Security & escrow
Built so No One Has to Trust Anyone
A store sale moves six figures between strangers. Kairos is designed so the process carries the trust - not the buyer, not the seller, and not us.
Read-only, or it does not connect
Sellers link Shopify through a read-only token they create themselves. Kairos can read the order history to verify it - it can never touch the store, the products, or the money. Revoke the token in your Shopify admin whenever you like, and we stop reading.
No wire goes straight to the seller
The buyer never wires the seller directly. Funds sit with Escrow.com, a licensed third-party escrow provider, while the handover runs on a checklist. They release only when the transfer is actually done. Kairos never holds the purchase price.
NDA-gated numbers, leak-traced
Full financials unlock only after a buyer signs the NDA. Every unlocked document is fingerprinted to the buyer who received it - if a memo leaks, we know which copy it was.
Everything on the record
Unlocks, offers, approvals, payouts - every sensitive action lands in an append-only audit log, and the LOI and purchase agreement are signed through DocuSign. Disputes get settled by reading what happened, not by arguing about it.
Verification does not go stale
Verified listings are re-checked against their live data every week. If the numbers drift from what was proven, the tier drops - automatically.
Gold cannot be bought or faked
The gold mark is reserved for states proven from real store data. A self-reported number stays amber no matter who the seller is. That rule is enforced in the design system itself.
What We Actually Run
Names you can look up, and the measures our privacy policy commits us to. Same words in both places.
Who touches a deal
- Escrow.com - Holds the money and releases it when the handover is confirmed
- Stripe - Takes the offer deposit and the invoices - card details never reach us
- DocuSign - Signs the LOI and the purchase agreement
- Shopify - The store data a seller connects, read-only
- Vercel - Hosting and listing file storage, in the United States
- Railway - The database, in the United States
- Resend - Sends the transactional email - no marketing lists, no tracking
Kairos is operated from the United Arab Emirates and its providers run in the United States. For EU, UK and Swiss users those transfers ride on Standard Contractual Clauses, and the privacy policy names the mechanism per provider.
How the data is held
- Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes.
- Store access tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.
- Sessions use signed, httpOnly cookies.
- Access to admin functions is role-gated and logged.
- Money never touches Kairos systems - settlement runs through the escrow provider and payments through Stripe.
Straight from the privacy policy, which also lists every provider and what it receives. No pen-test report or SOC 2 to show yet - when there is one, it will be named here rather than implied.
Five Stations. No Shortcuts
The full escrow path of a Kairos deal. The seller gets paid at station five - never at station one.
Offer accepted
Both sides sign the structured offer.
Funds in escrow
The buyer pays Escrow.com, not the seller.
Store transferred
Shopify, domain, suppliers - handed over on a checklist.
Handover verified
The buyer confirms every item on the list.
Funds released
Only now does the seller get paid.
When the Money Actually Moves
It is not enough to hear the money is held safely. Here is the whole rule, in order. Nothing releases until every line is true.
The buyer funds the full amount, in escrow
The whole sale price goes to Escrow.com, the licensed escrow provider, before anything transfers. It never touches a Kairos account.
Both sides sign the APA
The asset purchase agreement is signed and on the deal before the handover starts. No signature, no transfer.
Every critical asset is handed over and ticked off
Each one has to move and be marked done. One critical item still open blocks the close. The exact list, straight from the handover playbook the deal room runs on:
- Transfer the Shopify store
- Re-verify Shopify Payments for the new owner
- Move the Google Ads account
- Transfer the domain
The buyer confirms the handover
The buyer is the one who closes the deal, not us and not the seller. Their confirmation is what moves it to closed.
Only then do the funds release
Escrow pays out on close. Our success fee is auto-deducted at that moment, before the seller is paid. Cancel before close and no fee is charged - we only get paid when you do.
And after the funds release: We do not disappear the moment funds release. We stay until every asset has changed hands and you have confirmed each one - no 30-day clock, no ticket left to go cold.
Both promises live at their own addresses, made to be sent: /escrow-release and /post-close-support.
When Something Goes Wrong After Close
Most marketplaces go quiet the moment funds release. Here is what actually exists on a Kairos deal for the weeks after close - and where its limits are, said plainly.
- 1
Weeks 1-2: the buyer re-runs the numbers
In the first two weeks after handover, the buyer re-runs the key reports against the live store. The numbers were proven at listing; this confirms they are still true in the buyer's hands.
- 2
Inside the inspection window, the record decides
Every deal closes through escrow with an inspection window agreed up front - 1 to 30 days is the standard range. A dispute inside that window runs on the escrow provider's process. Kairos never holds the money and never adjudicates it - we mediate the facts, from the append-only deal-room log. Every unlock, offer, and confirmation is timestamped, so a dispute is settled by reading what happened, not by arguing about it.
- 3
The seller stays on for the transition
The purchase agreement includes a transition period - 30 to 90 days of seller support is the market norm - so the store does not go dark the day it changes hands. We check in at day 30.
- 4
A holdback can be agreed up front
A deal can be structured with a holdback - part of the price released later - so a surprise in the first months has a remedy that is already funded. Whether one applies, how much, and for how long is agreed in the purchase contract before close, not improvised after.
- 5
Proven misrepresentation is counted in public
If a store is found to have been misrepresented, the listing is removed, the seller is banned, and the rejection is counted on the public scoreboard. One strike.
After the inspection window closes and any holdback releases, remedies live in the purchase agreement between buyer and seller - the warranties both sides signed. Kairos is the venue and the record, not a party to the contract. That is also why the record is append-only: if it ends up in front of a lawyer, it reads the same as it did on deal day.
Built so You Can Wire with a Steady Hand
Escrow, read-only data, NDA tracing, an append-only log. Join the list and move money through a process, not a promise.