What Buyer Protection actually covers
Every marketplace purchase made through HoloLedger checkout includes Buyer Protection. Here's plainly what that is, what it costs, and what happens if something goes wrong.
When it applies
Buyer Protection applies to marketplace purchases completed through HoloLedger checkout — and only those. It doesn’t apply to card-for-card trades (see our Trading Guide), which have no money involved and their own, more limited protections. It also doesn’t apply to anything paid for outside HoloLedger — which is exactly why it’s worth keeping the whole transaction on the platform. See Safety for why moving payment off-platform is worth being wary of.
How checkout works
The price shown on every listing already includes the Buyer Protection fee, so it’s the total you’ll pay, with the breakdown on the listing. Before you pay, checkout shows it again: the seller’s price, the Buyer Protection fee, and the total. Delivery is currently arranged directly with the seller rather than collected through HoloLedger checkout, and checkout says so plainly rather than leaving it out. Payment itself is processed by Stripe — HoloLedger never sees or stores your card details.
The fee
The current Buyer Protection fee is calculated on a progressive scale against the item price, plus a small fixed amount per seller order, capped at a maximum:
| Portion of item price | Rate |
|---|---|
| First £20 | 6% |
| £20.01 to £250 | 4% |
| Above £250 | 3% |
Plus a fixed £0.30 per seller order, with the total fee capped at £75. The rates are progressive bands, not a single rate applied to the whole price — only the portion of the price within each band is charged at that band’s rate.
Worked example
This reflects the current fee schedule and isn’t VAT-inclusive pricing advice. Checkout always calculates and shows the exact fee for your specific order before you pay — treat the figures here as illustrative, not a substitute for what checkout actually shows you.
What the fee pays for
- Payment processed through a regulated payment processor (Stripe) rather than a direct transfer to the seller.
- A seller payout hold — HoloLedger doesn’t release the seller’s proceeds the instant you receive the item. It’s held for 48 hours after you confirm receipt, with no open dispute, before the seller is paid.
- A structured dispute process if something goes wrong (below), reviewed by a person before any decision is made — never automatic.
Dispatch, receipt, and completion
Once you’ve paid, the seller dispatches the card. There’s currently no formal dispatch deadline — if you’re unhappy with how long it’s taking, you can cancel any order that hasn’t been dispatched yet, at any time, for a full and immediate refund, no reason required. Once you receive the card, confirm receipt — that starts the 48-hour hold above, and also makes you eligible to leave a review.
If something goes wrong
You can open a dispute on a marketplace order for one of these reasons:
- the item never arrived — available once it’s been dispatched and at least 7 days have passed
- the item is significantly not as described, including suspected counterfeit
- the item arrived damaged
- you received the wrong item
- something else about the order
A written explanation is always required, and a photo is required for not-as-described, damaged, or wrong-item disputes. The seller has 5 days to respond with their own evidence — missing that window doesn’t automatically decide the dispute either way. Every dispute is reviewed individually; there are exactly three outcomes: a full refund of the item price, delivery charge (where one was collected), and the Buyer Protection fee itself; no refund; or you withdrawing your own dispute. There are no partial refunds, and a successful dispute doesn’t require you to return the physical card.
What Buyer Protection is not
It's a fee-funded process, not a financial product.
- Not insurance in the regulated-insurance-product sense.
- Not a guarantee against every possible loss.
- Not an authenticity guarantee — HoloLedger doesn’t grade or authenticate cards; a suspected counterfeit is a valid dispute reason reviewed case by case, not a certification.
- Not an escrow arrangement in the strict legal sense.
- Not a substitute for your card issuer’s own chargeback rights, which remain available to you independently.
If Stripe or your card issuer opens a chargeback on the same payment, HoloLedger’s own dispute resolution pauses until that concludes, so the same funds aren’t moved twice.
The full formal terms are in our Buyer Protection Policy.