PayMe connects verified vendors with buyers who want to convert USDC/USDT to Nigerian Naira. This guide covers how the platform works, how your ranking is calculated, and what to expect.
PayMe is a crypto payment app where users hold USDC and USDT in non-custodial smart wallets. The P2P marketplace lets verified vendors convert users' crypto to Nigerian Naira — you receive USDC/USDT and pay out NGN to the user's bank account.
All trades are secured by a 2-of-3 multisig smart contract. The three parties are: the buyer, the vendor (you), and the PayMe platform. Any outcome — releasing funds to you or refunding the buyer — requires two of the three to agree.
PayMe cannot unilaterally take your funds. The buyer cannot take their crypto back by simply asking. You cannot claim the crypto without the buyer's confirmation. Two parties must agree. Always. This is enforced by code on a public blockchain — not by policy, not by trust in PayMe.
Every time a buyer places an order, the system scores all eligible vendors in real time and routes the order to the highest scorer. Your ranking is calculated from four signals:
| Signal | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Star Rating | 35% | Your average rating from buyers (1–5 stars) |
| Exchange Rate | 35% | How competitive your rate is vs other online vendors |
| Completion Rate | 20% | % of accepted orders you successfully completed |
| Response Speed | 10% | How quickly you accept orders on average |
All four signals are normalized relative to other active vendors at the time of routing — so your score is always competitive, not absolute. If you're the only vendor online, you get full marks on every signal.
Buyers rate you 1–5 stars after every completed trade. This is the single most important signal in your ranking.
Only your last 50 ratings count. Recent performance outweighs your history — if you had a bad patch, you can recover.
If you have fewer than 5 completed trades, the system assigns you a neutral score (equivalent to 2.5 stars) so you aren't penalised before you've had a chance to build a track record.
Once you have 10 or more trades, if your rolling average drops below 2.0 stars, the algorithm applies a significant score penalty — you'll rank lower and receive far fewer orders until your rating recovers.
What this means for you: every single trade matters. One excellent trade doesn't erase several poor ones within your last 50. Treat each order as if it's your only rating.
Your rate is how much Naira you offer per 1 USDC or USDT. This carries the same weight as your star rating — 35%.
The algorithm normalises rates across all online vendors. If you offer the best rate, you score 1.0 on this signal. If you offer the worst, you score 0.0. Everyone else lands in between.
A great rate can compensate for a slower response time or slightly lower completion rate, but it cannot fully compensate for a poor star rating.
Practical guidance: keep your rate competitive without pricing yourself out of profitability. Check what other online vendors are offering regularly. A rate that was competitive last week may not be today.
Your completion rate is the percentage of orders you accept that result in a completed trade. It's calculated incrementally across your full trade history.
An incomplete trade includes: orders that result in a dispute won by the buyer, and orders that expire unresolved. A cancelled order (where you reject or the buyer cancels before escrow) does not count against your completion rate — but excessive cancellations have their own separate penalty.
Target: keep your completion rate above 90%. Vendors with consistently low completion rates drop in ranking even if their rate and star rating are strong.
How fast you accept an order after it arrives. Measured in seconds, averaged using an exponential moving average — your most recent responses are weighted more than older ones, so becoming consistently faster improves your score relatively quickly.
Practical guidance: enable push notifications and keep the vendor dashboard open when you're online. Set yourself offline when you cannot respond quickly.
Cancellations are tracked separately from completion rate and carry escalating penalties.
Each cancellation reduces your routing score by 8%, stacking up to a maximum 32% reduction. This is applied on top of your base score — even a perfectly-rated vendor can be meaningfully deprioritised by repeated cancellations.
| Cancellations | Score reduction |
|---|---|
| 1 | −8% |
| 2 | −16% |
| 3 | −24% + cooldown triggered |
| 4+ | −32% (maximum) |
Once you hit 3 consecutive cancellations without a completed trade in between, you are placed in a 6-hour cooldown — you will not receive any new orders during this time.
Every completed trade resets your cancellation streak to zero. The streak that triggers a cooldown block resets after each cooldown is applied.
Important: do not mark an order as paid before you have actually sent the Naira. If the buyer disputes and you cannot provide evidence of payment, the dispute will be resolved against you.
Auto-accept skips the manual "Accept" step — orders are accepted for you instantly. This maximises responsiveness, but comes with strict rules:
Only enable auto-accept when you are online, funded, and ready to pay within 30 minutes. If you're stepping away, turn it off — or go offline entirely.
Buyers can have up to 5 active orders, capped by how many eligible vendors are actually available.
Vendors have no limit on simultaneous orders — you can accept as many as you can handle. But every accepted order must be paid within 30 minutes or it reroutes.
PayMe uses a three-party vote to resolve every trade outcome. The three parties are: buyer, vendor (you), and PayMe platform. Any action requires two of the three to agree:
| Outcome | Who votes |
|---|---|
| Normal completion | Buyer confirms + Platform co-signs → funds released to vendor |
| Dispute resolved for vendor | Platform + Vendor vote release → funds released to vendor |
| Dispute resolved for buyer | Platform + Buyer vote refund → buyer gets crypto back |
| Mutual cancellation | Buyer + Vendor vote refund → instant refund, no admin needed |
PayMe cannot unilaterally take your funds. Even if an admin makes a resolution decision, the platform's vote alone is only 1 of 3. The contract enforces this. It is not a policy — it is code on a public blockchain.
Disputes freeze the escrow. Neither you nor the buyer can move the funds while a dispute is open.
Once you mark fiat as sent, a 2-hour auto-release countdown starts. If the buyer does not confirm receipt or open a dispute within 2 hours, the escrow automatically releases your USDC/USDT to you. This protects you from buyers who receive Naira and go silent. If the buyer opens a dispute, the auto-release is paused and an admin resolves it.
You will be asked to submit evidence — bank transfer receipts, screenshots, transaction references. Submit these promptly. Admin reviews both sides independently.
| Trigger | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Rolling avg below 2.0 stars (after 10+ trades) | Auto-deboost — ranking drops significantly, far fewer orders routed to you |
| 3 consecutive cancellations | 6-hour cooldown — locked out from receiving orders |
| 2 mark-paid timeouts (auto-accept on) | Auto-accept disabled for 24 hours |
| Dispute resolved against you (evidence of fraud) | Permanent removal of vendor status — no appeal |
| Acting in bad faith (false payment claims, fabricated evidence) | Permanent removal of vendor status — no appeal |
Deboosts are recoverable — improve your rating and you climb back. Vendor removal is permanent and not reversible. Fraudulent vendors are excommunicated from PayMe P2P forever.
Your PayMe wallet is always yours. P2P penalties only affect vendor status and P2P access — your crypto, sending, receiving, and bridging capabilities are never touched. PayMe is self-custodial: no one can ever take your funds.
Before you can receive orders, you need to:
Once live, orders will route to you automatically based on your score.
OPEN PAYME →