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These terms apply to all customers with merchant type business accounts that receive services from payware LLC. If you have been directed to this page from within our product, these terms also apply to your account regardless of the country in which your business or freelancing activity is registered. If you have any questions regarding which payware entity you receive services from, please reach out to customer service via support center.
These Terms incorporate the payware Framework Agreement by reference. The Framework Agreement contains general legal terms, platform safety rules, liability provisions, and administrative procedures that apply to all payware accounts and services. In the event of a conflict between these Terms and the Framework Agreement, these Terms shall prevail.
My payware merchant account
This document sets out the terms and conditions for your payware merchant account (the account) and its related services.
For the purposes of these Terms, a Merchant shall be defined as any business entity, commercial company or sole trader engaged in the sale of goods or provision of services, who has entered into a contractual agreement to accept electronic payment transactions as a form of payment for such goods or services. The Merchant is responsible for the delivery of the goods or services, and for ensuring that the payment transactions processed through its systems are in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.
A payware merchant account is a partner's profile definition in payware systems. It holds configurational information for your transactions and visualization preferences alongside any other related data required for the proper payware services operations.
Once you open your payware merchant account you'll be able to use our services. For example, you can do the following:
We add new features and services all the time. We'll let you know about these through the payware business web portal or by email.
You can access the payware business web portal through the business web portal reference on our website. You manage your account through the payware business web portal, which only you and the appropriate authorized persons will have access to.
By accepting these terms and conditions you confirm that:
You must be over 18 to open a payware merchant account, and you may only open it under this agreement for business purposes and not for personal purposes.
When you ask to open your account, the following apply:
We will only give you access to your payware merchant account, the payware business web portal and payware services once we have all the information we need.
You can't open more than one payware merchant account or open a new payware merchant account if we've previously closed a payware merchant account that you held.
We can refuse to let you open or hold a payware merchant account if you carry out a business or activity that we are not comfortable with. Or we may apply restrictions, which we'll tell you about before we allow you to open the account.
We know that different types of businesses need different things, so we've created different payware plans to suit our customers. You can choose the plan that best suits your business.
Different limits and restrictions apply to each plan. See the Fees page for more information about the plans.
You can check all payments into your account through the payware business web portal. We will not make any changes to the information, and it will be available to you through the payware business web portal until you close your account. If you need the information after then, you will need to download it while your account is still active. You can download information from the business web portal at any time. This information is provided as a Transient Technical Reflection of the records held by the relevant payment institution (the Authoritative Source), in accordance with Section C.1 of the Framework Agreement.
We will send a notification to your mobile or tablet, or by email, each time a payment goes into your account. You can turn off these notifications. If you do this, you should regularly check the payware business web portal for information on payments. It's important that you know what payments are going into your account, so we recommend that you do not turn off notifications.
API is an Application Programming Interface that allows you to carry out certain activities such as setting up payment information exchange into your account and displaying your transactions status. If your plan allows it, you will have access to the API.
See the API reference page for more information about our API.
You can allow other providers to exchange payments information from your payware merchant account on your behalf. These providers are often referred to as Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). These providers need to be authorized by you to provide these services.
When you access your payware merchant account and services via an ISV, our terms and conditions still apply to your use of your payware merchant account.
Sometimes we might have to block an ISV provider's access to your account (for example, if we're concerned about fraud, if they don't have the authorization they need or if there are legal or regulatory reasons for doing so). If we do this, we'll try to let you know beforehand or as soon as possible afterwards. We'll do this by email unless it would be unlawful to do so or there are valid security reasons why we can't. We'll also unblock the ISV as soon as the reasons for denying them access no longer exist.
You also can block an ISV's access to your payware merchant account via payware business web portal.
You should contact us if you think one is acting without your consent.
When you use an ISV, you authorize them and give consent to them to have access to your payware merchant account information or exchange payment information into your payware merchant account on your behalf. How we share your information for these, and other purposes is set out in our Privacy Notice.
payware processes the received instructions immediately and provides the necessary information to the payer's payment institution. The funds transfer time to your account will vary based on the payer's financial institution, your registered account, and the receiving financial institution.
payware will promptly notify you once the payer's payment institution has confirmed the transfer of the requested funds to the payee's account.
For your use of the platform, we charge a monthly subscription fee according to your plan. You can see the subscription fees on our Fees page.
In addition, a per-transaction fee applies to each transaction information exchange. This fee is not charged by payware. It is the charge of the participating payment institution that executes the transfer, for the execution and settlement service that institution renders to you as payee in respect of that transaction.
Your standing settlement authorization. For each transaction, you authorize and instruct the participating payment institution that executes the transfer (or procures its execution through settlement arrangements that institution makes) to retain the applicable per-transaction fee from the transaction amount, as that institution's own charge to you for its execution and settlement service, and to settle the net funds to your registered account. This authorization is a standing offer addressed to every participating payment institution, which payware transmits and makes available to each of them, together with the applicable fee, as part of the Services (Section C.20 of the Framework Agreement). A participating payment institution accepts your authorization by executing a transaction for you, and the resulting settlement relationship for that transaction arises directly between you and that institution. You agree that the full amount of each transaction and the amount of the fee retained are stated to you in the Settlement Fee Statement described below, and that settlement of the net amount together with that statement satisfies any requirement for your agreement to, and information about, the deduction of charges from the amount transferred.
The per-transaction fee applicable to a transaction is determined by the location where the sale is made: for a sale at a physical shop, the country of that shop's registered location; for an online sale, the country of your registration. A custom per-transaction fee agreed pursuant to a separate written agreement with payware, or through an authorized Independent Software Vendor (ISV) acting on your behalf, prevails over the location-determined fee. The per-transaction fee effective for each of your shops (including any custom fee applicable to your ISV integration) is displayed in the payware business web portal for your account, together with the date from which it applies; by processing transactions at a shop on or after that date, you accept the fee displayed for that shop as the applicable per-transaction fee, which prevails over any rate communicated to you elsewhere.
Changes to the per-transaction fee. We will notify you of a change to a per-transaction fee in accordance with Section D.1 of the Framework Agreement, stating the new fee, the shops it applies to, and the date from which it applies. That date will be no earlier than the end of the notice period in Section D.5 of the Framework Agreement. No confirmation, acknowledgement, acceptance, or other action by you in the payware business web portal is required for the change to take effect. If you do not wish to continue on the new fee, you may close your account under Section D.6 of the Framework Agreement before it applies; if you process transactions at an affected shop on or after that date, you accept the new fee.
Shop location. For each physical shop you register, you must provide the shop's accurate geographic coordinates, and you must keep them accurate if the shop moves. We use them to determine the country of the shop's registered location for fee purposes, to support verification of payer proximity at the point of interaction, and to enable location-based services. The country determined for each shop is displayed in the payware business web portal; if you believe it is incorrect, you must contact us before processing further transactions at that shop, and we will correct it where justified. Providing coordinates that misrepresent a shop's actual location is a breach of these terms. If a shop's location has not been provided or cannot be determined, the country of your registration applies to that shop's transactions until it is.
Settlement Fee Statement. payware makes available in the payware business web portal, for each billing period, a statement of the per-transaction fees retained from your transactions (the "Settlement Fee Statement"). The Settlement Fee Statement identifies, for each transaction, the executing payment institution, the transaction reference and date, the full transaction amount, the fee retained, the net amount settled, and the currency. It is issued by payware in the name and on behalf of each executing payment institution, as agreed between payware and that institution, and is the agreed record of those charges between you and each executing payment institution. Because the per-transaction fee is the payment institution's charge for a payment service, it is exempt from VAT and no invoice is issued for it (Art. 113, para. 3 in conjunction with Art. 46 of the Bulgarian VAT Act); the Settlement Fee Statement, together with your payment account records, serves as the documentary record of the charge for accounting purposes. Once a billing period is closed, the Settlement Fee Statement for that period is not altered, and it remains available to you in accordance with our data retention policy.
Please note that if the payer's bank (or intermediary banks) applies separate, independent charges to the payer for initiating the transfer, those specific third-party charges are out of our control.
You shall not enter into or participate in any arrangement with a payment institution or lender (including a linked discount, rebate, or side payment) designed to divert value off-platform so as to suppress the transaction amount or value reported through the Services, or the fees payable in respect of it, below the genuine, full consideration for the goods or services purchased. A genuine, generally-available lower price is not such an arrangement. Where payware reasonably suspects such an arrangement, payware may, on no less than ten (10) business days' written notice and no more than once in any twelve (12) month period (or more frequently where a prior review revealed such an arrangement), itself or through an independent auditor bound by confidentiality, review your pricing and settlement records for the affected transactions to the extent reasonably necessary to verify compliance with this section, and you shall provide reasonable cooperation with any such review. Information obtained in such a review will be treated as confidential and used only to verify and enforce compliance.
The safety of your account is important to us. We might prevent you from exchanging payment transaction information from your account with the API access if we're reasonably concerned about its security or that it might be used fraudulently or without your permission.
We might also have to block your account to meet our legal obligations.
We'll tell you through the payware business web portal or by email before, or as soon as possible after, we block your account or API access. We'll also let you know why we've done it (unless it would reduce your or our security or it would be unlawful).
For the purposes of Section D.7 of the Framework Agreement, the repayment timeframe under these Terms is fourteen (14) days.
In addition to the exceptional circumstances listed in Section B.8 of the Framework Agreement, the following merchant-specific circumstances also apply:
Where you present payware as a payment option in your own checkout, on a payment-method page, or on a redirect page, the following apply. These requirements are in addition to the terms governing payware Marks in Section C.9 of the Framework Agreement.
The payware Growth Program rewards merchants who bring other merchants to payware ("referrals") and who nominate a software provider they want to see offering payware ("nominations"). Taking part is voluntary. This Section 16 sets out the rules for merchants. Referrals between Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are governed by Section 5.6 of the ISV Partner Program Terms.
Who can take part. You can take part if you hold a payware merchant account that has not been closed. An account registered as a private individual for personal, non-commercial use cannot take part in any role: it cannot refer, be referred or nominate. An account registered as an ISV takes part only under the ISV Partner Program Terms.
Rewards are free plan days. Every reward under this Section 16 is a number of days of your payware subscription for which you are not charged ("free plan days"). Free plan days have no cash value, cannot be transferred, exchanged or paid out, and do not change the per-transaction fees described in Section 11. The minimum volumes and the number of free plan days for each reward tier are published on the Growth Program page. Volume is measured as the total, converted to euro, of transactions confirmed through the relevant merchant accounts in the period concerned.
(a) How a referral is recorded. When a business registers a payware merchant account, it can enter the partner identifier of an existing merchant, or follow that merchant's referral link, which enters the identifier for it. A referral is recorded only at registration and cannot be added or changed afterwards. Partner identifiers are case sensitive. A merchant can be referred by only one merchant at a time, a merchant cannot refer itself, and rewards apply to direct referrals only, not to referrals of referrals.
(b) Activation. A referral activates if the referred merchant processes at least the minimum volume published for its plan within thirty (30) days of the date the referral was recorded. We will tell both merchants before that period ends. If the minimum is not reached, or the referred merchant's account is closed before the period ends, the referral expires and nobody receives a reward.
(c) Reward. When a referral activates, the referring merchant and the referred merchant each receive the free plan days published for the tier the referred merchant's volume reached, on their own plan. A merchant on the Basic plan receives its free plan days on the Standard plan.
(d) What each merchant can see. By entering a partner identifier, the referred merchant agrees that the referring merchant can see, in the payware business web portal, the referred merchant's business name and partner identifier, the status and dates of the referral, and the reward granted, from which the range of its volume in the first thirty (30) days can be inferred. The referring merchant agrees that the referred merchant can see its business name and partner identifier. Neither merchant is shown the other's individual transactions.
(e) How to nominate. You can nominate a software provider that is not yet registered with payware as an ISV by giving us its name, its email address and, where available, its company registration number. You can do this from the Growth Program page of the payware business web portal or through the public nomination form on our website. A nomination made through the public form counts only once you register a payware merchant account with the email address you gave in the form. You cannot nominate your own business, and you cannot hold more than one active nomination for the same provider.
(f) Contacting the provider. We contact the nominated provider on your behalf and may tell it your name or your business name as a merchant who nominated it. By nominating, you agree to this. We send the provider one invitation, however many merchants nominate it.
(g) How long a nomination lasts. A nomination lasts ninety (90) days. If the provider has not registered by then, the nomination expires. We will tell you fifteen (15) days before it expires, and you can renew it for a further ninety (90) days, counted from its current expiry date, as many times as you wish.
(h) Activation and reward. A nomination activates if the provider registers as an ISV and the merchants it registers with payware as new registrations together process at least the minimum volume published for nominations within ninety (90) days of the provider's registration. Every merchant whose nomination was made before the provider registered, and is linked to its merchant account, then receives the free plan days published for the tier that volume reached, on the Standard plan, or on the Premium plan if it is on the Premium plan. A nomination made on or after the date the provider registered earns no reward. If the minimum volume is not reached, the nominations for that provider expire and nobody receives a reward.
(i) No effect on the provider. Nominations do not affect the provider's own terms, revenue share or rewards as an ISV.
(j) How free plan days are applied. We add free plan days to your subscription automatically; you do not need to claim them. If a paid subscription period is running, the free plan days start when it ends; otherwise they start on the day the reward is granted. We do not invoice you for free plan days, and a reward does not switch off automatic renewal you have set up. If your account is suspended only for a subscription reason - an overdue payment, or a trial or earlier free plan days that ended without a subscription - free plan days also end that suspension.
(k) When free plan days end. When your free plan days end, your account returns to the plan you held before the reward and continues under your renewal settings. If you have never subscribed, you need to subscribe to keep using your account, as at the end of a trial.
(l) Genuine referrals and nominations only. The Growth Program rewards genuine new business. We may refuse or cancel a referral or nomination, and withdraw free plan days not yet used, where we reasonably consider that the merchants involved are the same business or person, affiliates or under common control; that an account was registered, or volume was generated, mainly to obtain a reward, for example through transactions between related parties, transactions later refunded or reversed, or circular payments; or that you have otherwise breached these Terms. When measuring volume, we may exclude transactions that are refunded or reversed.
(m) Changes. We may change the Growth Program, including the minimum volumes and free plan days published on the Growth Program page, or end it, in accordance with Section D.5 of the Framework Agreement. A change does not affect free plan days already granted.
(n) Taxes. You are responsible for any tax consequences a reward has for your business.