BetaFund — Terms and Conditions

Version: 1.1 Effective date: 27 August 2026 Applies to: the BetaFund website, the public event pages, the organizer dashboard, the account settings, and the BetaFund WhatsApp bot accounts.

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1. Who we are and what this agreement is

BetaFund ("BetaFund", "we", "us", "the Platform") is operated by Beta TQ Company Limited, a company registered in the United Republic of Tanzania (see Schedule C).

BetaFund lets a person organising an event — a wedding, a funeral, school fees, a harambee, a medical emergency — collect mobile-money contributions through a shareable link, and have the running list of who has contributed posted automatically into their WhatsApp group by a BetaFund-owned bot account.

These Terms and Conditions ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and BetaFund. They apply from the moment you first use the Service, whether or not you have created an account.

1.1 How you accept these Terms

1. Organizers accept them explicitly, before anything else. After you have proved your phone number and before your dashboard opens for the first time, you are shown these Terms and must tick to accept them. There is no way to create an Event, connect a WhatsApp Group, or receive a single shilling through BetaFund without having done so.
2. We keep the record of it. When you accept, we store the version number of the Terms you accepted and the moment you accepted them, against your account. Both are shown to you on your account settings page, and every version is listed in Schedule D. That record is what either of us would rely on if we ever disagreed about which terms applied to you — which is exactly why you can see it and we cannot quietly change it.
3. Contributors accept them by contributing. A Contributor holds no account and is asked to tick nothing. The contribution form states, above the button, that paying accepts these Terms, and links to them. Making a Contribution is acceptance of the parts of these Terms that concern Contributors — principally section 8, section 12, section 13, and section 16.
4. Anyone else who uses the Service accepts them by using it. Opening an event page, searching BetaFund, or being in a WhatsApp group the bot posts into is use of the Service.
5. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service. For an Organizer that means not finishing sign-up. For a Contributor it means not paying.

2. Definitions

Words in bold below carry the meaning given here wherever they appear in these Terms.

3. Eligibility and accounts

1. You must be at least the Minimum Age to hold an Organizer account. You confirm that you are when you accept these Terms at sign-up, and we may close an account we find to be below it.
2. Organizer accounts are opened and accessed with a Tanzanian mobile number and a one-time code. There is no password. Anyone who controls your SIM card can access your account, so keep control of your number and tell us at once if you lose it.
3. Where the code is sent. It always goes to your handset by SMS. Once your account has an email address, the same code goes to that address as well, because SMS in Tanzania is delayed or dropped often enough that a single channel regularly leaves people locked out of their own money. This means your email account is a second way into your BetaFund account — secure it as you would your SIM. Nobody at BetaFund will ever ask you for a code, by any channel, for any reason.
4. What finishing an account requires. After your first successful code we ask for your name, an email address, and your acceptance of these Terms. All three are required and the dashboard does not open until they are given: a payments account with nowhere to send a receipt or a security alert is an account that cannot answer for its own money, and an account that never accepted the terms it operates under is one we could not hold to them.
5. You must give accurate details, and keep them accurate. We may suspend an account whose details we cannot verify.
6. One person, one account. Do not open accounts under another person's identity or number.
7. You are responsible for everything done through your account, including by co-organizers or family members you hand the phone to.
8. Contributors do not need an account. Making a contribution does not create one.
9. You can end every session on every device at once from your account settings. It is the first thing to do if you lose your handset, and the only honest answer to "I think somebody else is in my account".
10. We may refuse, suspend, or close any account at our discretion where these Terms are breached, where we are required to by law, or where we reasonably suspect fraud — see section 15.

4. What the Service does, and what it is not

1. BetaFund is a collection and record-keeping tool. We move money between a Contributor's mobile-money account and, eventually, an Organizer's payout destination, and we publish the record of it.
2. BetaFund is not a bank, not a savings product, and not an investment. Money held for an Event earns no interest for anyone, and is not a deposit.
3. BetaFund is not the recipient of your fundraising. We do not vet, endorse, or guarantee any Event, any Organizer, or any claim made on an event page. The Organizer alone is responsible for the truth of what their Event says and for using the money for the stated purpose.
4. BetaFund does not provide legal, tax, or financial advice.
5. The live event page and the organizer dashboard are the authoritative record of an Event. WhatsApp posting is a convenience layer on top of that record. If the WhatsApp connection fails, nothing is lost — only the automatic posting pauses.

5. Events

1. Creating an Event requires a title, type, description, a payout destination, and a choice of Visibility (clause 3 below). The Organizer may add participants and pledge amounts, an image, and a target.
2. An Event moves through the following states, and each state has consequences you should understand before choosing it:

3. Visibility. Every Event is either Listed or Link-only, chosen by the Organizer when the Event is created. This decides who can find the Event, not who may open it: under both settings the Event page is readable by anyone holding its link, and nothing on the page is hidden by either choice.

A Link-only Event may be made Listed at any time. A Listed Event may be made Link-only only while it has received no Contributions at all, whether by mobile money or as a Recorded Cash Contribution. Once an Event that is Listed has received anything, it stays Listed for the rest of its life. People give to a Listed Event on the strength of a page that anyone can find, and removing it from search afterwards would take that from them. To stop collecting, Pause or Close the Event (section 11) — its page stays online either way.

4. The Organizer must set a payout destination that they lawfully control and that matches the name on their account. We may require proof before releasing funds.
5. The Organizer is responsible for the accuracy of the participant list and of any Recorded Cash Contribution they enter by hand.
6. We may require an Event to be corrected, or may suspend it, where its description is misleading, where it appears to breach section 14, or where we are required to act by law or by our payment provider.
7. Every Event has a Public ID, shown on its page and in the WhatsApp posts. It is a second name for the same Event, so that somebody read a code over the phone or shown one on a poster can reach the page a link would have taken them to, and can check that a link forwarded to them is the collection they were actually told about. An Event's page answers to its Public ID as readily as to its link, Link-only Events included. The ID is not a password and was never the thing keeping a Link-only Event private; what Link-only controls is whether the Event is offered to people searching BetaFund, and a Link-only Event stays absent from search whether it is looked for by name, by word, or by its exact ID.
8. A target is a statement of intent, not a promise, and every change to it is public. The Organizer may set, raise, lower, or remove an Event's target at any time. Each change is recorded and the history is shown on the public page, because a target that could be quietly lowered once the money was in would be worth nothing to the people who gave against it.
9. Participants and pledges. An Organizer may list participants, with or without a pledged amount. A pledge is the Organizer's own record of what somebody said they would give. It is not a debt, it is not owed to BetaFund, and we never collect it: we do not contact participants, chase pledges, or charge anybody because their name appears on a list.
10. What you put on an Event page stays yours, and stays your responsibility. By uploading a photograph, a description, or a list of names, you give BetaFund the licence it needs to store, resize, and display them — on the event page, in BetaFund search results for a Listed Event, in the link preview when the page is shared, and in that Event's WhatsApp posts. That licence is no wider than what publishing them means, and it ends when the content comes down, save for copies in backups and in records we must keep. You confirm you are entitled to publish what you upload, including any photograph of another person. We may remove content that breaches section 14 or somebody else's rights, and may suspend the Event with it.

6. WhatsApp Groups and the Bot

WhatsApp is not our platform. WhatsApp is operated by Meta. Our bot connects through a third-party library over ordinary WhatsApp accounts, and we depend on the continued availability of a service we do not control and are not affiliated with. Read this section carefully — it sets the limits of what we can promise.

1. How a Group is connected. The Organizer adds our Bot Account's number to their WhatsApp group as a normal participant, then posts the Event's one-time claim code in the group. The Bot Account recognises the code, claims that Group for that Event, and introduces itself in-chat.
2. Consent inside the group. By connecting a Group, the Organizer confirms they are an admin of it and that they have the group's agreement to a BetaFund account being present. The Bot Account posts contribution summaries — names and amounts — into that group.
3. What the Bot does. It posts the updated summary after a confirmed Contribution, introduces itself on connection, and explains itself when an invalid code is posted. It does not read, store, or reply to ordinary group conversation for any other purpose.
4. What can go wrong, and who carries it. A Bot Account may be removed from a group, rate-limited, restricted, or banned by WhatsApp at any time, for reasons we cannot always foresee or appeal. Group messages may be delayed or fail to send. We do not guarantee delivery of any WhatsApp message and are not liable for a message that is delayed, missed, or never sent. The dashboard and event page remain accurate throughout.
5. Recovery. If a Bot Account is removed from a Group, that Group's connection is marked removed and posting stops. The Event carries on: the page, the list, and the totals stay accurate, and contributions keep arriving. Reconnecting requires an admin to add a Bot Account again and claim it with a fresh code, at no charge.
6. Number changes. We may move an Event to a different Bot Account number at any time — for load, for recovery, or because a number was restricted. The Organizer may need to re-add and re-claim.
7. You must not use the Bot Account for anything other than an Event's updates: no forwarding it into unrelated groups, no using it to broadcast, no adding it to groups where it is unwelcome, and no attempt to message, extract, or interfere with the account.
8. Limits. Connecting a Group is free, and an Event may connect up to the Maximum Groups Per Event at no charge. The cap exists to protect our pool of WhatsApp numbers from a single Event, not to meter the feature. We may lower it where a pattern of use puts that pool at risk.

7. WhatsApp groups are free

Connecting a WhatsApp Group to an Event costs nothing. There is no per-group charge, no monthly charge, and no charge for using the same group on more than one Event.

1. An Event may connect up to the Maximum Groups Per Event at no cost.
2. The same WhatsApp group may be connected to as many Events as the Organizer runs, at no cost for any of them.
3. Automatic posting — the summary the Bot Account puts into the group after each confirmed Contribution — is part of the Service and is not a paid add-on.
4. BetaFund is paid out of the money it collects and holds (section 9), not out of the tools an Organizer uses to collect it. An Organizer who connects no group and simply shares the link pays exactly the same rate as one who connects five.

8. Contributions

1. Contributions are made through the Event's public link, without an account, using mobile money. The Contributor's network is detected from their number.
2. A Contribution is only confirmed when our payment provider confirms it to us server-to-server. A message on your screen that a payment is being processed is not a confirmation, and neither is your mobile-money SMS on its own — those two can briefly disagree, and our record catches up within a short time.
3. Contributions must be at least the Minimum Contribution and no more than the Maximum Contribution per transaction.
4. A Contribution is a voluntary gift towards the stated purpose of the Event. It is not a purchase, an investment, a loan, or a ticket, and it carries no entitlement to goods, services, a return, or a share of anything raised.
5. Contributions are non-refundable once confirmed, except as set out in section 12 or where the law requires otherwise.
6. Contributions are public. The name given by the Contributor and the amount are shown on the public event page and posted into every connected WhatsApp Group. Do not contribute under a name you are not willing to have shown. We do not publish the Contributor's phone number.
7. Contributors are responsible for paying to the right Event. Check the event page before paying — a link shared in a group chat can be forwarded anywhere.
8. Making a Contribution accepts these Terms. The contribution form says so above the button and links to this page. You are not asked to create an account and not asked to tick anything, but by paying you accept the parts of these Terms that apply to Contributors (§1.1).
9. Recorded Cash Contributions are entered by the Organizer for money that never reached BetaFund. They count towards the displayed total and the participant's tick, but they are not part of the Event Balance and cannot be withdrawn from BetaFund, because we never held that money. Their accuracy is entirely the Organizer's responsibility.

9. Fees

BetaFund charges two Fees, and only two. Both are set out in Schedule A.

9.1 The Platform Fee

1. A Platform Fee, the percentage in Schedule A, is charged on each Contribution that BetaFund collects and holds. It covers payment processing and the running of the Service.
2. It is charged against the Event Balance, never taken out of the Contribution itself. A Contributor is always credited with the full amount they paid. Someone who pledged TZS 10,000 and paid TZS 10,000 is recorded as having given TZS 10,000 and is shown as fully paid on the public list and in the WhatsApp group — the Fee does not make them look short.
3. The Fee is charged when the Contribution is confirmed, and settles out of the Event Balance when the Event is paid out. The Organizer's dashboard shows what was collected and what was charged as two separate figures.
4. Recorded Cash Contributions carry no Platform Fee. BetaFund never held that money, so there is nothing to charge on it — and equally nothing to pay out (section 8.9).
5. Because the Fee is charged at confirmation, a later change to the rate never reprices money that was already collected (section 9.4).

9.2 The Withdrawal Fee

1. A flat Withdrawal Fee is charged on each Withdrawal and deducted from the amount paid out.
2. It is charged once per payout, so a Withdrawal of the whole balance costs less than several smaller ones. This is why a Withdrawal always takes the entire Available Balance rather than an amount the Organizer types in (section 10.4).
3. A payout that fails is not charged: the Fee is returned to the Event Balance along with the payout amount (section 10.4.7).

9.3 How Fees are calculated

1. Rounding. A Fee calculated as a percentage is rounded to the nearest whole Tanzanian Shilling. All amounts in the Service are held in whole shillings.
2. Taxes. Fees are stated inclusive of VAT unless Schedule A says otherwise. Any tax arising on the money an Organizer raises or receives is their own responsibility — see section 17.
3. Third-party costs are yours. Mobile-network charges, USSD costs, and any fee a Contributor's own mobile-money provider applies to sending money are not ours and are not refundable by us.
4. There are no other charges. No account fee, no monthly fee, no per-group fee, no charge for connecting or reconnecting a WhatsApp group, and no charge for creating, pausing, or closing an Event.

9.4 Changing Fees

1. We may change a Fee. We will publish the change and give at least the Fee Change Notice Period before it takes effect.
2. An Event that is already Active when a change takes effect keeps the Fees it was created under until it is Closed.
3. Money already collected is never repriced. A Contribution is charged at the rate in force when it confirmed, whatever the rate becomes later.
4. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect is acceptance of it.

10. Holding of funds, and Withdrawals

10.1 We hold the money

1. Confirmed Contributions are held by BetaFund in a platform-controlled balance attributed to that Event. They do not flow straight to the Organizer.
2. Funds are held in trust for the purpose of the Event, are not BetaFund's money, and earn no interest for anyone.
3. Every movement is recorded in an append-only ledger. An Event's balance is always derived from that ledger, never from a figure typed in by hand.

10.2 When a Withdrawal is possible

All of the following must be true:

1. The Event is Active, Paused, or Closed. An Event does not have to be Closed to be withdrawn from, and Closing is not what releases the money. Money is often needed while a collection is still running — a hospital bill, a burial, a deposit that cannot wait — and no Organizer should have to end their own collection and lose their WhatsApp Groups to reach funds that have already cleared. No Withdrawal is possible from a Draft Event (it has never been public and holds nothing) or from a Cancelled Event (money collected for it is dealt with under section 12, not paid to the Organizer).
2. The Available Balance is at least the Minimum Withdrawal Balance. Below that threshold, no Withdrawal can be requested. The Withdrawal Fee is then deducted from the amount withdrawn, so the smallest payout you can actually receive is the Minimum Withdrawal Balance less the Withdrawal Fee.
3. The Clearing Period has passed on the Contributions making up the balance. A confirmed mobile-money payment can still be reversed after the fact, so each Contribution is held for this period before it becomes withdrawable. The dashboard shows what is still clearing and the date it clears.
4. The Organizer's identity and payout destination have been verified where we ask for it.
5. Nothing is under investigation. A Withdrawal can be held where an Event is under dispute, review, or a legal or regulatory request.

10.3 Withdrawals are made from the Event, not the account

There is no withdrawal from the main dashboard. Money does not pool into an account-level wallet, and there is no account balance to draw from. Each Event holds its own balance and is withdrawn from inside that Event's own dashboard. An Organizer running four Events has four separate balances, each withdrawn separately, each carrying its own Withdrawal Fee and its own Minimum Withdrawal Balance. Balances from different Events cannot be combined to reach the minimum.

10.4 How a Withdrawal is processed

1. A Withdrawal takes the whole Available Balance. There is no partial withdrawal and no amount to type in: the Withdrawal Fee is flat, so splitting one payout in two would only cost the Organizer that Fee twice to receive the same money.

   An Event still collecting may be withdrawn from more than once. Each Withdrawal takes what has cleared by that point, and each one is charged its own Withdrawal Fee and must independently meet the Minimum Withdrawal Balance. Withdrawing does not end, pause, or otherwise change the Event, and it does not reduce the contribution total shown on the public page — that total records what was given, not what is currently held.

2. Withdrawals are paid only to the payout destination recorded on that Event. That destination may be a Tanzanian mobile-money number or an account at a supported Tanzanian bank; the bank is chosen from the list we support, not typed, because our payment provider will only accept a bank it recognises.

3. Changing a payout destination requires a code sent to the current destination and a second code sent to the new one. Both must be answered before the destination moves. A bank account has no handset, so where either side is a bank account the Organizer's own registered number stands in for that side. This is the single highest-value action on the account — someone holding a stolen session needs nothing else to redirect an entire collection — and the code sent to the current destination is as much a warning to its owner as it is a check.

4. A bank transfer is rejected if the account holder's name does not match the bank's records. Enter it exactly as the bank holds it.

5. We aim to complete a Withdrawal within the Payout Processing Time, but this depends on our payment provider and the receiving bank or network, and is not guaranteed.

6. The amount leaves the Event Balance the moment a Withdrawal is requested, not when it arrives. This is what stops the same money being drawn twice while a payout is in flight, and it is why the dashboard shows the balance at zero with a payout listed as pending.

7. If a payout fails — wrong number, unknown account, name mismatch, network rejection — the amount is returned to the Event Balance in full, including the Withdrawal Fee. Nobody pays for a transfer that did not happen. The Organizer can correct the destination and request again, and the Fee is charged on that next attempt.

8. We may make a Withdrawal in parts where our provider's limits require it. Where we do so for our own operational reasons, only one Withdrawal Fee is charged.

9. Dormant balances. If a Closed Event's Available Balance is left unwithdrawn for the Dormancy Period after closing, we will attempt to contact the Organizer on their registered number. Where we cannot reach them, we will deal with the funds as required by Tanzanian law, and may charge the Dormancy Fee for continuing to hold and administer them.

11. Closing an Event

Closing is deliberate and it is final. When an Event is Closed:

1. The public page stops accepting Contributions. It remains viewable as a record.
2. Every Bot Account leaves every WhatsApp Group connected to that Event. The bot exits the groups; the summaries stop. This is automatic and is the intended behaviour, not a fault.
3. Before it leaves, the Bot Account posts a final message to each of those groups stating the closing total and saying that it is leaving. The group is told; it does not simply go quiet.
4. All Platform Fees charged on the Event settle from the Event Balance.
5. The Clearing Period runs on the remaining Contributions, after which they become Available like any others. Anything already Available before Closing was already withdrawable and is unaffected.

A Closed Event cannot be reopened. To collect again — or to bring a WhatsApp group back — create a new Event and connect the groups to it. That costs nothing (section 7), but the new Event starts from zero with its own link, its own list, and its own balance. Do not close an Event until collection has genuinely finished.

12. Refunds, reversals, and chargebacks

1. Confirmed Contributions are generally non-refundable (section 8.5).
2. We may reverse a Contribution where it was made in error and is reported promptly, where it is fraudulent or was made with stolen funds, where an Event is Cancelled before payout, or where the law or our payment provider requires it.
3. A refund, where we make one, returns the full Contribution to the sending account. The Platform Fee charged on it is reversed out of the Event Balance at the same time, so the Organizer is not left carrying a fee on money they did not keep.
4. Reversals after payout. If a Contribution is reversed or charged back after the Event has been paid out, the Organizer must repay that amount to BetaFund on demand. We may recover it from any other Event balance held for that Organizer.
5. Cancelled Events. Where an Event is Cancelled and money is still held, we will normally return Contributions to their senders in full. Where returning them is impossible, we will deal with the funds as Tanzanian law requires.
6. Disputes between Organizer and Contributors — about whether money was used as promised, or whether an Event was genuine — are between those parties. BetaFund is not a party to them and is not an arbiter of them. We will provide our transaction records where we are lawfully asked to.
7. To raise a dispute with us, contact us at the address in Schedule C within the Dispute Window of the transaction, with the Event link and the transaction reference.

13. Your data, and what is public

This section is the whole of what we promise about personal data. Where we publish a separate Privacy Policy at the address in Schedule C, it adds detail to this section and does not narrow anything in it.

1. What we collect. From an Organizer: the mobile number the account is opened with, the name and email address given at sign-up, the acceptance record described in §1.1, each Event's payout destination, and everything typed into an Event — titles, descriptions, images, participant names, pledges, and Recorded Cash Contributions. From a Contributor: the name they type, the mobile number they pay from, the amount, and the reference our payment provider returns. From everybody: ordinary technical records of requests made to our servers.
2. Why we hold it. To run the Service and move the money, which is the agreement between us; to meet Tanzanian financial-record, tax, and anti-money-laundering obligations; and to keep accounts secure — sign-in codes, security alerts, and the record of which version of these Terms an account accepted and when.
3. What is public by design: an Event's title, description, image, Public ID, target and the history of every change to it, participant names, pledged amounts, contributor names, individual contribution amounts, the times contributions arrived, and the running total. All of it sits on a public web page that anyone holding the link or the Public ID can open, and is posted into connected WhatsApp Groups. This is true of Link-only Events as well: Link-only limits who can find the Event (section 5) and hides nothing from anyone who has the link. A Listed Event is additionally offered to anyone searching BetaFund. Do not put anything on an event page you would not want publicly readable.
4. What is never public: phone numbers — the Organizer's or a Contributor's — email addresses, payout destinations, payment references, and everything about a payout. An Event's payout details and its payout history are visible to that Event's Organizer and to nobody else.
5. Who else sees it. Our payment provider, our SMS and email providers, our hosting and file-storage providers, and WhatsApp as to whatever the Bot Account posts into a group — each only so far as their part of the job requires. We do not sell personal data and we do not share it for anybody else's marketing.
6. Organizers act as a data controller for the participant lists they upload. By uploading names, an Organizer confirms they are entitled to use them for this purpose and is responsible for what those people have been told.
7. Service messages. By using the Service you consent to receiving service SMS and email — sign-in codes, payout receipts, and notices about your own Events. These are not marketing, and cannot be switched off while your account is open. We do not send marketing.
8. Your rights. You may ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to close your account and delete what we are free to delete. Write to the address in Schedule C. Two limits are better said plainly than discovered later: we cannot delete records we are required by law to keep, and we will not retrospectively rewrite a public event page — a contribution list that other people gave money against is a record of something that happened, and a name comes off it only where the law requires.
9. How long we keep it. Account and Event records for as long as the account is open, and afterwards for as long as Tanzanian financial-record law requires — which is longer than the life of your account. Sign-in codes are kept only until they are used or expire.
10. Where it is held. On servers operated by us or by the providers named in clause 5, which may be outside Tanzania. Where personal data leaves Tanzania we require it to be protected to the same standard.

14. Prohibited uses

You must not use the Service:

1. To raise money by deception — a fabricated event, a false emergency, an impersonated family or organisation, or a purpose you do not intend to honour.
2. To launder money, to move the proceeds of crime, or to finance terrorism.
3. For anything unlawful in Tanzania, including unlicensed lotteries, gambling, or the sale of prohibited goods.
4. To collect political-party funds, where doing so would breach Tanzanian campaign-finance law.
5. To sell goods or services, or to raise investment, dressed as a contribution.
6. To impersonate another person or Event, or to copy an existing Event's page in order to divert its money.
7. To add our Bot Account to groups without their admins' consent, to spam, or to use the Bot for anything other than the connected Event's updates.
8. To attempt to access another user's account, Event, or data; to probe, scan, or attack our systems; to scrape the Service at scale; or to circumvent a rate limit, a fee, or a security control.
9. To publish, through an event page or a bot message, content that is defamatory, obscene, harassing, or that infringes someone else's rights.

We treat breaches of 14.1, 14.2, and 14.6 as grounds for immediate closure, retention of funds pending investigation, and referral to the authorities.

15. Suspension and termination

1. By you. You may close an Event at any time (which triggers everything in section 11), and may ask us to close your account. Fees already accrued remain payable, and we will hold any balance until it can lawfully be paid out.
2. By us. We may suspend or terminate an account, an Event, or a Group connection — with notice where practical, and immediately where not — if these Terms are breached, if we suspect fraud or unlawful use, if our payment provider or WhatsApp requires it, or if we are ordered to by a court or regulator.
3. Held funds on suspension. Where we suspend an Event, contributions already held remain the Contributors' or Organizer's money as the case may be. They are not forfeited to us. We will release or return them once the matter is resolved, subject to any legal obligation preventing us from doing so.
4. Discontinuing the Service. We may withdraw the Service, or any part of it, on the Service Withdrawal Notice Period. We will allow Events to close and balances to be withdrawn before it takes effect.

16. Availability, third parties, and liability

1. No uptime guarantee. The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any particular moment, including at the moment of an event.
2. Third parties we depend on. The Service relies on providers we do not control, among them our mobile-money aggregator, our SMS provider, the mobile networks, hosting infrastructure, and WhatsApp, operated by Meta, with which BetaFund is not affiliated, endorsed, or partnered. An outage, restriction, policy change, account ban, or failure at any of them can degrade or stop parts of the Service, and we are not liable for their acts or omissions.
3. Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for our own fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded under Tanzanian law.
4. Subject to 16.3, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of goodwill, loss of an opportunity, or distress; nor for a WhatsApp message that was not delivered; nor for a contribution made to the wrong Event; nor for an Organizer's use or misuse of the funds they raise.
5. Subject to 16.3, our total liability to you for all claims arising in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the total Fees you paid us in that period and the Liability Floor.
6. You indemnify us against claims, losses, and reasonable costs arising from your breach of these Terms, from an Event you organised, or from the content you published through the Service.

17. Taxes

1. Organizers are solely responsible for determining whether the money they raise or receive is taxable, and for declaring and paying any tax due to the Tanzania Revenue Authority.
2. BetaFund does not withhold tax on an Organizer's behalf unless the law requires us to, in which case we will deduct it from the payout and tell you.
3. We may be required to report transaction information to the Tanzanian tax or financial authorities, and will do so where required.

18. Compliance, verification, and sanctions

1. We may ask any Organizer for identity documents, proof of address, proof of control of a payout number, or an explanation of an Event's purpose or of an unusual pattern of contributions, and may hold a payout until we receive them.
2. We may report suspicious activity to the Financial Intelligence Unit or other competent authority, and are not permitted to tell you when we have.
3. We may refuse to deal with any person subject to sanctions, and may block a transaction where a law or our provider requires.

19. Changes to these Terms

1. We may change these Terms. The current version always lives at the address in Schedule C, with a version number and effective date at the top and a summary of what changed in Schedule D.
2. For a change that materially affects your rights or increases a Fee, we will give at least the Terms Change Notice Period — by SMS, by email, or in the dashboard — before it takes effect.
3. Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect is acceptance of the changed Terms. If you do not accept a change, close your Events and stop using the Service before the effective date.
4. A material change is put in front of you and asked for. Where a change materially affects your rights or increases a Fee, we do not rely on clause 3 alone: the dashboard tells you a new version is waiting, and asks you to accept it. We record your acceptance of the new version exactly as we recorded the first (§1.1), so what you agreed to and when is never a matter of recollection.
5. You can always see which version you accepted. Your account settings name the version and the date. Schedule D says what changed in each one.

20. General

1. Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the United Republic of Tanzania.
2. Disputes. We ask you to contact us first — most disputes are settled that way. Failing that, the courts of Tanzania have exclusive jurisdiction.
3. Language. These Terms are written in English. Where we publish a Swahili translation, the English version prevails if the two differ.
4. Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
5. No waiver. If we do not enforce a right immediately, we have not given it up.
6. Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a successor of our business, on notice.
7. Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Schedules below are the whole agreement between us on this subject.

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Schedule A — Fee and Limit Schedule

This is the only place values are defined. All amounts are in Tanzanian Shillings (TZS), in whole shillings.

The application reads these same values from backend/src/lib/pricing.ts, which mirrors A.4 below. The two must be changed together — a fee the code charges but this schedule does not publish is a fee we cannot defend.

A.1 Fees

A.2 Limits and thresholds

A.3 Periods

A.4 Machine-readable copy

Keep this block in step with the tables above and with backend/src/lib/pricing.ts, so that what a user is charged and what this document says can never drift apart.

{
  "currency": "TZS",
  "fees": {
    "platformPercent": 3.5,
    "withdrawalFlat": 1500,
    "dormancyPerMonth": 1000,
    "vatTreatment": "inclusive",
    "groupConnection": 0
  },
  "limits": {
    "minWithdrawalBalance": 5000,
    "minContribution": 1000,
    "maxContribution": 3000000,
    "maxGroupsPerEvent": 10,
    "minAgeYears": 18,
    "liabilityFloor": 100000
  },
  "periods": {
    "clearingDays": 7,
    "payoutProcessingBusinessDays": 2,
    "dormancyDays": 180,
    "disputeWindowDays": 30,
    "feeChangeNoticeDays": 14,
    "termsChangeNoticeDays": 14,
    "serviceWithdrawalNoticeDays": 60
  }
}

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Schedule B — Worked examples

Figures below use the values in Schedule A at the time of writing. If Schedule A changes, these examples change with it.

B.1 An ordinary event, from first contribution to payout

An Organizer raises TZS 500,000 online, connects two WhatsApp groups, and also collects TZS 80,000 in cash which they record by hand.

The cash never reaches BetaFund, so it carries no fee and cannot be withdrawn here — the Organizer already has it.

B.2 A contributor who pays their pledge exactly

Neema pledged TZS 10,000 and pays TZS 10,000.

The Fee never touches what Neema is recorded as giving. Deducting it from her contribution would credit her 9,650 against a 10,000 pledge and show her as partially paid, in public, in her own WhatsApp group.

B.3 The same WhatsApp group used by two events

An Organizer runs a wedding Event and a funeral Event in the same month and connects the same WhatsApp group to both.

Groups are free, however many Events use them. BetaFund earns from the money it holds, not from the groups an Organizer connects.

B.4 Two events cannot be combined to reach the minimum

The combined TZS 7,000 is above the threshold, but the balances belong to different Events and cannot be pooled (§10.3).

B.5 A small balance at the threshold

An Event closes with an Available Balance of exactly TZS 5,000. It may be withdrawn; the Withdrawal Fee of 1,500 is deducted, and the Organizer receives 3,500.

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Schedule C — Entity and contact details

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Schedule D — Change log

Newest first. Versions 0.1 to 0.4 were internal drafts and were never published or accepted by anybody; 1.0 is the first version these Terms took effect under.