What To Do When Escrow Isn’t Available: Secure Transaction Alternatives for Digital Assets

You have agreed a price on a digital business, perhaps a SaaS product, an app, or an e-commerce site, and you are ready to settle. The safest way to do that is through escrow, but you hit a snag: escrow.com does not operate in the buyer's or the seller's country. This piece explains what to do about it, starting with the default and working down to the fallbacks.

A note first: this is general information, not legal or financial advice. Payment rules, buyer protections, and banking arrangements vary by country and change over time, so confirm your own position with a qualified professional before you move funds.

Start with escrow.com

For settling a digital business sale, escrow.com is the on-brand default and, in most cases, the right answer. A licensed escrow service acts as a neutral third party: it holds the buyer's funds, confirms that the seller has delivered what was agreed, and only then releases payment. Neither side has to trust the other on faith, which is precisely the problem that kills so many private deals. If you can use escrow.com, use it, and stop reading here.

The reason this article exists is that escrow.com does not support every country. Before you assume you need a fallback, check the current list of unsupported regions on the escrow.com support site directly, because coverage changes. If your situation is not on that list, the default stands.

Everything below is what to reach for only when escrow.com genuinely is not available to you. These are fallbacks, not upgrades. None of them replicates a fully licensed escrow, and none is a reason to skip escrow.com when it is on the table.

Fallbacks when escrow.com is not available

The principle behind every option here is the same: settle in cash or by bank wire, and structure the exchange so that neither side has to act purely on trust. We are not talking about seller financing, deferred payment, or earning the price out over time. For the small digital businesses Indiemaker deals in, settlement should be clean and complete: funds move, the asset transfers, the deal is done.

Bank wire against a controlled handover

A direct bank wire is the most common fallback. On its own a wire offers no protection, so the safety comes from how you sequence it. The workable pattern is to tie the transfer of control, for example domain transfer, repository access, or account handover, to the cleared funds, and to agree the exact steps in writing before anyone moves. A structured, step-by-step handover is what makes this manageable; our guide to the asset inventory that turns a scary handover into a boring one sets out how to break it down so nobody is exposed for long.

A regulated third party holding funds

Where escrow.com is unavailable, a regulated third party in your own jurisdiction can sometimes play a similar role. A solicitor's or lawyer's client account, or in some countries a bank-provided facility, can hold the buyer's funds and release them once both sides confirm the terms are met. This is closer in spirit to true escrow than a bare wire, but it costs more, usually a percentage of the deal, and it needs a professional who has handled digital transfers before. Choose someone regulated, agree the release conditions in writing, and read the small print on fees.

Bank letter of credit for larger deals

For higher-value transactions between parties who do not know each other, a letter of credit from a bank is a long-established instrument. The buyer's bank commits to release funds only once defined conditions are met, such as confirmed transfer of the asset or working access credentials. It adds paperwork and cost and is heavier than most small deals need, but it is well understood in cross-border trade and can be the right tool when the sums justify it.

Whatever the fallback, settlement stays cash or wire, and the money moves in full at completion. If a proposed structure involves paying part now and part later, taking a share of future revenue, or the seller lending the buyer the price, that is not a settlement mechanism and it is outside the scope of a clean cash deal.

Do not bypass escrow to save a fee

When escrow.com is available, use it. The temptation to skip it and settle privately, to save the fee or move faster, is where most avoidable losses happen. The fee is small next to the value of the asset, and the protection it buys is the whole point. Trust is the hardest thing to establish in a small private deal, as we cover in the micro-deal trust problem, and a neutral third party solves it more cheaply than any workaround.

At Indiemaker, escrow is our default for settlement. When escrow.com is genuinely unavailable in a buyer's or seller's country, we act as an intermediary and both parties can contact us for help completing the transaction safely. What we will not do is treat a fallback as an excuse to cut corners.

Red flags to walk away from

Some of the clearest warning signs at the payment step are worth naming, since this is where deals most often go wrong. Treat any of the following as a reason to slow down or stop:

• pressure to skip escrow when it is actually available, or to move quickly "before someone else buys"
• a request to release control of the asset before funds have cleared, or to pay before you have verified what you are buying
• a refusal to put the settlement steps in writing
• payment routed through an unusual channel, a personal account, or an untraceable method rather than a normal bank wire
• a counterparty who resists any independent verification of the asset or their identity

More of these surface right at settlement than anywhere else; our piece on what kills a deal at the payment step goes deeper, and if this is your first purchase, how to buy your first digital business walks through the wider process.

The short version

Use escrow.com whenever it is available, and check its current country coverage before assuming you need anything else. When it genuinely is not available, fall back to a controlled bank wire, a regulated third party holding funds, or a letter of credit for larger deals, always settling in cash or by wire, in full, at completion. Keep the sequence in writing, verify before you release, and walk away from anyone who pushes you to do otherwise.