How payments work
This page explains every place money is involved in our product — what can be paid for when enabled, who receives it, and what is only planned. We have written it to be read end to end by an ordinary visitor and by a payment or compliance reviewer.
Our product has two distinct layers, and they are separate by design. The social layer is where people show what they want. It does not move money. The commercial layer is where money is paid for something specific. Ads and Community Boosts are distinct promotional purchases from us. A target campaign, which is planned and not available, would be a separate offer that a verified company or creator issues on its own terms.
Everything below is labelled with its real status. Where a capability depends on a payment provider's written approval, we say so and we do not describe it as available.
Community Boosts
A Boost is an ordinary purchase from Artificial Frontier for promotional distribution. You pay us to show a public demand to more people. That is the entire product.
When someone buys a Boost, the money is paid to Artificial Frontier in exchange for additional appearances of a public demand in other people's feeds. The budget is spent per appearance delivered, over a window of up to 30 days. Whatever is not delivered in that window is refunded to the original payment method.
A Boost buys reach and nothing else. It never adds supporters. It never changes how the demand ranks organically. It has no effect on any economic total in the product. And the company or creator the demand is aimed at receives nothing from it — a Boost is not a payment to them and never becomes one.
When Boost checkout is enabled, eligible adults may buy in US dollars wherever the payment methods offered by our Stripe Checkout configuration are available, between $5 and $500 per Boost. We may apply explicit country restrictions. A missing profile country does not by itself block checkout. We activate a Boost only after Stripe confirms payment. Card details are entered on Stripe's own page and we never see or store a card number.
- Who is paid
- Artificial Frontier
- What is bought
- Additional feed appearances for one public demand
- What the target gets
- Nothing. No money reaches the company or person the demand is aimed at.
- Amount
- $5 to $500 per boost, US dollars
- Delivery window
- Up to 30 days from payment, or until the budget is delivered
- Undelivered budget
- Refunded to the original payment method
- Processing
- Stripe Checkout. We never receive or store card numbers.
- Availability
- Built. Availability is shown in the product; purchases require Stripe payment confirmation.
What a Boost is not
It is not a donation. It is not a contribution to the company or creator named in the demand. It is not Verified Demand, and buying one changes no economic total anywhere in the product. It is not backing for a campaign. It buys distribution from us, on our platform, and nothing else.
Ads
An Ad is a purchase from Artificial Frontier for a defined number of commercial impressions. It is separate from a Community Boost and is always labelled Ad when delivered.
An advertiser chooses sitewide or category placement, selects either a general or adults-only audience, submits its advertiser name, message, and destination, and purchases impressions at the price shown at checkout. Each campaign requires operator review before delivery. Ads do not add supporters, change organic demand ranking, or put money behind any demand or target.
When Ad checkout is enabled, eligible adults may buy in US dollars wherever the payment methods offered by our Stripe Checkout configuration are available. We may apply explicit country restrictions. A missing profile country does not by itself block checkout. We credit an order for delivery only after Stripe confirms payment and reports a valid billing country allowed by our policy. A paid checkout with a missing, malformed, or disallowed billing country is rejected for delivery and marked for a full refund.
Delivered impressions are charged against the purchased order. If a paused campaign has unused impressions, the corresponding undelivered amount can be refunded to the original payment method. Read the refund and cancellation policy for Ads and Boosts →
- Who is paid
- Artificial Frontier
- What is bought
- A defined number of labelled Ad impressions
- Placement
- Sitewide or within one selected demand category
- Review
- Required before paid delivery begins
- Undelivered amount
- Eligible for refund after the campaign is paused
- Availability
- Availability is shown in the product; purchases require Stripe payment confirmation.
Verified Demand
No money is collected merely because someone adds Verified Demand. It is evidence of what a person wants and what it is currently worth to them — not a payment, not a reservation, and not permission to charge them later.
A person chooses an amount while completing verification for a specific outcome. A typed amount on its own does not create a record or change the public total. Only successful provider verification creates Verified Demand. The amount is capped by verified capacity, allocated across the demands the person has joined, so the same capacity cannot be counted in unlimited places at once.
Verified Demand can be reduced or withdrawn at any time. Increasing it requires a new verification. It expires within seven days and has to be renewed. A failed, abandoned, cancelled, expired, or unsupported verification does not create or increase an amount. An earlier still-valid amount remains until it is reduced, withdrawn, expired, or replaced. It is not a payment authorization or a commitment to anything in the future.
When verification is available, an eligible adult can voluntarily link one supported United States checking or savings account through Stripe Financial Connections. This separate US-bank policy does not expand when Ads and Boosts are available outside the United States. Verification collects no payment, reserves no money, authorises no merchant, and publishes no personal financial information.
- Money collected
- None
- Money reserved
- None
- Merchant authorised
- None. At this stage there is often no merchant at all — the target may not have responded or verified itself.
- What it is
- Evidence of current economic intent, counted only when supported and bounded by verified capacity
- Lifetime
- Up to seven days; renewal is explicit
- Shown publicly
- Aggregates only — never an individual's identity, amount, payment method, or evidence
Target campaigns
Planned, and not available. A campaign is an offer a verified company or creator issues in response to a demand aimed at it. We will not operate one until a payment provider has reviewed and approved the flow in writing.
The intent is narrow on purpose. A target that has verified its identity, its authority to act for the organisation, and its ability to be paid could publish an exact all-or-nothing preorder or reward campaign: a specific deliverable, a specific price, a specific minimum, and a specific deadline, all fixed at publication. Changing an economic or legal term does not edit the offer — it creates a new version that people have to agree to again.
Prior demand never becomes a charge. When a campaign opens, the people who had added Verified Demand are invited to look at it. That is all that happens. There is no automatic backing, no payment attempt, no carried-over authorisation, and no adding of Verified Demand to campaign backing — they are different things and are never summed. Someone who wants to back the offer chooses their own amount and agrees to the published terms as a separate, fresh decision.
Whether such a campaign goes ahead would depend on money that actually arrived and stayed eligible, measured against the published minimum by the published deadline. Clicks, expressions of interest, and pending attempts would not count toward it. If the minimum is not reached, the target takes on no obligation, there is no payout, and backers are refunded on the campaign's published terms.
We would also say plainly, on the offer itself, what kind of risk a backer is taking: this structure pays the target before it delivers, which means a backer is relying on that target to do what it published. We make no promise of delivery on a target's behalf.
- Status
- Planned. Not built for live money, and gated on a payment provider's written approval that we do not have.
- Who could open one
- Only the demand's one verified, merchant-onboarded target. Never us, never the demand's author, never a third party.
- Who would be paid
- The target that issued the campaign, after fees
- Funds-flow structure
- Undecided. Merchant-of-record, settlement structure, payout timing, and risk allocation are questions for our payment provider, and we claim no answer to them here.
- Go / no-go
- Money that actually arrived and remained eligible, versus the published minimum, by the published deadline
- If the minimum is missed
- No obligation for the target, no payout, and refunds on the published terms
Future possibilities
Things we have thought about and deliberately excluded from what we are building now. We list them because a reviewer should hear about them from us rather than infer them.
Merchant-fulfilled group purchases
A group of people who all want the same thing might one day buy it together from a merchant that fulfils the order. This is a future idea only. It is not built, not enabled, and would be a separate product decision reviewed separately with a payment provider before anything was operated.
Additional campaign types
The first campaign type we are asking to run is deliberately the narrowest one: target-issued, all-or-nothing, preorder or reward. Other structures are conceivable later, and each would be reviewed on its own before it existed.
What we do not do.
Some of this is obvious from the product, but it is easier for everyone if it is written down.
- No peer-to-peer cash transfer. You cannot send money to another person through our product, and it is not designed to allow it.
- No wallet, no stored value. Nobody has an account balance with us and there is no balance surface in the product.
- No investments or securities. Nothing we offer is a share, a stake, a return, or a financial instrument of any kind.
- No crypto. No tokens, no coins, no blockchain component, anywhere.
- No lending or credit. We do not lend, arrange credit, or offer deferred payment.
- No money transmission. We are not a bank, a money transmitter, or a financial institution, and we do not describe ourselves as one.
A note on how this is described
We make no claim on this page about how a payment provider does or should classify us, which entity is the merchant of record for any future campaign, or what settlement structure would be used. Those are decisions for a provider to make with us in writing, and until they are made we will not describe them as settled.
If you are reviewing us and something here is unclear or reads as inconsistent with what you see in the product, please tell us and we will correct it. Contact details are here.
Related pages
The refund and cancellation policy covers Ads and Boosts in detail. The terms of use and privacy policy describe the rest of the relationship.