TL;DR
A payment bond is a surety instrument guaranteeing that subcontractors and material suppliers on a project get paid even if the general contractor defaults, protecting the owner from liens filed by unpaid parties downstream. Required on public work by the federal Miller Act and state equivalents, it is optional but available on private jobs, typically costing 1 to 3 percent of contract value alongside a performance bond.
What it means
A payment bond is a surety instrument guaranteeing that subcontractors and material suppliers on a project get paid even if the general contractor defaults, protecting the owner from liens filed by unpaid parties downstream. Required on public work by the federal Miller Act and state equivalents, it is optional but available on private jobs, typically costing 1 to 3 percent of contract value alongside a performance bond. Claimants must follow strict notice deadlines to recover against it.
Where it sits in the glossary
Payment bond is part of the Legal group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
License: CC-BY-4.0 — quote freely with attribution to ProFix Editorial Team / ProFix Directory.