Before you pay a penny, here is exactly what happens to it

Funding a milestone charges the homeowner's card. Track My Build Ltd then holds that money in its own account with our payment provider until the homeowner approves the work, at which point it is transferred to the builder. Nothing is released on a timer and nothing is released without the homeowner pressing approve.

We would rather be straightforward about the limits of that. The money is not held in a separate client account, it is not safeguarded, and it is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Track My Build is not a bank and is not authorised by the FCA. If the company stopped trading while holding funded milestones, homeowners would rank as unsecured creditors. Section 1 of our Terms sets this out in full.

The milestone flow is a way of recording what has been agreed, what has been completed and what has been approved. It is a record-keeping and payment process, not a regulated protection scheme.

Nothing here is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and you should not treat Track My Build as offering deposit protection. What you get is control over timing and a complete record: milestones, evidence, documents and approvals kept together, and no money moving to the builder until you say so.

Payments run through a regulated payment processor. Builder onboarding and identity checks run on the same infrastructure.

Card details are entered directly into the processor's hosted checkout and are never seen, transmitted, or stored by Track My Build's servers. We store only a payment reference so we can show you a receipt.

No builder will be able to receive a payout without completing identity and business verification: government photo ID, date of birth, home or trading address, and, for limited companies. Companies House registration and director details.

Bank account ownership is verified before payouts are enabled. If verification fails or documents expire, payouts are automatically blocked and the builder's project pages show an unverified status to the homeowner.

Homeowners complete a short onboarding: verified email address, name, contact number and the property address the work relates to. Fraud screening and 3-D Secure authentication will apply to payments once live payments are enabled.

Verification status for both parties is shown openly in the project's Trust Centre, so each side can see exactly who they are dealing with, without ever seeing the other party's private documents.

The platform runs on managed infrastructure with row-level database security: every query is checked against your identity, so a homeowner can only ever read their own projects and a builder only theirs. Financial fields are write-protected at database level and can be changed only by verified server operations.

Uploaded documents and photos live in private storage. Files are served through short-lived signed links, so a URL cannot be shared or guessed to expose your paperwork.

All traffic to and from the platform is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher, with HTTPS enforced. Data at rest, database records, documents and photos, is encrypted with AES-256.

Passwords are never stored in readable form. Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider using industry-standard hashing, and you can sign in with Google if you would prefer not to hold another password.

Track My Build Ltd is NOT authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are not a bank, we do not offer credit, insurance or investment products, and nothing here is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Card processing is carried out by an authorised payment provider. Between a homeowner funding a milestone and approving its release, the money sits in Track My Build Ltd's own account with that provider. It is not in a separate client account and it is not safeguarded. We are taking specialist advice on the regulatory treatment of that arrangement and we claim no exemption, protection or safeguarding in the meantime.

If anyone tells you Track My Build is regulated or authorised by the FCA, they are wrong, including us. What we offer is control over timing and a complete project record: what was agreed, what was completed, what was evidenced and what was approved, kept together in one place.