01 · Hold
Writing to you costs a hold.
A stranger writes, and PayPal places a $3 hold on their account. Nothing is charged yet.
PayPal Orders v2 · intent AUTHORIZE
Postage for your attention
Strangers pay to reach you. The good ones pay nothing.
A small PayPal hold on every message from a stranger. An AI reads it against what you want to hear about. Worth your time? The hold is released.
01 · Hold
Writing to you costs a hold.
A stranger writes, and PayPal places a $3 hold on their account. Nothing is charged yet.
PayPal Orders v2 · intent AUTHORIZE
02 · Read
An AI reads it the way you would.
It scores the message against what you said you want to hear about, not a generic spam list.
Gemini · structured verdict
03 · Worth it
Worth your time? The hold is voided.
Score 70 or more and the hold is released on the spot. Maya's offer scored 95. She paid nothing.
Payments v2 · void
04 · Spam
Spam pays for itself.
Rahul sent the same pitch to two people. It scored 15. Confirm it, and the $3 goes to GiveDirectly.
Payments v2 · capture
Postage for your attention
Strangers pay to reach you. The good ones pay nothing.
01 · Hold
Writing to you costs a hold.
A stranger writes, and PayPal places a $3 hold on their account. Nothing is charged yet.
02 · Read
An AI reads it the way you would.
It scores the message against what you said you want to hear about, not a generic spam list.
03 · Worth it
Worth your time? The hold is voided.
Score 70 or more and the hold is released on the spot. Maya's offer scored 95. She paid nothing.
04 · Spam
Spam pays for itself.
Rahul sent the same pitch to two people. It scored 15. Confirm it, and the $3 goes to GiveDirectly.
Postage for your attention
Strangers pay to reach you. The good ones pay nothing.
Sandbox · no real money moves
How it works
02 · Read
An AI reads it the way you would.
It scores the message against what you said you want to hear about, not a generic spam list.
Gemini · structured verdict
03 · Worth it
Worth your time? The hold is voided.
Score 70 or more and the hold is released on the spot. Maya's offer scored 95. She paid nothing.
Payments v2 · void
04 · Spam
Spam pays for itself.
Rahul sent the same pitch to two people. It scored 15. Confirm it, and the $3 goes to GiveDirectly.
Payments v2 · capture
Why it holds up
Hard to game. Easy to trust.
0.887
vs 0.684 · cut-off 0.85
Blasts get caught, even reworded.
The AI boils every message down to one neutral line and compares it with what the same sender sent other people this week. The same pitch reworded scored 0.887. Genuinely different messages scored 0.684.
PayPal
verified name and country
Every sender has a real name.
Recipients see the sender's PayPal name and country, straight from PayPal. Nobody can pose as someone else.
000
score for “SYSTEM OVERRIDE”
Orders hidden in a message are ignored.
A message that tells the AI to score it 100 is flagged as an injection attempt and treated as spam.
2
people who found them worth it
Good senders get the benefit of the doubt.
Once two different people found a sender worth it, keyed to their PayPal account, any message the AI is unsure about is released at once. It never overrides spam.
$0
charged when the AI fails
If the AI fails, nobody is charged.
The hold waits for you to decide. Toll never takes money because a model was down.
Live from the sandbox
Every number is real.
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Reading the ledger
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Reading the ledger
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Reading the ledger
Agentic commerce
AI agents can knock too.
Recruiting and sales agents read your Toll through an API, send one message, and a human approves the PayPal hold. Every agent message is labelled with the agent and who it works for. No human approval, no message.
Read the agent APIPOST /api/v1/tolls/dhruv/messages
{ "subject": "Design-engineering internship",
"agent": { "name": "Scout",
"operator": "Studio Recruiting" } }
201 { "approve_url": "https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/…",
"status_url": "/api/v1/messages/…" }