Six stages carry every Assaya transaction from first interest to sealed file. Read them once and you know exactly what you are joining — who you will meet, what you will sign, when money moves, and when title passes.
What happens — Buyer, Seller and both Intermediaries negotiate terms in a private deal room under platform codes: metal and form, quantity, price basis, terms, jurisdiction, refinery preference, and the tranche pattern, captured on a structured worksheet as they settle each point.
Who is present — Exactly four: the coded Buyer, the coded Seller, the Seller's Intermediary and the Buyer's Intermediary. No one else can enter the room.
What it produces — Agreed heads of terms, locked as the basis for drafting.
What happens — Assaya, the platform's assistant, drafts the Sale and Purchase Agreement and the fee-protection agreement (IMFPA) from the agreed terms. Both sides review online — including each party's own appointed counsel — sign online, and notarise online before an accredited remote notary. This is the code-lift moment: legal names enter the signed documents and the notary's verification, and nowhere else. The room itself continues under codes.
Who is present — The four parties, plus each side's appointed legal counsel as reviewers.
What it produces — The notarised SPA and IMFPA of record, sealed into the deal file, their fingerprints anchored on the platform's Integrity Ledger.
What happens — The Seller shows the product live on video, lot by lot, with scanner purity readings taken as you watch; the session is recorded into the deal file as the proof-of-product record. Only then does the Buyer present proof of funds, which the platform verifies through banking channels — paper alone is never proof on Assaya.
Who is present — The four parties.
What it produces — The POP record of the room, sealed and anchored; the Buyer's proof of funds presented of record.
What happens — Both sides accept the same accredited refinery — neither side's refinery is imposed — and agree the smelting and assay schedule. The Buyer's bank issues a Bank Guarantee of at least 75% of the transaction value, verified bank-to-bank. The remaining 25% is a reserve held against what the final assay may find; it is an adjustment buffer, and its balance remains payable to the Seller on the final assay — it is not a discount and it is never a forfeiture.
Who is present — The four parties; the chosen refinery and the paymaster join for their steps.
What it produces — An agreed smelting and assay schedule at an accepted refinery, and a verified Bank Guarantee in place before any metal is melted.
What happens — The metal is delivered to the refinery under joint custody; smelting and sampling are witnessed by both sides; no movement happens without its insurance certificate on file. The refinery issues its assay certificate, and the final value is computed on it against the official LBMA print for the valuation date, which is archived into the file. The paymaster then disburses from escrow — the Seller's full final value, the Intermediaries' fees under the IMFPA, the platform's commission, and the service invoices — each line tracked until it shows as received: REFLECTED. Title and possession pass to the Buyer on payment reflected in full — never before.
Who is present — The four parties; the refinery, the paymaster, and the booked logistics and insurance suppliers for their steps.
What it produces — A settled transaction: assay certificate, final-value computation, full disbursement proof, and title passed.
What happens — The parties review the completed deal together — assay against the Stage 3 showing, how the reserve resolved, settlement confirmed. Where the contract carries succeeding tranches, the next tranche is agreed here and runs its own Stage 3 to 5 cycle in the same room, under the same SPA and IMFPA — no re-onboarding, no new negotiation. The guarantee is released, the closing statement is generated, and the complete file — drafts, notarised documents, proofs, certificates, settlement records — is sealed into the Document Vault. Confidentiality survives closing.
Who is present — The four parties; service parties for closing items.
What it produces — A closed transaction of record — and, on the public board, its anonymised summary.