Questions & answers

One of two things, and the shop's own page says which before you order.

Most shops take requests: you send the order, the maker reads it and accepts or declines, and you pay once they have. Nothing is owed by either of you until then.

Some shops book collection times: the maker publishes a timetable and says how many of each thing they can have ready at each slot, so you pick one and pay straight away. There is nothing for them to accept — they agreed to it when they published it — and the slot is held for you from the moment you order.

Not to browse, save a shop or message a maker — those work straight away with nothing to fill in.

You need an account to place an order or leave a review. It is an email address and a link we send to it: no password, and we never ask for your name. An order is somebody setting something aside or holding a time for you, so there has to be a way to reach you about it.

PayNow, directly to the maker. Your order page shows a QR code with the amount and a reference already filled in, so you scan it in your bank app and pay — as soon as you order at a shop that books collection times, or once the maker accepts at a shop that takes requests. If you are reading the order on the same phone you pay from, save the image and pick it from your photo album instead.

Kaya never touches the money — it goes straight from your bank app to the maker's.

Some things a maker sells are really a booked hour of their time — a treatment, a lesson, a big cake — and those items can ask for part of the price up front. You pay the deposit to book and the rest to the maker when you collect. The shop page says so on the item itself, before you add it, and your order page shows both figures the whole way through.

A deposit is what stops a slot being held by somebody who never arrives, so it is not returned if you do not turn up. If the maker cancels on you, they send it back themselves — Kaya never held it, so we cannot.

Once a deposit has been sent you can no longer cancel the order from your own orders page. Message the maker instead.

No — everything on Kaya is collected in person. The shop page says where: the maker’s door, their void deck, or a lift lobby.

The building — the block and street — is on the listing before you order. The unit number, if the maker collects at their door, is released to you once they have confirmed your payment. Makers who meet seekers downstairs never give out a unit at all.

Yes. A closed shop still takes orders — you pick a collection time and they see it when they next open. At a shop that takes requests, nothing is owed by either of you until they accept; at one that books collection times, the slot is held straight away.

At a shop that books collection times, yes — up to two hours before it, from your order page, paid or not. Pick another slot with room in it and the one you were holding goes back on sale. Inside those two hours the maker has usually started, so that is a message rather than a button.

Elsewhere the collection time is what you asked for rather than a slot anybody is holding, so there is nothing to move — say so in the conversation.

At a shop that books collection times, an unpaid booking is released after 30 minutes and the slot goes back on sale. Nothing is charged and nothing is owed; order again if you still want it.

Some things need notice — a CNY tin, a celebration cake, a made-to-measure alteration. Those items say how many days ahead they must be ordered, and you pick a collection date at least that far out. Everything else is collected the same day. If your order mixes the two, it all comes together on the date you chose.

Your order page updates itself while it is open. Where the maker is making it to order you get a countdown once they have confirmed your payment; where you booked a collection time, that time is the answer and the page shows it back to you. Turn on notifications and your phone will tell you when the order is accepted, confirmed and ready.

Message the maker first — every shop has a conversation thread, and most things are sorted there in a minute.

Because you paid the maker directly, we cannot refund an order; the money never came to us. If a maker is behaving badly, use Report maker on their shop page — that we can act on.

On iPhone or iPad, open Kaya in Safari or Chrome, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen. Open it from the icon after that, not from the browser tab.

On Android, Chrome offers Install app — either from the banner at the top of Kaya or from the browser's ⋮ menu.

On a computer, Chrome and Edge show an install icon in the address bar; in Safari on a Mac it is Share → Add to Dock.

It opens like an app, with no browser bars around it, and your orders, pickup times and messages are one tap away instead of a tab you have to find again.

On iPhone it is also the only way to get notifications: Safari will only deliver them to Kaya opened from the Home Screen, never to a browser tab.

As a seeker, the switch is on My orders. As a maker, it's on your dashboard's Orders tab. Either way it tells you when an order is accepted or booked, when a payment is confirmed, and when something is ready to collect — nothing else.

On iPhone, install it first: the switch cannot do anything until Kaya is opened from the Home Screen.

That one is on us, not you — the build of Kaya you are on is missing the key that sends them. Nothing you can do from your side fixes it; tell us and we will.

Nothing right now. Listing is free while we grow, and the money goes from your customer’s bank app straight into your own account — we're never in the middle of that transfer. If that changes, including a possible commission on orders, you'll hear about it well before it applies, and it will never apply to orders you've already taken.

Your block and street, yes — a seeker has to know which building they are coming to, and a block number on its own identifies nothing. Your unit number is private, and it is only ever disclosed if you choose to collect at your door, and then only to a seeker whose payment you have already confirmed. Choose the void deck or a lift lobby instead and no unit is disclosed to anybody.

No. You publish it yourself, the moment it is ready. Before you can, Kaya checks you have the things a seeker needs to complete an order: an address, at least one item, and a way to be paid.

Enter your PayNow mobile or UEN on the Payment tab and Kaya builds a per-order QR with the amount and reference filled in, so nobody types them wrong. You can upload your bank’s own QR instead, though then the seeker enters the amount by hand. Scan your own QR once before going live — nothing here can check that a PayNow proxy is really registered to you.

Yes, per item. Open the item on your Listing tab and set a Deposit — seekers pay that to book and the rest to you when they collect, and the PayNow QR they scan is made out for the deposit alone. It has to be less than the item's price, and it does not change when they pick options, so a $20 deposit is $20 whichever size they choose.

It is worth setting on anything that is really an hour of your time — a treatment, a lesson, a set of extensions — because a deposit is what stops that hour being held by somebody who never arrives. A seeker who has sent one can no longer cancel the order themselves. Leave it blank and the item is paid for in full, as everything on Kaya was before.

Yes, and it is off until you switch it on. Collection slots on your dashboard walks you through it: your opening hours, how long each thing takes to make and how many you can have ready, and then a timetable generated from all three that you edit before saving.

With it on, a seeker picks one of your slots and pays straight away — you are not asked to accept anything, because the timetable already did. A slot that fills stops being offered, an unpaid booking releases itself after 30 minutes, and you can still cancel a booking you cannot make (if they had paid, you send that money back yourself). Leave it off and your shop works exactly as it does now.

Yes. Set a notice period on the item and it moves into a Pre-order section on your shop, where seekers pick a collection date at least that far ahead. Those orders are listed separately from today’s queue, so next month’s booking does not bury this afternoon’s work.

Food hygiene, business registration and halal certifications. You claim one with its certificate number, an administrator checks it, and only then does it appear on your page — and it disappears by itself the day the certificate expires. The number itself is never public.

What you were paid, which items earn their place per minute of work, when requests actually arrive, how quickly you respond, who comes back, and the whole order record as a spreadsheet. It is meant to be a paid feature one day; right now every maker has all of it, free.

Read the reviews, which can only be left by people who actually ordered, and check whether the shop carries verified certification badges. Then message them — a home business that answers well usually is one. Kaya does not inspect anybody’s home and does not pretend to.

A shop whose ratings stay poor over enough reviews goes on a temporary cooldown and cannot take new orders while it lasts. Administrators can also suspend a listing or restrict a maker outright. Orders already placed still have to be honoured.

Open the shop's page and use Report maker, near the bottom — it reaches us with the shop already attached. For a review, or anything else, use Contact us. Anything unsafe gets looked at first.