anyone know of any escrow agents other than bitrated? looking for other reputable service providers, and frankly don't quite understand the bitrated.com platform.

Trades & Payments
How does the payment system works?

The Bitrated payment system allows to make reversible e-commerce transactions using multi-signature smart contracts.

The buyer and seller nominate, ahead of time, a trust agent to act as an arbiter for their transaction. The buyer then makes the payment to a 2-of-3 multi-signature address, which is locked until two of the parties agree to release it.

The payment process consists of of four steps:

After agreeing on a contract and a trust agent, a new trade is created by the buyer. [screenshot]

All parties are required to review & authorize their participation in the trade. [screenshot]

The buyer is requested to make the payment into the multi-signature address. The seller can verify that the payment is secured in the multi-signature and provides the goods/service to the buyer. [screenshot]

The payment is now locked for the duration of the trade, until two of the three parties – buyer, seller and trust agent – agree to release it. [screenshots]

This can go in two ways:

When everything goes well, the buyer & seller agree and release the payment to the control of the seller. No intervention by the trust agent is required in this case.

When a dispute arises, the trust agent can intervene, review the case and decide which party to side with — either refunding the payment to the buyer, or releasing it to the seller.