This article summarises the key updates that we have made to our terms in August 2019. For a full understanding of all the changes please refer to the contract terms themselves.
What have we changed in our terms?
1. Updates to enable our launch in the US
We have updated our terms of service so that we are able to launch our ACH scheme, enabling you to collect payments in the US, if you (as a ‘merchant’) choose to do so. These changes include a new set of ‘Regulated Terms’ that are between GoCardless, the merchant and our US Bank (called Community Federal Savings Bank, or CFSB). These Regulated Terms are a legal requirement to enable us to launch ACH in the US and merchants need to agree to these terms to use our ACH services.
2. A new contract structure
GoCardless is now a global business, serving merchants all around the world. We are also constantly striving to improve the services that we can offer you. However, our old terms didn’t always enable this.
We have therefore revamped our terms to:
- enable new product features to be added easily in the future
- include Country-Specific Terms meaning we can make tweaks to our terms for merchants in specific countries (for example where this is required by law or regulation in that country)
- ensure that, should other GoCardless entities be required to provide some of our services (for example, for regulatory reasons) we can do this without needing to update our terms again
- be more streamlined and to make future international expansion easier
3. Ensuring that we are ready for any Brexit scenario
It still isn’t clear what will happen with Brexit, but we want to ensure that in the event Brexit does happen, our merchants receive a seamless service in the UK, Europe and around the world. The contract structure described in (2) above means that, in preparation for Brexit, we will be able to switch our payment processing to GoCardless SAS, our French entity, without impacting our services. We will keep you updated should this be required.
4. Other changes you might notice
- We updated data protection references to reflect our global services
- We formalised the language in our terms generally
- We made clear that we will treat merchant funds in accordance with law or regulation, and will safeguard them where required
- We have re-ordered a number of provisions, in particular, moving common legal terms into one ‘General’ section
- We have updated our liability wording, in particular so that this works for CFSB - to make things as simple as possible - we wanted one set of liability provisions covering your relationship with GoCardless and CFSB