❓ Before you trade

My supplier wants to be paid in USDT. How do I pay without losing the money?

Normal, and increasingly common for cross-border suppliers. The risk is not the USDT; it is sending it before anything is delivered. Hold it in escrow instead and release by stage.

A supplier asking for USDT instead of a wire is not a red flag by itself: it clears in minutes, it does not depend on correspondent banks, and in several countries it is simply how exporters get paid. What is a red flag is the same thing as with a wire: being asked to send the full amount, or a deposit, to an address before anything is produced or shipped. USDT sent to a wallet is final. So do not send it; hold it.

How to pay a supplier in USDT safely

  1. 1Agree the stages and the evidence for each in writing, as you would with any order.
  2. 2Open a Business Escrow room (or a product trade) with the supplier on iEscrow and fund the whole amount in USDT. The supplier sees the funds locked; you have not paid anyone yet.
  3. 3Release each stage when its evidence is in: production started, inspection passed, shipped with documents. Each release goes to the supplier’s iEscrow balance, from where they withdraw to any wallet of theirs.
  4. 4If a stage is not met, you do not release it, and an arbiter decides any dispute on the documents.

Practical things people get wrong

  • Which USDT. There are several networks (Tron, Ethereum, others). On iEscrow you choose the network for the trade and the supplier withdraws on a network of their choice; what matters is that the escrow holds the amount, not the rail.
  • Address typos. Inside escrow you never type the supplier’s address: the release goes to their account on the platform. The classic "sent to the wrong address" loss does not exist in this flow.
  • Your own records. The trade record (amounts, dates, stages, counterparty) is what your accountant will ask for. Keep it.
If the supplier wants USDT "to your wallet, today, then we ship", that is the wire-transfer scam with a different rail. The answer is the same: funds held, released by stage.
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