Merchant Terms & Conditions

1. What the service is (and is not)

Malini is software that lets your business accept instant PayShap payments with your phone, records your sales (including cash sales you enter yourself), and gives you a dashboard, ledger and shareable receipts.

2. Who may use it

• You must be 18 or older, operating a business in South Africa, and provide accurate registration details.
• The law (FICA) requires identity verification before you can accept payments. Until you are verified, payment acceptance stays locked — you can still record cash sales as bookkeeping.
• One account per person. You are responsible for keeping your login credentials safe, and for everything done under your account.

3. Payments are final

PayShap payments cannot be reversed once made. This is how the national payment rail works — it is not our choice. In practice:

• Check the amount before showing the QR code. The app makes the amount and the confirmation screen unmissable for exactly this reason.
• If a customer pays you the wrong amount, the correction happens between you and your customer — for example, you pay them back. We provide the records (receipt reference, amount, time) to help.
• Only treat a sale as paid when the app shows Payment received. A pending screen is not money.

4. Fees

You buy payment credits up front. Each sale uses some. Nothing is ever taken out of your bank account.

The customer's bank pays your bank directly. We are never in the middle of that payment, so there is nothing for us to take — the full amount of every sale reaches you.

• Bigger sales use more credits than smaller ones. You can check your balance at any time, so you always know how many payments you have left.
• You top up when you choose, in the amounts you choose. If you run out you can still record cash sales — you just cannot take new digital payments until you top up.
• Cash sales are free. Recording cash costs nothing, because we did not move that money for you. The dashboard, the ledger and receipts are free too.
• No monthly fee. No hardware to buy or rent. No contract period, no lock-in — stop using it whenever you like.
• If you take no digital payments, you use no credits. There is no minimum and no monthly charge.
• We give you 30 days' notice in the app before any price change. Credits you have already bought are not affected.

5. Your responsibilities

You agree to: sell only lawful goods and services; enter honest amounts (including cash sales — your records feed any future credit application, and inflating them is fraud); not use the service for money laundering or on behalf of someone else; and keep your registration details current.

6. Our rights and responsibilities

• We may suspend or lock payment acceptance while we investigate suspected fraud or unlawful use, or when a verification or screening check requires it. Where the law requires, we may not be permitted to tell you why.
• We give you notice of material service changes in the app.
• We may report suspicious activity to the Financial Intelligence Centre — this is a legal duty.

7. Service availability and liability

We work to keep the service available 24/7 but do not guarantee it — the payment rail, your PSP, your bank and your connectivity are outside our control.

To the extent the law allows, and without excluding any liability the Consumer Protection Act does not permit us to exclude: we are not liable for loss caused by rail, PSP or bank outages, for disputes between you and your customers, or for indirect losses. Our total liability in any 12-month period is capped at the fees you paid us in that period.

8. Your information

How we handle your information is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms. Sales records are kept for the legally required period — five years after account closure, per FICA — even if you close your account.

9. Ending the relationship

You can stop using the service and close your account at any time. We can terminate on 30 days' notice, or immediately for material breach, fraud, or where the law requires. Sections 3 (finality), 7 (liability) and 8 (records) survive termination.

10. Complaints and disputes

Complaints go to sipho@malinipay.co.za first — our process and timelines are set out in our complaints and disputes policy. If we cannot resolve a payment matter, it can be escalated to your PSP or bank, and ultimately to the National Financial Ombud Scheme (nfosa.co.za).

These terms are governed by South African law.