Terms of Service

Talent Bridge is a marketplace operated in South Africa. We connect clients who need work done with freelancers who do it, and we hold the money in between.

We are not a party to the contract between a client and a freelancer. We do not employ freelancers, we do not supervise their work, and we do not warrant that any freelancer is competent or that any client will be reasonable. The agreement about what will be built, by when, and for how much is between the two of you. What we provide is the venue, the escrow, and a process for when it goes wrong.

Freelancers on Talent Bridge are independent contractors. Nothing here creates an employment relationship, a partnership, or an agency between any freelancer and Talent Bridge, or between a freelancer and a client beyond the terms they agree between themselves.

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into contracts. One person, one account. You are responsible for what happens under your account, including anything done by someone you gave your password to.

Everything you tell us must be true — your name, your location, your portfolio, your company. Misrepresenting who you are or what you have done is grounds for suspension, and if money is involved it is fraud.

Verification is optional. A verified badge means we have seen a government-issued identity document and that the name on it matched the name on the profile. It is not a guarantee of skill, honesty or solvency, and it should not be read as one.

Talent Bridge charges a flat 10% of the contract value. It is taken from the freelancer's side when the payment is released, which means:

• The client pays exactly the amount agreed. There is no buyer fee, no markup, and no processing charge added at checkout.
• The freelancer receives the agreed amount less 10%. This is shown on the contract before anyone commits to it.

There are no listing fees, no monthly fees, no fees for messaging or for sending a proposal, and no charge for withdrawing your earnings. If a contract is refunded in full, we take no fee at all.

We may change our fees. If we do, the change applies only to contracts created after we announce it — never retroactively to money already in escrow.

When a client funds a contract, the money is charged to them and held by our payment provider. It is not ours, and it is not the freelancer's. It is released when one of these happens:

• the client approves the delivered work;
• a dispute is resolved, in which case it is released according to that decision.

We release payouts to the bank account the freelancer has entered and confirmed. We do not verify that the account belongs to them beyond requiring them to confirm the number, and a transfer to a valid account number that turns out to be the wrong one cannot be reversed by us. Check your details.

Payouts are usually sent within one working day of approval, but transfers are executed by our payment provider and by the South African banking system, neither of which we control. We do not guarantee a settlement time.

We do not pay interest on money held in escrow, however long it is held.

You may not use Talent Bridge to find someone and then arrange payment elsewhere. This is not merely a commercial preference on our part: escrow, the dispute process, the ledger and every protection described in these terms exist only for transactions that happen here. A deal moved off-platform has none of them, for either side.

We flag messages and job posts that appear to solicit off-platform payment. Flagging is not blocking — the content still posts — but repeated or deliberate circumvention will result in suspension.

• Post work that is illegal in South Africa, or that requires the freelancer to break the law.
• Harass, threaten or discriminate against anyone. This includes discrimination on any ground listed in section 9 of the Constitution.
• Post someone else's work as your own.
• Create multiple accounts to evade a suspension, to bid against yourself, or to leave reviews for yourself.
• Scrape, spam, or use the platform to advertise anything other than your own services.
• Attempt to interfere with the platform's security, or access data that is not yours.

Unless the client and freelancer agree otherwise in writing, intellectual property in delivered work transfers to the client when the contract is paid in full — not when it is delivered. A freelancer who has not been paid retains ownership of what they made.

You keep ownership of everything you upload to Talent Bridge. You grant us a licence to store and display it as needed to run the platform: your profile and portfolio on your public profile, your job post on the job board, your files to the other party on a contract. That licence ends when you delete the content or your account.

Either party may raise a dispute on a funded contract. The money stays in escrow while it is open. We review what was agreed, what was delivered, and what the two of you said to each other on the platform, and we decide: refund the client, release to the freelancer, or split the amount.

Our decision determines what happens to the money we are holding. It is not an arbitration award and it does not stop either of you from pursuing the other in court or through any other lawful process — it only settles the escrow.

Full detail is in our Refund & Dispute Policy.

We may suspend an account that breaches these terms. A suspended account cannot post jobs, submit proposals or send messages. We record a reason for every suspension and we tell you what it is.

Suspension does not touch money already in escrow. We do not withhold a freelancer's earnings as a penalty. If work has been approved, the payout is released whatever the state of the account; if it is disputed, the dispute process decides.

You may close your account at any time from Privacy & data. Doing so deletes your personal information. It does not cancel a contract that is already funded — settle or dispute those first.

We provide the platform as it is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, or that any particular job will be filled, or that any particular freelancer will be hired.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything arising out of your use of Talent Bridge is limited to the fees we earned on the contract the claim relates to. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit or lost business.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, and nothing here excludes liability for our own fraud or gross negligence.

We may update these terms. Material changes will be announced on the platform before they take effect. Continuing to use Talent Bridge after that means you accept the new version. If you do not, close your account.

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction. Nothing here removes your right to approach the National Consumer Commission or any other statutory body.

Questions about these terms go to our contact page.