to us, we will acknowledge it within 2 business days and aim to make a decision within 7 business days after receiving the information we need from both sides.
A complicated case may take longer. If we cannot decide it within 7 business days, we will tell both sides what is holding it up and aim to resolve it within 14 business days.
We may ask for delivery records, messages, photographs, receipts, the delivery confirmation code, or other information reasonably needed to decide what happened.
Orders that are never confirmed
If an order has been paid for but is never confirmed delivered, the money stays in escrow. We do not release it to the merchant simply because time has passed.
If 30 calendar days pass after payment without delivery being confirmed, and the merchant did not clearly state a later delivery date, either party may ask us to review the order and we may also review it ourselves.
We will contact the merchant and customer where reasonably possible. If the merchant cannot provide reasonable evidence within 5 business days that the order was delivered or is still being fulfilled with the customer's agreement, we may cancel the order and refund the customer.
If the merchant provides reasonable evidence of delivery, we may ask the customer for more information and decide the order under the dispute process above.
Money remains in escrow while that review is taking place. There is no automatic release to the merchant merely because a particular number of days has passed.
What this means: normally the merchant. Sometimes us.
The merchant sets their own returns policy and normally decides whether a refund is due, the same as in a physical shop.
We issue a refund without the merchant's agreement when the order was never delivered and the merchant cannot show that it was, when the payment was fraudulent, when the listing broke the Terms of Service, or when the law or our payment providers require it.
We do not normally overrule a merchant's returns policy simply because a customer changed their mind.
That does not take away a customer's rights under Sierra Leonean law. For electronic purchases where the legal right of withdrawal applies, a customer may cancel the purchase within the period provided by law even without giving a reason. Some categories of goods and services are excluded from that right.
Where the law requires a refund, the merchant's own returns policy cannot be used to take that right away.
What this means: back to the mobile-money account that paid, automatically.
Refunds go back to the account the payment came from. We do not refund to a different number, and we do not pay refunds in cash, because sending money somewhere other than where it came from is how refund fraud works.
The transfer is automatic once the refund is issued. How quickly it lands depends on the mobile-money network rather than on us.
If the paying number has since been disconnected, contact support with the order details.
Once a refund is approved, we normally submit it to our payment provider on the same or next business day.
The time it takes to appear in the customer's mobile-money account depends on Orange Money, Afrimoney and the payment network. If the refund has not arrived within 5 business days after we confirm that it was issued, contact support and we will trace it.
Where a customer exercises a statutory right to cancel an electronic purchase, we will process the reimbursement within the period required by Sierra Leonean law. Where the seven-day electronic withdrawal right applies, reimbursement must be made as soon as possible and no later than 14 days after the customer exercises that right.
What this means: this policy is about order money, not about your subscription.
Everything above concerns money customers pay for orders.
A merchant's own subscription is different. Plan fees are billed in advance and are not refundable for a period already billed, except where the law says otherwise. Cancelling stops the next payment; it does not refund the current one. The free trial exists so that nobody pays before deciding.
What this means: here is where to write about a payment.
Have the order number ready. It is the fastest way for us to find the payment.
PeekTower Company Limited, trading as EzStaw, is registered in Sierra Leone under company registration number SL260922PEEKT15470.
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Questions about this page? Get in touch through the contact form. For how EzStaw protects payments and data, see Trust & security.
EzStaw is an e-commerce platform owned and operated by PeekTower Limited, a company registered in Sierra Leone.