Deposits and payments policy

Last updated: August 2026 · What is charged, when, and when it comes back

This document explains the money side of a booking: what the charge includes, the difference between authorising and charging, how the security deposit works and when it comes back. Refunds for cancelling have their own document; everything else is here, including what happens to your money when something goes wrong.

Definitions

Booking:: The agreement between a traveler and a host for the use of a vehicle on specific dates, created on the platform and governed by the contract both sign.
Rental:: The amount corresponding to use of the vehicle for the booked period, excluding deposit and delivery fee.
Security deposit:: Refundable amount that answers for damage, missing items, fuel, fines and other charges under the contract.
Delivery fee:: Optional charge set by the host for bringing the vehicle to the traveler.
Payout:: The payment Vribe transfers to the host for a booking, with the commission already deducted.

1. Currency and conversion

All Vribe amounts are expressed and processed in US dollars. If your card is issued in another currency, your bank will apply its own exchange rate and may charge you a conversion fee: that happens between you and your bank, Vribe does not take part and receives no share of it. That is why the amount on your statement may not match exactly the one shown on the platform.

2. What is charged when you book

A booking's charge is made up of the rent, the services you chose and, if the booking carries one, the security deposit as a hold. The price you see is the final price: nothing is added at the moment of paying.

2.1 The parts of the charge

The rent for the booked period; the home delivery fee, only if you chose that service; the extras you chose; and, on vehicles offered without a deposit, the Administrative fee, included in the price you see. The pieces that are charged go in a single charge to your card, whether when booking or —if you chose to book without paying today— on the scheduled date; the security deposit is held separately and is never charged. If you have promotional credit available, it is deducted before charging and only from the host's price: it never pays the Administrative fee, the delivery or the deposit.

2.2 What is NOT charged

There is no charge for using the platform, nor for paying with one card instead of another, nor for booking a vehicle that asks for a security deposit. Vribe's commission is paid by the host and comes out of their payout, not out of your pocket. Nor is there a charge for cancelling: what happens when you cancel is that you are refunded less, according to the vehicle's policy, not that you are charged something new — and if the booking carried an Administrative fee, that fee is refunded to you in the same proportion as the rent.

3. Authorised is not charged

This is the distinction that causes the most confusion, because your bank shows both in similar ways. If the vehicle is instant-book, the charge executes on confirmation. If it requires the host's approval, the amount is authorised on your card without being charged: your bank shows it as a pending charge that reduces your available limit, but that money has not left your account. If the host accepts, the authorisation becomes a charge. If they decline or let their 24 hours pass, it is released and nothing was ever charged to you. How long the hold takes to disappear from your statement is decided by your bank, not by Vribe. And there is a third case: if you chose to book without paying today, nothing is charged or authorised when you book; the rent charge is executed on the scheduled date, and the deposit hold follows its own calendar, separately.

4. The security deposit

The security deposit is a refundable amount that answers for the amounts payable by you that the dispute process determines: damage, missing items, fuel, fines, late hours, extra kilometres and other charges arising from the contract that have reached that process. It is not part of the rental price and it is not charged: it is held, and if the trip closes without incident it is released in full. Asking for it is the host's decision: there are vehicles that do not ask for it, and on those nothing is held.

4.1 Who sets it

The host sets it when listing their vehicle, and it varies from one to another: they decide whether to ask for it and how much, so there are vehicles that ask for none. It is always shown separately at checkout, never mixed with the rent, so you know exactly how much of what you pay is refundable. On listings that do not ask for a deposit nothing is held and the price you see includes the Administrative fee. Your liability is the same in both cases: what changes is whether you leave money held or not.

4.2 What it covers and what it does not

It covers charges arising from the rental contract. It is not insurance and does not replace the vehicle's policy: if there is a claim covered by insurance, the excess is the traveler's responsibility under the contract, and the deposit may be applied to it. Nor is it a cap on liability: if the damage exceeds the deposit, the host keeps their remedies for the difference.

5. When the deposit is released

When the vehicle is returned, the host has 24 hours to inspect it and report damage, on every booking. If they report nothing, the booking closes and the hold is released by itself, without you having to ask. The automatic closing runs every hour, so it may happen up to an hour after the deadline is met; how long the hold takes to disappear from your statement is decided by your bank, not by Vribe. If at the time of return there were determined charges —late hours, extra kilometres—, they are not taken from the hold: they are presented to you for payment and you have 48 hours. If when the trip closes there is no open claim and no charge pending in dispute, the hold is released in full; if an unpaid charge or a claim entered the dispute process, the hold remains until its resolution and answers only for what that resolution determines. If the vehicle did not ask for a deposit, there is no hold to release: the booking closes just the same and with the same deadlines.

6. When the deposit does not release on its own

There are three situations in which the automatic release does not happen, and it is worth knowing them because in all three the money stays held until someone decides:

The host reports damage within their 24-hour window. The booking enters a dispute and, if the vehicle asked for a deposit, that amount is held until it is resolved.
A dispute is opened for any other reason — a charge you do not recognise, a problem with the vehicle, an incident during the trip.
The return inspection was flagged for manual review. The booking waits for someone on the team to look at the evidence: we prefer to delay the return rather than release a deposit with nobody having reviewed the case, because releasing it is irreversible.

7. What happens to the money in a dispute

When a dispute opens, the booking freezes and the money stops moving on its own. Nothing is charged or returned until there is a resolution, and that resolution is made by a person on the team reviewing the evidence, not by an automatic process.

7.1 If it is resolved in the host's favour

The determined amount is applied first to the deposit hold, which exists for that. If the hold is not enough, the difference is not automatically charged to your card: it remains a matter between the parties, with the file's evidence as backing. If it is enough and there is a remainder, the rest is released. If the vehicle did not ask for a deposit there is no held amount to charge against, so the charge remains from the first dollar a matter between the parties, with the same file as backing.

7.2 If it is resolved in your favour

The full deposit is released and the applicable part of the rental is refunded. If you had paid with promotional credit, that credit returns to your balance before the cash refund is calculated, so it is not lost through someone else's failure. If it's determined that the host didn't hand over the vehicle and the booking still has dates ahead, the rental is set aside for another vehicle as in the Cancellation policy (section 5.1).

7.3 How long it takes

Vribe aims to resolve each dispute within 72 hours of it being opened, and the system raises an internal alert when a case has few hours left to meet that target. It is a service target, not a guarantee: a case with contradictory evidence or one that needs further documentation may take longer, and if that happens we tell you.

8. Refunds for cancelling

Refunds for cancelling depend on the vehicle's policy —which you see at checkout before paying and which is frozen in your booking— and on who cancels. They are described in detail in the Cancellation Policy. The only thing worth repeating here is the rule that never changes: in every cancellation the deposit is released in full. The cancellation policy affects the rent and the delivery, never the deposit. All of this applies when the vehicle asks for a deposit; if it does not, there is no held amount to return and the cancellation only moves the rent.

9. Changes and extensions

Modifying a booking moves money, and it does not do so the same way in both cases.

9.1 Date change

If the change makes the booking more expensive, the difference is charged as a separate payment; if it makes it cheaper, it is refunded to you. The host's commission is recalculated with the rate frozen on your booking, not the current one, so a date change does not alter what they agreed to be charged.

9.2 Trip extension

If you extend with the vehicle already in your hands, the difference is calculated at the vehicle's current rate and charged as a separate payment, additional to the original booking. The extension only becomes firm once that payment completes: if it fails, the trip keeps its original dates and the return remains as agreed.

9.3 Refunds across several payments

When a booking has grown through one or more of these changes, the money charged lives across several separate payments. If a refund is later due, it cascades against each of them, starting with the original, until what you are owed is complete. You do not have to do anything different or claim separately.

10. Vribe's commission

Vribe charges its commission to the host, deducting it from their payout: it is not added to the traveler. The rate is frozen on the booking at the moment it is created, so neither a tier change nor a later modification alters what the host agreed to. The percentage and the tiers are in the Fees and commissions policy.

11. Promotional credit

If you have Vribe credit available, it is applied automatically on payment and deducted only from the rental. It does not cover the security deposit or the delivery fee, which are always charged to your card, nor the difference payments of a date change or an extension. If you cancel by your own decision the applied credit is lost; it returns to your balance if the failure was the host's, or if you change the dates instead of cancelling. The full rules are in the Referral programme terms.

12. Where your money lives

Vribe does not store your card details: the form where you type them is served by our payment processor and those details go straight to it. Vribe receives only what it needs to identify the payment and execute refunds. Every movement of a booking's money is recorded: charges, refunds and host payouts, including voided ones, which are marked as voided rather than deleted. That is what makes it possible to reconstruct afterwards what happened to every cent.

What this policy is not

It is not insurance nor a guarantee of cover: the deposit answers for the contract's charges, it does not replace the vehicle's policy or the excess, which are the traveler's responsibility. Nor does it set prices: each host decides their vehicle's rate and deposit, and Vribe does not intervene in that decision. It is not a promise about your bank's timings: what Vribe controls is when it executes the refund, not when your bank credits it. And it does not replace the Cancellation policy or the Disputes and incidents policy, which govern those two cases.

In the event of any discrepancy between the translated versions of this document, the Spanish version prevails.