YourTime"No-show fee" sounds simple — flake, pay. But the moment you try to make it real between two ordinary people, hard questions appear. Who holds the money? Who decides whether someone actually showed? What if both are a little late? What if one phone dies?
This is the full walkthrough of how YourTime answers those questions — the same mechanics, in the same order, that both people see in the app before anything is committed.
Step 1 — Two people, two deposits, zero charges
When you schedule a meetup, each of you attaches a deposit — you choose the amount, starting at $10. Crucially, this is a card authorization hold, not a payment. It's the same thing a hotel does at check-in: your bank reserves the amount, nobody receives it, and it isn't money that left your account. Nothing is charged when you schedule, and the hold itself is only placed shortly before the meetup.
The symmetry is the point. Neither person pays the other up front — which is why this works between strangers where sending a seller a deposit doesn't.
Step 2 — Show up, and GPS does the confirming
Around the scheduled time, the app checks each person's distance to the agreed spot. You can arrive up to 30 minutes early. Be at the spot together — about 30 seconds side by side — and the meetup confirms automatically on both phones. No forms, no "did they show?" argument: the confirmation is built from both devices being at the same place at the same time. (If GPS is being difficult, there's a one-tap backup where the other person confirms you're there.)
Privacy note, because it's the first thing people ask: the app records only your distance to the meetup spot during the meetup window — never your coordinates or route — and the other person only ever sees your status at the spot (arrived, or left), never where you are. More in the FAQ.
Step 3 — Both showed: both holds released, always free
The moment the meetup confirms, both deposits are released in full. A meetup that happens costs nothing — no fee, no cut, ever. This isn't a promotional detail; it's the design. The system only ever makes money from the person who wasted someone's time.
Step 4 — Someone didn't show: their deposit pays the person who did
If your counterpart never arrives, their deposit is charged as a no-show fee, and most of it is paid to you — YourTime keeps a service cut and the app shows you the exact net amount before you ever commit. Your own deposit is simply released: showing up can never cost you money.
Lateness is graded, not binary: within 15 minutes of the start still counts as on time; 15 to 30 minutes late pays a partial fee; more than 30 minutes late is a full no-show. Cancelling works on the same principle — free 48+ hours out, a sliding fee closer in.
The rule that makes it humane: leaving early only costs you if the other person actually shows up. If they never arrive, you can leave whenever you like and pay nothing — their no-show counts against them no matter when you left. And every ambiguous case is decided the same way: when the evidence is unclear, the system leans toward the outcome that moves no money at all.
What if it's genuinely unclear?
Phones die, GPS drifts, people wait at the wrong entrance. When the automatic confirmation can't tell what happened, nothing is charged automatically — the meetup goes to a human review before any deposit moves, and only the person the review finds at fault pays. A false "everything's fine" costs nobody; a false fee takes someone's real money — so the system is built to prefer the first mistake over the second, every time.
Why mutual beats one-sided
One-sided deposits — buyer pays the seller to "hold" something — concentrate all the risk on one stranger and all the power in the other. Mutual holds spread it evenly: both committed, neither paid, a neutral referee with GPS evidence in the middle. That's the difference between a fee that punishes and a deposit that simply makes "I'll be there" mean something again.
If you sell on Marketplace, the companion piece — how to stop no-shows as a seller — covers the lighter tactics too.