How Payments Work on Zoooom

1. How Zoooom payments work

A Zoooom car sale can settle entirely online, entirely in cash, or as a split of the two. The seller receives their full asking price in every case.

The buyer pays the vehicle price plus Zoooom's flat $100 service fee — by bank wire, processed secank wire, processed securely by Stripe. On a card the seller is paid out instantly. Nothing is ever deducted from the seller for processing.

If you pay online in full, nothing is left to pay at the handoff. You meet to inspect the car, sign the title and bill of sale, exchange keys, and both tap “Confirm handoff” in the app. If you agreed on cash, or on a split, that portion changes hands at the same meeting.

Why pay online at all, when cash is free of Zoooom fees? Because withdrawing a five-figure sum and handing it to a stranger in a parking lot is the most dangerous part of a private-party sale, for both people. Paying through Stripe means verified identities on both sides, dispute rights, no counterfeit exposure, a seller who is paid before the keys move, and a clean payment record tied to the VIN. Cash remains your choice — Zoooom simply does not charge you for making it.

2. The Zoooom service fee, explained

Every transaction on Zoooom includes a $100 flat service fee paid by the buyer online. It's the same regardless of vehicle price and the same regardless of payment method — card, debit, or bank wire. It's waived only for a pure cash deal, where no money flows through Zoooom.

The service fee covers:

• Identity verification (KYC) of both buyer and seller
• VIN-level vehicle ownership verification
• Document authentication and forgery checks
• Payment infrastructure and dispute mediation — the network processing cost itself is passed through to the buyer at cost, not marked up
• Payouts released to sellers as soon as the funds settle
• Title transfer support and the in-app Deal Center where buyer and seller close the deal
• Customer support before, during, and after the transaction
• Chargeback and dispute defense — Zoooom contests disputes on the seller's behalf and reviews every chargeback for reimbursement

3. Payment methods

There are three rails. Checkout prices each one for you and shows the exact total before you confirm.

• Credit card — coming soon. Not available yet. When it arrives it will bring instant authorization and full card-network buyer protections, with the card rate passed through at cost.
• Debit card — coming soon. Will work exactly like a credit card at checkout, with funds drawing straight from the buyer's bank.
• Bank wire — the online rail today: only the $100, because Zoooom covers the bank fee. No price ceiling, so it covers a car of any value. It is not instant — you send it from your bank, and one started before 2:00 PM Pacific is typically received the same day (see section 6).

Cash at the handoff is also supported, and a 100% cash sale carries no Zoooom fee at all — not even the $100. A split works too: pay part online, hand over the rest in cash, and the $100 rides the online part.

If you are a little short of cash, card the gap — not the whole price. Say a car is $8,000 and you have $6,000. Putting the entire $8,000 on a card costs about $325 in processing; putting only the $2,000 shortfall on the card and handing over $6,000 in cash costs about $84. Same car, same day, roughly $240 cheaper — and only $2,000 is exposed to your card’s interest rate instead of $8,000.

Zoooom does not offer financing or buy-now-pay-later — no loans, no credit checks, no pre-approvals, and Klarna and Affirm are no longer offered. Financing is coming soon.

4. Who pays processing, and how it is priced

Card networks and payment processors charge a fee on every electronic payment — typically around 2.9% + $0.30, and more on some rails. On most marketplaces that cost is either deducted from the seller's payout or marked up and added to the buyer's total as a “convenience fee.”

On Zoooom the buyer pays it, at cost, and Zoooom takes no margin on it.

• The seller receives the full asking price — nothing is deducted for processing, so there is no haircut to price around.
• The buyer pays the price and the flat $100 Zoooom fee — and, on a bank wire, nothing else. Zoooom covers the bank fee. When cards arrive, the card rate will be passed through at cost with not a cent of margin added.
• Zoooom's $100 flat fee is its entire revenue on the transaction.

Because the cost differs by rail, checkout prices each one separately and shows you the totals side by side before you choose. A bank wire is always cheaper for the buyer than a card — and on a 100% cash sale there is no fee at all, including the $100.

5. Card and debit — coming soon

Credit and debit cards are not enabled yet. Bank wire covers any price, so no car is out of reach — the ceiling only decides which rail you use.

Why cap the card rails at all?

• It bounds chargeback exposure. Card payments can be disputed for up to 120 days after the charge. On a private-party car sale between strangers, an unbounded card charge is the single largest risk in the system — to Zoooom and, ultimately, to sellers.
• Wire is better suited to large amounts anyway. It is not reversible in the same way, it settles same day when started before the cutoff, and it costs the buyer far less than card processing on a five-figure sum.

Separately, your own card issuer will have its own limit — frequently around $1,000 per transaction or per day — which is set by your bank and is invisible to Zoooom. Hitting that limit is the most common reason a card is declined on a car purchase.

The $100 Zoooom service fee is charged in addition to the vehicle price.

6. Bank wire and the 2 PM Pacific cutoff

Bank wire is supported for the online payment, with one scheduling rule: wires must be started before 2:00 PM Pacific. After that cutoff the wire option is hidden at checkout, and you'll use a card or debit card instead, or wait for the next business day.

The reason is settlement timing. A wire started before the afternoon cutoff can be received and confirmed the same day; one started later is received the next business day. You can start a wire at any time — checkout is always open — and the deal simply settles a day later. We tell you which it will be before you send it, rather than leaving a seller waiting and unsure.

A wire costs the buyer nothing beyond the flat $100: there is no card processing today, and Zoooom covers the bank fee, so the only thing added is the $100. The trade-off is speed — a wire is not instant. You send it from your own bank, which is why the 2 PM Pacific cutoff matters. To pay by wire, select it at checkout and you receive the transfer instructions to give your bank.

7. How fast sellers get paid

When the buyer's wire is received and the funds settle, the seller's payout is released to their bank — typically within a couple of business days. The seller receives their full asking price with nothing deducted for processing; Zoooom absorbs the bank fee on the wire.

Zoooom does not offer instant payouts yet. Paying a seller within minutes requires settled funds to draw from, and a card or wire payment is not settled at the moment it is made. That changes when real-time rails — RTP and FedNow — are in place, and instant payout arrives with them. We would rather tell you the real timing than promise a speed we cannot hit.

Here's the full sequence:

1. Buyer pays online. The buyer pays the full vehicle price plus the $100 fee plus the processing cost of their rail, by card, debit or bank wire.
2. Seller is paid on settlement. The full asking price is released to the seller once the wire clears — typically a couple of business days, and weekends and holidays.
3. Both parties meet in person. The buyer inspects the vehicle; keys, title and paperwork change hands. There is no money left to exchange. Both tap “Confirm handoff” in the app to close the deal.

Setting up payouts (sellers)

To receive payouts, a seller connects a Stripe Express account and adds a bank account (an eligible debit card can be added too, ready for when instant payouts arrive, since those pay to a debit card, not a bank account number). The one-time setup takes a few minutes and happens the first time you accept a payment. Once it's done, every future sale pays out to that card automatically.

Chargebacks and reversals

If a buyer pays by card and later disputes the online charge, Zoooom responds with the documentation collected during the transaction — KYC records, VIN verification, the in-app handoff confirmation, signed bill of sale, and messages between the parties. Zoooom reviews every dispute case by case and stands behind sellers who followed the flow.

8. Worked examples

In every example the seller receives their full asking price, with nothing deducted. What changes is what the buyer adds on top. Exact dollar amounts are quoted live at checkout — the arithmetic lives in one place on the server, deliberately not duplicated here, so the number you read is never different from the number you are charged.

Example A: $8,500 Honda Civic, paid by card

Paid by bank wire — the online rail available today.

Example B: the same $8,500 Civic, paid by bank wire

The cheapest option for the buyer — Zoooom covers the bank fee, so the card rate disappears entirely. The trade-off is that a wire is not instant.

Example C: $25,000 truck

A bank wire has no ceiling, so an expensive car is paid for exactly the same way as any other.

Example D: $8,500 Civic, settled 100% in cash

No money moves through Zoooom, so Zoooom charges nothing — not even the $100.

A split deal works the same way: the $100 and any card processing apply only to the portion paid online.

9. Security and dispute protection

Your payment information is never stored on Zoooom servers

When you enter your card details at checkout, they go directly from your device to Stripe via an encrypted, PCI-compliant connection. Zoooom never sees your full card number. We receive only a tokenized reference and a confirmation of payment success.

Why passing funds straight through is safer than holding them

Zoooom never holds your money. Payment moves from the buyer straight to the seller through Stripe, so the seller is paid the moment checkout completes rather than waiting on a platform to release funds. There is no escrow account, no holding period, and no third party sitting on the price of a car — which also means there is no balance for a failed platform or a frozen account to strand. Buyers keep the dispute rights their card network already gives them.

Identity and ownership verified before checkout

Before either party can complete a transaction, Zoooom has already verified:

• The buyer's identity via driver's license scan and selfie match (KYC)
• The seller's identity using the same process
• The seller's ownership of the vehicle via VIN, license plate, and document authentication

What happens if something goes wrong at handoff

If the car doesn't match the listing, if the seller can't produce a clean title, or if either party feels unsafe completing the deal, do not tap "Confirm handoff" and do not hand over the balance. Tap "Report an issue" in the Deal Center instead. Zoooom support investigates within one business day, and can refund the online deposit where warranted. Because the bulk of the money is exchanged in person only after inspection, you're never handing over a car's full price to a deal that hasn't checked out.

Card-issuer protections layered on top

When the purchase is paid by credit card, buyers also benefit from card-network and card-issuer protections that apply automatically: fraud monitoring, $0 fraud liability on most US cards, and the right to dispute charges that don't match the merchant's description. Check with your card issuer for the specifics of what your card covers.

10. California disclosure

SB 478 (Honest Pricing Law) compliance

California's SB 478, effective July 1, 2024, requires that all mandatory fees be included in the displayed price of a product or service. Zoooom complies as follows:

• The $100 mandatory Zoooom service fee is included in the headline price displayed for every marketplace listing. When you see a price on a vehicle card, that price already includes the service fee — no add-on at checkout.
• The breakdown (vehicle price + service fee) is shown on the listing detail page and again at checkout, so you always know exactly what you're paying for.
• There is no buyer surcharge on any payment method. The buyer pays only the displayed price plus the $100 service fee — payment processing costs are absorbed entirely by Zoooom, never added to the buyer's charge.

11. Frequently asked questions