Help & FAQ

5arz pays off your debt directly to your creditors. You earn it back by completing short tasks from your phone — answer questions, label content, rate quality. Each task earns Stars worth $1 each, which automatically reduce your balance with us. No interest, no penalties, no job required.

No. A loan you owe back with interest on a fixed schedule. With 5arz, we pay your creditor for you and you owe us only what they paid — with zero interest, on no fixed schedule. You can pause for a week, a month, a year. Your balance never grows. If you stop completing tasks, you just stop progressing — no penalties, no collections, no credit ding.

Average member retires their balance in 12–18 months working 5–8 hours per week. A typical $5,000 balance burns off in 8–10 months at average pace. The math: most tasks pay $2–$5 in Stars and take 10–15 minutes. So roughly $15–$25/hour of focused work, applied directly to your debt.

Short multiple-choice and rating tasks: which of two responses is better, is this content off-topic, rate this for accuracy on a 1-5 scale. No coding, no calls, no surveys, no "watch this ad." Think: Reddit moderating, but each task earns Stars.

Your answers help AI research partners (AI research and labeled-data buyers) improve their products. That's how we fund the debt payoff up front.

Nothing bad. Your balance freezes — it doesn't grow. We don't report you to credit bureaus. You don't get charged anything. You just stop progressing toward zero. When you come back, you pick up exactly where you left off.

Inactive accounts (90+ days no activity) get an email check-in. After 12 months of inactivity, we may pause your account and require you to re-verify your identity before resuming, but your balance stays exactly where it was.

Two parts: (1) checking your offer is a soft pull — zero impact on your score. (2) When 5arz pays off your debt, it's reported as "settled" or "paid in full" depending on the creditor. "Settled" can temporarily ding your score 20–50 points; "paid in full" helps. We negotiate the best designation possible with each creditor. Most members see their score net-improve within 6 months because total debt drops dramatically.

While you have a debt balance with us: 1 Star automatically erases $1 of your balance. You don't need to convert — it happens on every Star you earn.

Once your balance is zero: any additional Stars you earn can be cashed out to your bank account at the same 1:1 rate via Stripe Connect. Payouts run weekly with a $10 minimum.

Once your balance hits zero and you start cashing Stars out as USD, yes — that income is reportable to the IRS as miscellaneous income (1099-NEC if over $600/yr). We issue 1099s at year-end and we're working on a tax-prep partner discount.

While Stars are erasing your debt with us, the IRS treats this as discharge-of-indebtedness income only in narrow cases. We send a 1099-C if applicable. Talk to a CPA for your specific situation.

Yes. Email info@5arz.com with the subject "Account closure". Your remaining balance with us either stays open (you can come back) or gets converted — the agreement covers both cases. We respond within one business day.

From your dashboard, hit the Support link in the side dock, or email info@5arz.com. Include your member ID (top of the dashboard) and we'll triage within one business day.

Anything that benefits from human judgment at scale: prompt-response ranking (RLHF), content moderation, image annotation, translation QA, audio labeling, document review, accuracy rating. We're best at short (5–15 minute) multiple-choice and ranking tasks — not long-form open-ended work.

You pay per completed task. Most categories run $0.40–$2.00 per task depending on complexity and required worker skill level. Volume discounts kick in at 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 tasks per month. First $50 of tasks are free while you validate quality.

If your work-email domain matches your website domain AND your tax ID format checks out, verification is instant — you can post tasks immediately. Otherwise our team manually reviews within 1 business day. You can sign in and explore the dashboard while pending; only task posting is gated until you're verified.

Standard tasks fill in 1–4 hours. Boosted postings (10% rush fee) fill in under 30 minutes if your task batch is under 500. Our throughput grows daily as we onboard members — by end of 2026 we expect sub-hour fill on any volume.

Three layers: (1) minimum dwell-time gates per category so click-through speedrunners can't farm Stars; (2) consensus thresholds — answers needing high accuracy get N reviewers and an agreement score; (3) ongoing performance scoring per member so high-skill workers get prioritized for high-value tasks. You can review individual completions in your dashboard before approving payout.

Yes — CSV and JSON export from your business dashboard, plus webhook delivery for streaming integrations. API access is available for Tier 2+ accounts.

Scale/Surge are middlemen — they take ~60% of what you pay and pass ~40% to workers. We route nearly the full task price to the member (their incentive is debt payoff, not subsistence). That gives you better quality at the same price point — workers are motivated by zero-balance, not getting through a quota.

Three tiers: 1.00% of every dollar your direct recruits pay down (L1), 0.25% on your team's recruits (L2), 0.10% on the third layer (L3). All compensation flows from actual debt your downline retires, not from anyone signing up. 1 Star = $1.

It's multi-level, but it's not a pyramid scheme. The FTC distinction: pyramid schemes pay you for recruiting; legitimate programs (Amway, Avon) pay you for real product usage. We pay you 0% if your recruit signs up and ghosts. We pay you only as they actually retire debt through 5arz. You can't even pay to "boost" your tier — promotion is automatic based on activity. No starter kits, no monthly fees, nothing to buy. Free to join, free to stay.

Three things have to happen: (1) they verify their identity with Stripe Identity; (2) they run a credit pull (Spinwheel) or enter their debts manually with a verification document; (3) we send their first creditor payment. Once those three are done, your Star meter starts ticking up automatically as they pay down debt.

Team Member = anyone verified, sharing their code. Earns 1% on direct recruits.
Team Captain = 5+ active Team Members in your downline. Adds the 0.25% L2 override.
Regional Lead = 3+ Team Captains under you. Adds the 0.10% L3 override + featured leaderboard placement.

Promotions are automatic — when you hit the threshold, your role updates and new dashboard panels unlock.

No cap on your personal earnings. There IS a cap on total upline payout per recruit: across all three tiers combined, no more than 3% of any one referee's debt burn-down gets paid out to uplines. This protects unit economics and keeps the program legal.

Sign up at 5arz.com, finish verify, then go to /team. Your code appears immediately. The sharing kit (link, social posts, talking points, flyer) is on the same page.

We tag them as yours for 60 days. If they sign up within that window — even from a different browser or device — you get credit. After 60 days the tag expires; if they sign up under nobody else's code in the meantime, the referral attribution is lost.

No. We use a soft pull via Spinwheel — invisible to credit bureaus, zero impact on your FICO. The same kind of check Credit Karma and NerdWallet use.

Spinwheel charges us per pull (their actual cost is around $2.50; we add a thin margin to cover Stripe fees). We charge it because otherwise people scrape free credit reports through our system without ever intending to sign up. The $4 gets fully credited back to your starting balance if you accept your debt offer — so net cost is zero if you become a member.

Skip the $4 by choosing manual debt entry in the verify flow. You'll need to type each debt manually and upload a recent statement as proof, but it's free.

Outstanding balance, creditor name, account type, payment history (12 months), and current APR for each debt. They don't see your full credit report, your score, or any inquiries. Their data feed is delivered to us encrypted; we only retain the numbers we need (balance + creditor + type) for as long as you have an active 5arz account, then deletion follows our 30-day post-cancellation retention policy.

Yes: credit cards, medical bills, BNPL (Klarna/Affirm/Afterpay), private student loans, personal loans, store cards, past-due bills in collections.

Not yet: federal student loans (regulatory work in progress), mortgages, auto loans secured by a vehicle, business debt, tax debt, child support, court-ordered debt. We'll expand as licensing and partnerships allow.

Some debts (especially medical bills and collections accounts) don't always report to the standard sources. If Spinwheel comes back light, you can switch to manual entry and add the missing debts yourself with a statement upload. Your offer is built from the combined list either way.

Choose manual debt entry in step 2 of verify. You'll see a form to add each debt (creditor name, type, balance, APR, last 4 digits of account). After you submit, you'll be asked to upload a recent statement for each debt (or skip and our admin team verifies via outreach to the creditor). Slower but free, and the end result is the same.