Questions people actually ask

You pay Wasil, not the traveller. The charge lands on Wasil's Stripe balance the moment you accept a bid, and it stays there until you read your six-digit code to the traveller at handover. One honest word about that: it is an escrow-style hold on a platform balance, not a regulated escrow account with a licensed third party. The money genuinely does sit with Stripe rather than with your traveller, and it genuinely is not released until you give the code.

Write to us for a full refund at any point before the item is marked delivered — there is no cancel button, and a person at Wasil issues the refund through Stripe. After that, report it from the deal: an open report for a no-show or a non-delivery blocks the payout, so the money stays with Wasil while a person reads it. Nobody is paid out over a live report.

Ask us — there is no cancel button, and that is deliberate: the money is with Stripe rather than with Wasil or your traveller, so a refund is a real Stripe refund somebody has to issue. Write to us before the item is marked delivered and the full amount comes back. After delivery the code is what settles the deal, and a problem from that point is a report rather than a cancellation. Once a traveller has been paid out the money has left Stripe and cannot be pulled back.

The traveller keeps the difference. Your cap is what you are charged — they took the risk, fronted their own money and did the sourcing. Set a cap you are happy to pay rather than one you hope to beat.

As soon as your payment is held. Chat opens on the deal the moment the charge settles, and both of you then join the thread before either can send a message — so nobody is messaged by someone who has not agreed to talk. Before the payment lands there is no chat at all, and that is deliberate: until money is committed there is nothing to arrange, and an open channel before then is where a deal gets taken off Wasil, which is exactly where neither side is protected.

A person at Wasil reads it, and the money stays held while they do. A disputed deal is frozen — no payout, no refund — until an admin resolves it. We cannot promise a particular outcome, and we will not tell you what action was taken against someone else's account.

We do not verify identity documents. Accounts are confirmed by email only. What you can see is what the platform has counted: how many handovers a traveller has completed, and their reviews. The protection is the money rather than a badge — it sits with Stripe until you read your six-digit code at the handover, so somebody who never hands anything over is never paid.

The traveller carries the goods and is responsible for what is in their bag at the border. Wasil does not calculate, collect or pay duty, and none is included in your budget cap. Check your own country's allowances before you ask for something — the person at the desk will be them, not us.

Medicines, weapons, animal products, anything needing a licence, and anything sealed that the traveller has not seen inside. Some countries also restrict food, seeds, honey and dairy whatever the quantity. Every traveller reads the carry guidance and ticks it before they can bid, so this is a rule with a gate on it rather than a suggestion.

The delivery fee they bid, plus reimbursement of what they actually spent on the item. Travellers set their own fee and shoppers choose whether to accept it. Wasil's 12% is charged to the shopper on top of that fee and is never deducted from it — a traveller keeps what they bid in full. We do not set, suggest or cap the rate, and there is no published average: we are a pilot and any figure we printed would be made up.

After the shopper confirms the handover with their code. Payouts are manual bank transfers rather than an automatic split — a person at Wasil sends them — so allow a few working days. If there is an open report on the deal the payout is held until it is resolved.

Wasil never sees, stores or transmits your card number. Card details are entered on Stripe's own form and go straight to Stripe. What Wasil keeps is a Stripe customer reference, which is what lets you reuse a saved card without us ever holding the number.

Wasil runs Saudi to the world, so the real question is whether a traveller is flying to you. Pick your city when you post a request; if nobody is heading there yet, the request waits until someone is. We are a pilot and the corridors are still thin — that is the honest answer rather than a map with pins on it.