Terms & Conditions

1.About these terms

These Terms & Conditions govern your use of the Finoptiq website and the payment services we provide. By accessing the website, applying for an account, or using our services, you confirm that you accept them.

If you are agreeing on behalf of a business, you confirm you have authority to bind that business. If you do not accept these terms, please do not use the website or our services.

2.Who we are

Finoptiq is a payment service provider. We arrange card acquiring for Visa and Mastercard and enable Apple Pay and Google Pay acceptance for businesses.

We are not a bank and we do not hold deposits. Where funds pass through us, we do so as a payment service provider on the basis set out in your merchant agreement.

3.Our services

Depending on what you sign up for, our services may include:

• Visa and Mastercard card acquiring, including authorisation, clearing and settlement.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay acceptance through the same integration.
• Hosted checkout, secure fields, APIs and e-commerce plugins.
• Risk, fraud-prevention and 3-D Secure tooling, plus chargeback handling.
• Merchant dashboards, reporting and reconciliation files.

The exact scope of what we provide to you is defined in your merchant agreement, order form or fee schedule. Where those documents conflict with these terms, the merchant agreement prevails for the services it covers.

4.Eligibility and your application

You must be a legally constituted business able to enter a contract, and you must give us accurate, complete and current information during onboarding — including about your company, directors, beneficial owners, trading activity and expected volumes.

We may decline an application, ask for more information, or place conditions on an account at our discretion. We may also close an account or stop offering particular services if your business changes in a way that affects our risk assessment.

Businesses and activities we cannot support include illegal goods and services, and anything prohibited under the rules of the card schemes we work with.

5.Your account, credentials and security

You are responsible for keeping API keys, dashboard logins and any other credentials confidential, and for all activity carried out with them. Restrict access to the people who need it and tell us promptly if you believe a credential has been compromised.

You may not use our services to store, process or transmit card data in a way that breaches PCI DSS or the card scheme rules, and you must keep your integration reasonably up to date.

6.Integration and testing

You are responsible for how our services are integrated into your website, app or checkout, including the customer-facing presentation of payment options.

Before going live, test your integration in our test environment and confirm that payments, refunds, webhooks, 3-D Secure flows and webhook retries behave as expected in your own systems.

7.Fees, charges and settlement

Our fees, interchange and scheme assessments, and any other charges, are those set out in your fee schedule. Card scheme fees and interchange rates can change independently of us; if they do, we will pass the change through and give you notice where we reasonably can.

Settlement of approved transactions happens to your nominated bank account on the schedule and in the currency agreed with us, subject to deductions for fees, refunds, chargebacks and any reserve we are entitled to hold.

You authorise us to set off amounts you owe us against amounts payable to you, and to deduct chargeback, dispute and scheme fine amounts from settlements.

8.Refunds, disputes and chargebacks

You decide whether to refund a customer and are responsible for your own refund and cancellation policies. Where a cardholder raises a dispute with their bank, we will notify you and pass on the evidence you provide.

You are liable for the value of disputed transactions, related fees and any scheme fines where the dispute arises from your products, your fulfilment, your failure to follow scheme rules, or your failure to respond to a dispute on time.

9.Prohibited use of our services

You agree not to use the website or our services to:

• Break any law, including money laundering, sanctions, tax and consumer protection rules.
• Sell goods or services that are illegal, infringing, deceptive or prohibited by the card schemes.
• Attempt to probe, test the security of, or disrupt our systems or another merchant's account.
• Circumvent risk controls, for example by splitting transactions across accounts or misrepresenting your trading.
• Process payments without the cardholder's authorisation.

10.Your ongoing compliance obligations

• Comply with PCI DSS at the level applicable to your integration, and provide evidence of compliance on request.
• Comply with the Visa and Mastercard operating rules as they apply to merchants.
• Keep your customers informed about charges, and honour your own terms of sale and refund promises.
• Comply with applicable data protection laws for the personal data you control.
• Account for and pay any taxes arising from your sales.

11.Intellectual property

The website, its design, our APIs, documentation and the Finoptiq name and marks belong to us or our licensors. We give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use them only as needed to operate your integration.

You may not copy, resell, reverse engineer or republish them, and you may not use our brand in a way that suggests a partnership or endorsement we have not agreed to.

You grant us a licence to display your logo and name in connection with your account, for example in dashboards and in our marketing with your consent.

12.Confidentiality

Each side must keep the other's confidential information private, use it only for the agreed purpose, and disclose it only to people who need it and are bound to keep it confidential. This does not apply to information that is already public, independently developed, or required to be disclosed by law or a card scheme.

13.Warranties and disclaimers

Our services are provided with reasonable skill and care, but we do not guarantee that any specific transaction will be authorised, that approval rates will reach any particular level, or that the website will be uninterrupted or error free.

The website and its content — including blog articles — are provided for general information. They are not legal, tax, accounting or financial advice, and you should take your own advice before acting on them.

14.Limitation of liability

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for fraud or death or personal injury caused by negligence.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for lost profits, lost revenue, lost sales, loss of business opportunity, or indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability arising out of these terms is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or the amount required by applicable payment-services regulation.

We are not liable for failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, including card scheme or bank outages, network failures, and force majeure events.

15.Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from your breach of these terms, your use of the services in breach of law or scheme rules, or your products and dealings with your customers.

16.Suspension and termination

Either side may terminate the merchant agreement as it provides for notice. We may suspend or close an account immediately where required by a card scheme, bank or regulator, where there is a security or fraud risk, or where you materially breach these terms and fail to remedy it promptly.

On termination you must stop using our services and brand, and we will settle amounts due after deducting refunds, disputes and fees. We may retain a reserve for a reasonable period to cover disputes that may still arrive.

Clauses that by their nature should survive — fees, liability, indemnity, confidentiality and governing law — survive termination.

17.Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as our services or the law change. If a change materially affects you, we will give reasonable notice by email or through the website. Continued use of the services after the change takes effect means you accept it.

18.Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Cyprus, and the courts of Cyprus have jurisdiction over disputes, without affecting mandatory consumer or data protection rights you may have elsewhere.

Before starting proceedings, both sides will try to resolve the issue in good faith within thirty days of written notice.

19.General

• If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
• We may assign these terms within our group; you may not assign them without our consent.
• Our failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.
• These terms and your merchant agreement are the entire agreement about the services, replacing earlier discussions.

20.Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent to legal@finoptiq.com, or through the contact details published on our website.