RateMyFeet does not process payments. A subscriber pays a creator directly, on a service she chose, and the platform is never in the middle. That single fact explains most of what looks unusual about the flow, so this page goes through it properly.
It concerns both sides, whether you are buying access or selling it.
Nobody at RateMyFeet touches the money
There is no card form, no wallet, no balance and no payout, because there is nothing to hold. When a creator accepts your request, you pay her on her own payment service, and the money goes from your account to hers.
RateMyFeet
keeps the record, never the money
What RateMyFeet does is keep the record: who asked whom, when it was accepted, what was declared, what was confirmed, and what each side said about it. Every step is written with its author, its date and its reason. Neither side can rewrite it, and it is what any later decision reads.
Why it works that way
Three reasons, in plain terms.
A creator keeps everything she earns. There is no cut on the way through, because there is no way through.
A creator is paid on a service she already trusts. She is not waiting on a platform's payout schedule or its rules about her account.
Nobody's payment details land on RateMyFeet. The platform stores a link she published, and nothing else about either side's money.
The cost of that choice is that the platform cannot see whether a payment happened. Everything below exists because of that.
The RMF reference
When a creator accepts a request, RateMyFeet mints a short code: RMF- followed by four characters. It skips the letters and digits people misread, so it survives being typed by hand into a payment app.
You write it in the message of your transfer. She reads it and knows which request, and which month, your money is for.
The seven days, and what they are for
Three separate deadlines, all a week long, and they run one after the other rather than at once.
Within 7 days
The creator answers the request
Within 7 days
The subscriber pays and declares it
Within 7 days
The creator confirms, or says nothing arrived
After that
RateMyFeet decides
A creator has seven days to answer a request. Past that it expires, and the person who asked is told nothing was charged.
A subscriber has seven days to pay and declare it once a request is accepted. Past that the acceptance expires, with the same message.
A creator has seven days to answer a declared payment. She is nudged on the third day and warned on the sixth. Past that, the case goes to RateMyFeet.
A declared payment is the one thing that never expires by itself. Money may genuinely have moved, and only a decision closes it.
"Nothing received", and the second one
When a subscriber declares a payment, the creator has two answers.
"I received it" confirms it. Her confirmation and the opening of the month are one gesture: there is no state where she has been paid and the door stayed shut.
"Nothing received" sends the request back with a fresh deadline to pay, and the subscriber is told, with her note if she wrote one. This is the normal answer to a transfer that genuinely never arrived.
A second "Nothing received" on the same payment does something different: it takes the case out of her hands and gives it to RateMyFeet. She can still confirm the payment herself right up to the moment we decide, and the dialog warns her before she taps it.
What RateMyFeet can and cannot do
When a case reaches us, whether by a second "Nothing received" or by a week of silence, we read the recorded history of that request and the proof each side brings, and we decide. It is a declarative process, not an investigation: we have no access to anyone's bank account, and we never will.
When the creator stayed silent, we open the access on the strength of the subscriber's declaration, unless the proof says otherwise. A creator whose silence opened an access can contest that decision by writing to contact@ratemyfeet.io.
What we can do: open the access, or close the case without opening it. Both decisions are taken with a written reason, kept in the record, and both sides are told. We can also confirm a payment on the proof a subscriber sends, without waiting for a queue. For a first request that was accepted and then expired unpaid, we can still do it for up to thirty days, unless the creator has stepped away since or the two of you have started a newer request.
What we cannot do: refund anybody. The platform never held the money, so there is nothing for it to return. A refund is settled between the subscriber and the creator, under the rules of the payment service used.
What is not tolerated: declaring a payment that never happened. It is an abuse of the platform, and it can cost the account.
Founders, and the zero commission
RateMyFeet takes no share of what goes from a subscriber to a creator. For a creator approved before 1 January 2027, that is written into the terms for life: she is a Founder, it is stamped on her account once and never cleared, and it follows her even if she leaves Pro status and comes back later.
Whatever applies to creators approved after that date will be announced in the terms before it applies, and it never reaches a Founder.
One thing that is easy to misread: this is our commission. If the payment service a creator chose has fees of its own, those are its fees, today and tomorrow, and RateMyFeet has no say in them.
Taxes
Each side answers for its own tax obligations. The money went straight into the creator's account, so what she owes on it, and to whom, is between her and her country. RateMyFeet issues no invoice, no statement and no tax form, because it was never a party to the payment.
The figures a creator reads in her Studio Pro are the sum of the months she confirmed receiving. They are useful, and they are neither a bank statement nor a proof of payment.
Where the rules actually live
This page explains the mechanism. The rules that bind both sides are in the terms, and that is the text that wins if the two ever disagree.
The two step-by-step guides are How to open your backroom for creators and How to subscribe to a backroom for subscribers.