Most informal livestock trade in South Africa still happens the same way it always has: a photo in a WhatsApp group, a price in the comments, and a bank transfer before anyone has seen the animals in person.
The failure points are consistent. The buyer pays first and hopes. The seller is often a stranger with no verifiable history. There is no record of what was actually agreed — weight, condition, price. And if something goes wrong after the money has moved, there is no process to fall back on, only a phone call that may or may not get answered.
A settlement process has to close all four of those gaps at once, not just one of them, or the risk simply moves somewhere else in the chain. That is the whole reason escrow sits at the centre of Yalla rather than being an optional extra on large sales.