Terms and Conditions

When you create an account with us, you must provide us information that is accurate, complete, and current at all times. Failure to do so constitutes a breach of the Terms, which may result in immediate termination of your account on our Service. You are responsible for safeguarding the password that you use to access the Service and for any activities or actions under your password, whether your password is with our Service or a third-party service. You agree not to disclose your password to any third party. You must notify us immediately upon becoming aware of any breach of security or unauthorized use of your account.

SAO accepts EUR, USD, and CAD.

We reserve the right to change these Terms from time to time, with or without notice to you. If you continue to use the Services, you consent to the new Terms, as modified. We will always have the latest Terms posted on the Services.

SAO is a Fintrac regulated institution under the laws of Canada, with MSB registration nr: M22958959. As such, we endeavor to comply with all laws and regulations applicable to our business, including anti-money laundering and terrorism financing (“AML”) and Know Your Customer/Client (KYC) regulations.

Identification and verification procedures (also known as "Know Your Customer" or "KYC") are required for all the Transactions. If the User refuses to provide required documents and information under KYC, SAO reserves the right to immediately terminate the Services provision to the User.

The User undertakes to provide SAO with correct and relevant documents and personal information contained therein. In case the User provides counterfeit documents and false personal information, such behavior will be interpreted as a fraudulent activity.

The User hereby authorizes SAO to, directly or indirectly (through third parties), make any inquiries we consider necessary to verify the relevance and accuracy of the information provided for verification purposes. Personal Data transferred will be limited strictly to necessary data and with security measures to protect the data.

To be eligible to use the Services, you must meet the following requirements:

• You must be at least 18 years old.
• You must register for a SAO user account via the Services (a “User Account”) and successfully complete the identity verification process described below.
• You must reside in a state or jurisdiction in which we operate.

By signing up for a User Account, you represent and warrant that you are a resident of a state or jurisdiction in which we operate and meet all of the eligibility criteria for the Service.

The User has the right to enter and use the Site and the Services, as long as he/she agrees to and actually complies with the Terms of Use. By using the Site, the User agrees to accept and comply with the terms and conditions stated herein.

• The User undertakes to read the entire Terms of Use carefully before using the Site or any of the Services provided by SAO.
• The User undertakes to comply with any and all applicable laws and regulations related to the use of the Services.
• The User undertakes to monitor all and any changes on his/her Account.
• The User undertakes to immediately (i.e. right after the moment of discovery) inform SAO about any unusual, suspicious, unclear or abnormal changes on his/her Account. In case of late notice or lack of notice, the User will be liable for the breach of the Terms of Use and SAO will have the right to take any further steps accordingly, including but not limited to, reports to the relevant state or national authorities.
• The User is responsible for any and all damages caused, and all liability actions brought against SAO, for infringement of any third-party rights or violation of any applicable laws.

Nothing in the Terms of Use excludes or limits the liability of the User for fraud, death or personal injury caused by their negligence, breach of the terms implied by operation of law or any other liability which may not be limited or excluded by law.

As a regulated financial institution, we are required to obtain information about and verify the identity of our users. To comply with our KYC/AML obligations, we will request that you provide certain information to us about you. This information will be used by us for the purposes of identity verification and the detection of money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, or any other financial crimes. You agree that all such information provided by you will be complete and accurate, that you will keep us updated if any of the information you provide changes, and that we may keep a record of such information consistent with our KYC/AML obligations.

In addition to collecting information from you, we are required to take reasonable steps to verify your identity as a user. You expressly authorize SAO to take any and all actions that we reasonably deem necessary to verify your identity or protect you and/or us against fraud or other financial crime. These may include, but are not limited to, engaging third-party services to assist with such verification efforts, sharing your information with such third parties, and collecting additional information about you from such third parties.

Your privacy is important to us. We only share your information with third parties as outlined in our Privacy Policy or as required to do so by law enforcement, court order, or in compliance with identity verification or legal reporting obligations in SAO’s sole judgment.

Except as provided by law, all purchases are final and non-refundable. If you believe that SAO has charged you in error, you must contact SAO within 30 days of such charge. No refunds will be given for any transaction which is more than 30 days old. When you purchase any digital content or services from SAO, any right you may have to withdraw from or cancel the purchase will be terminated once the digital content is delivered to you upon your request, and you will not be entitled to claim any refund, except where you believe SAO has charged you in error.

SAO reserves the right to refuse a refund request if it reasonably believes or suspects (i) that you are trying to unfairly exploit this refund policy, for example, by making repetitive refund requests in respect of the same product or feature; (ii) that you are in breach of the terms of Policy, SAO Terms of Service;. This refund policy does not affect any of your statutory rights to pursue a claim.

For all refunds due to an error in your payment amount please e-mail support@saopayments.com quoting your full name, contact number, and reason for requesting a refund. The accounts department will deal with your query at the earliest possible opportunity and may ask for some additional details to process your refund.

Any billing disputes raised by you to SAO will be settled in accordance with the SAO Terms of Service. A pending billing dispute does not exempt you from timely paying any undisputed amounts that you owe.

The Services contain important and proprietary property owned by us, including software, that constitutes our trademarks, trade secrets and other intellectual property. Nothing in these Terms shall be construed as a conveyance of any ownership right or title in or to our property. We only grant you a limited, nonexclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, and revocable license to use the Services for the purposes permitted by these Terms, and only for as long as you are permitted to access the Services.

The Services, including any images, illustrations, posts, audio clips, photographs, editorial content, notices, software (including html-based computer programs), and other content related to the Services, are the property of SAO and its affiliates, or are the property of a third party who has granted SAO permission to use such material, and in any case are protected from unauthorized copying and dissemination by copyrights that are owned or licensed by SAO and by copyright law, trademark law, international conventions and other intellectual property laws. All logos or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. You may not reproduce, perform, create derivative works from, republish, upload, post, transmit, distribute, decompile, reverse-engineer, disassemble, or otherwise convert in any way whatsoever any materials from the Services without our prior written permission. Nothing contained in these Terms should be construed as granting, by implication, estoppel, or otherwise, any license or right to use the Services or any information displayed on the Services except: (a) as expressly permitted by these Terms or (b) with the prior written permission of SAO or such third party that may own the trademark or copyright of information displayed on the Services.

You covenant and represent that you will not use the Services to engage in, or aid or abet in, the violation of any law, statute, ordinance, or regulation. These include, without limitation, violation of any sanction’s programs administered in any jurisdiction in which we operate.

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, you may not use the Services in connection with any of the following businesses or activities:

• Intellectual property or proprietary rights infringement: sales, distribution, or access to counterfeit music, movies, software, or other licensed materials without the appropriate authorization from the rights holder; any product or service that directly infringes or facilitates infringement upon the trademark, patent, copyright, trade secrets, or proprietary or privacy rights of any third party;
• Counterfeit or unauthorized goods: sale of counterfeit goods; unauthorized sale or resale of brand name or designer products or services; sale of goods or services that are illegally imported or exported;
• Soliciting, selling or offering for sale regulated or illegal products or services: sale of tobacco, e-cigarettes, and e-liquid; online pharmacies; prescription-only products including card-not-present pharmaceuticals; peptides and research chemicals; fake references or identification services; age-restricted goods or services; weapons and munitions; gunpowder and other explosives; fireworks and related goods; toxic, flammable, and radioactive materials; products and services with varying legal status on a state-by-state basis; goods or services, the sale of which is illegal under applicable law in the jurisdictions to which your business is targeted or directed;
• Unfair, predatory or deceptive practices: investment opportunities or other services that promise high rewards; sale or resale of a service without added benefit to the buyer; resale of government offerings without authorization or added value; sites that we determine in our sole discretion to be unfair, deceptive, or predatory towards consumers; platforms that facilitate the publication and removal of content (such as mug shots), where the primary purpose of posting such content is to cause or raise concerns of reputational harm;
• Aggregation: engaging in any form of licensed or unlicensed aggregation of funds owed to third parties, factoring, or other activities intended to obfuscate the origin of funds; payment facilitation;
• Drugs and drug paraphernalia: sale of narcotics, controlled substances, and any equipment designed for making or using drugs, such as bongs, vaporizers, and hookahs;
• Multi-level marketing: pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing;
• Pseudo pharmaceuticals: nutraceuticals, pseudo-pharmaceuticals and other products that make health claims that have not been approved or verified by the Food and Drug Administration (or equivalent applicable local and/or national regulatory body); or
• High risk businesses: any other businesses that we believe poses elevated financial risk, legal liability, or violates the policies of our banking partners.

In addition to the above, you may not engage in any of the following activities on the Services:

• Violating the rights, including intellectual property rights, of others;
• Activities that could be harmful to minors;
• Harassment of others;
• Transmission of "junk mail" or unsolicited mass mailing or "spam" or harvesting;
• Abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libelous conduct;
• Soliciting passwords or personally identifiable information for unlawful purposes from other users of the Services;
• Using any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor, copy, or "scrape" web pages or the content contained in the Services or for any other unauthorized purpose without our prior written consent;
• Using any device, software, or routine to interfere with, or attempt to interfere with, the proper working of the Services;
• Decompiling, reverse engineering, or disassembling the software underlying the Services or attempting to do so; or
• Taking any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the Services or our hardware and software infrastructure or that of any of its licensors or suppliers.

We reserve the right to take action to limit or prevent your access to our Services if we, in our sole discretion, determine that limiting or preventing your access to our Services is necessary or advisable. Circumstances in which we may limit or prevent your access to our Services include, but are not limited to, if we deem that such action is necessary based on: (i) your use of the Services in a way that is unlawful or would potentially expose us to liability; (ii) disruption of the Services by you to others; (iii) your violation of these Terms or our Privacy Policy; (iv) your violation of any applicable laws, rules, regulations, and agreements that may apply to you; and (v) your use of the Services in a way that could cause harm to any person or entity. Such action may include, without limitation suspending your User Account or terminating your access to the Services provided by SAO.

If you would like to terminate this legally binding agreement with SAO, you must contact us at support@saopayments.com to deactivate your User Account. We may request certain information and/or documentation to verify your request to deactivate your User Account. Upon any termination of this Agreement, whether by you or by us, you must discontinue any further use of the Services. Once deactivated, you may request to re-activate your User Account. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to determine whether to re-activate your User Account. Please note that even if you terminate your User Account, we may retain information about you consistent with our KYC/AML obligations and our Privacy Policy.

Notwithstanding any termination of these Terms, any provision of these Terms that by its nature and context is intended to survive its termination will so survive. These include, without limitation, provisions related to limitation of our liability, disclaimer of warranties, our intellectual property rights, indemnity and dispute resolution.

SAO MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE CONTENT OR OPERATION OF THE SERVICES OR OF THE SERVICES. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, LOST PROFITS, OR LOST DATA, REGARDLESS OF THE FORESEEABILITY OF THOSE DAMAGES) ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING: ANY HARM OR DAMAGE CAUSED BY, OR OTHERWISE RELATED TO, YOUR RELIANCE ON INFORMATION PROVIDED THROUGH THE SERVICES; ANY LOSS OR UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF DATA; ANY HARM OR DAMAGE CAUSED BY, OR OTHERWISE RELATED TO, YOUR USE OF OR INTERACTION WITH ANY SERVICES OFFERED THROUGH THE SERVICES; AND ANY VIOLATIONS OF APPLICABLE LAWS, RULES, REGULATIONS, AND OTHER AGREEMENTS. THIS LIMITATION SHALL APPLY REGARDLESS OF THE LEGAL THEORY OR FORM OF ACTION.

THE LIMITATIONS OF DAMAGES SET FORTH ABOVE ARE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS OF THE BASIS OF THE BARGAIN BETWEEN YOU AND US. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF LIABILITY FOR CERTAIN TYPES OF DAMAGES OR CAUSES OF ACTION, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

This website and rules of using this website is regulated under the laws of Canada. Any legal proceeding in respect to using this website shall be brought in the district courts of country of Canada, and these courts shall have subject matter jurisdiction of all such disputes.

If you have any questions, concerns or complaints about the Services, your User Account, these Terms, or anything else, please contact our support team at support@saopayments.com. We may ask you certain information about you and your User Account to respond to your inquiry.

By agreeing to these Terms, you consent to receiving all communications, agreements, disclosures, and notices related to your use of the Services electronically. These may include, but are not limited to, your consent to these Terms, any updates to these Terms and our Privacy Policy, details and notices about your User Account, and any other disclosures and notices. We will communicate all electronic disclosures to you by posting them on the SAO website or via e-mail at the address associated with your User Account, and are deemed received as of the time and date sent by SAO.

To access documents electronically, you will need to have access to the SAO website and your e-mail address using an Internet-connected device and a compatible web browser with cookies enabled. You may retain documents in paper form by printing them using a printer, or electronically by saving them to a hard drive or cloud storage with sufficient space.

You agree to keep your e-mail address updated at all times. You may update your contact information by logging into your User Account and updating the information in your account settings page.

If you wish to withdraw your consent to receiving electronic disclosures, you must contact us at support@saopayments.com, in which case we may deactivate your User Account and terminate your access to the Services, as described above. If we choose to provide communications to you by paper, we may charge you additional fees.

If, for whatever reason, any term or condition in these Terms is found unenforceable, all other terms and conditions will remain unaffected and in full force and effect.

If you have any questions about these Terms or our Services, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at info@saopayments.com.