Setting up prizes and escrow

If your challenge has a cash prize, fund it from the Settings tab in Manage — this opens a Stripe Checkout session, and the funds are held in escrow rather than sitting in your own account. Escrow is what lets participants trust that an advertised prize is actually backed by real money. Winners are paid out automatically once you announce results and the 48-hour appeal window closes, straight to each winner's connected payout account (set up via Stripe Connect from their own wallet settings — see "Setting up payouts" in the Innovation Wallet category). You don't need to manually send anything once the prize pool is funded.