JoyR1der is built so that people can buy and enjoy live experiences with confidence, and so that creators are paid reliably and lawfully. This page sets out — plainly and honestly — how we handle money, how creators are paid, how we screen for financial crime, how tax is dealt with, and where we sit under New Zealand law. It is written for our community, our partners, our insurers and the media.
1. How your money is handled
2. Established payment companies move the money
3. Client money & segregation
4. The safeguards we apply
5. Sanctions screening
6. Identity verification (KYC)
7. Tax
8. The NZ legal framework
9. For reviewers & contact
When you buy Clicks (JoyR1der’s in-app credit for live experiences), your payment is processed by established, regulated payment companies — Apple and Google for in-app purchases on mobile, and Stripe for card payments on the web. Clicks are prepaid credit you spend inside JoyR1der; they are not cashable back to money by buyers.
When a creator (“host”) earns their share of Clicks and cashes out, the payout is sent by our payout partner, Trolley, to the creator’s payout account (at this stage, PayPal). Until then we hold creator-payable amounts as our own funds pending payout (section 3 explains why), and every payout is screened, held to maturity, and checked before it is released.
JoyR1der does not move money between people’s bank accounts itself. Payments are collected by Apple, Google and Stripe, and creator payouts are sent by Trolley. Card details are entered on those companies’ own payment pages and never reach JoyR1der. Each of these companies runs its own checks on the payments and payouts it handles.
New Zealand’s client-money trust rules (in the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 and its regulations) exist to protect people who hand money to a broker or custodian in connection with a financial product — shares, managed investments, derivatives and the like. They require that kind of money to be held on trust in a separate account.
JoyR1der’s Clicks are none of those things. They are simple, closed-loop prepaid credit for entertainment and live-experience services — not a security, investment, or financial product, and buyers cannot redeem them for cash. We sell Clicks as our own product and pay creators as a counterparty under a revenue share. For those reasons, our reading of the legislation is that the statutory client-money segregation regime does not apply to our model (see section 8).
Financial-crime prevention and creator protection are built into how payouts work:
| Safeguard | What it does |
|---|---|
| Established payment companies | Payments are collected by Apple, Google and Stripe, and payouts are sent by Trolley; card details never reach JoyR1der. |
| Sanctions screening | Every payout recipient is screened against official sanctions lists before money is released (section 5). |
| Identity verification | Creators complete a selfie age check before they go on camera and a government-ID check before they cash out (section 6). |
| Maturity hold | Earnings mature for a 90-day period before payout, giving refunds and card chargebacks time to resolve and preventing rapid money-in/money-out cycling. |
| Daily buy/spend limits | How much a member can buy and spend in any rolling 24 hours is capped, and the caps rise with verification (selfie tier: US$100/day each; full-ID tier: US$10,000 purchases and US$1,500 spend per day). This bounds a compromised or fraudulent account's daily exposure. Real Clicks only; admin-adjustable. |
| Ongoing monitoring & records | The creator base is re-screened as sanctions lists update, and compliance records are retained for the required periods. |
We screen every payout recipient against the United States OFAC sanctions lists and the related consolidated lists, using the official public-domain sanctions data, before any payout is released. Screening runs at payout time and again as the lists are updated, so a person designated after an earlier payout is caught. If a payout matches a sanctions listing it is held for review, never released automatically, and handled through our compliance process. We also block payments connected to comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions.
Verification is tiered to the risk of what a member does. Anyone can browse and watch public streams unverified. Before spending money, messaging privately or going on camera, a member completes a free face liveness and age-estimation check (a “selfie”), which is processed to estimate age and immediately deleted (see our Privacy Policy). At the selfie tier, buying and spending are allowed but capped at US$100 per day each (section 4). Hosting, going on camera and selling need only that selfie check. Before withdrawing funds — and to raise those daily caps to US$10,000 / US$1,500 — a member completes a government-ID check through a specialist identity-verification provider. Our payout provider additionally performs its own “know your customer” checks on payees as the regulated party. Identity data is handled in line with our Privacy Policy.
Tax on purchases. Apple and Google act as the seller of record for in-app purchases on mobile, and the price you pay there includes any tax they collect and remit. Web card purchases are processed by Stripe.
Tax on your earnings. If you earn on JoyR1der, you are responsible for any tax on those earnings, as our Terms say. We may withhold or report where the law requires it.
Our position is grounded in New Zealand’s financial-markets and financial-crime legislation:
This reflects our considered position on current New Zealand law and is kept under review, including as New Zealand’s payments-system regulation develops. It is provided for information and is not legal advice.
We’re happy to provide further detail to insurers, partners, regulators and journalists reviewing how JoyR1der handles money and compliance. A more detailed briefing document is available to counsel and reviewers on request. Please contact us at hello@joyr1der.com.