Terms of use

1. Who we are

CircleSave is run by CircleSave Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company no. 16935930). Our registered office is at 5b Norfolk Street, Sunderland, UK. You can reach us at hello@circlesave.app.

2. What CircleSave does

CircleSave keeps the record of a rotating savings circle (ajo, esusu, susu and others). It shows who pays when, who has paid and whose turn is next, and it sends reminders on WhatsApp.

CircleSave is software. We aren’t a bank, a lender or a payment service, and we never hold, collect or move your money. Members pay each other directly from their own bank accounts. The savings arrangement is between the members of each circle, and CircleSave isn’t a party to it.

3. Who can use CircleSave

• You must be 18 or over.
• You sign in with a code sent to your WhatsApp, so use a phone number that’s yours. Don’t share your codes or sign-in links with anyone.
• Use your real name and keep your details up to date. Members rely on them to know who they’re paying.

4. If you organise a circle

You set the circle up: the amount, how often everyone pays, who’s in it and the payout order. You can set the order yourself or let CircleSave shuffle it.

• Only add people who have agreed to be in the circle and to get messages from CircleSave about it.
• If your circle has already started, the earlier turns and dates you enter must be true. Each member who had a turn confirms it when they join.
• If you remove someone before the circle starts, you’ll need to set the payout order again.
• If round 1 is less than 3 days away, you take round 1 yourself, because nobody else would have time to check their ID.
• When you vouch for a member, you’re telling the group you know them and trust the account they’ve given. Only vouch for people you know.

Some decisions are yours to make, such as keeping or moving a turn and removing a member. You’re responsible for making them fairly and for sorting out disagreements in your group. You pay in like every other member, and the promise in section 5 applies to you too.

5. If you join a circle

When you join, you make a promise to the other members:

• You’ll pay the agreed amount, on each due date, to the member whose turn it is, until everyone has had a turn.
• You’ll keep paying after you’ve had your own turn.

This promise is between you and the other members. CircleSave keeps a record of it, with the date and time you agreed. If your turn came before the circle moved to CircleSave, the join message shows it, and agreeing confirms you were paid.

If you leave a circle after your turn, you still owe the payments you promised. If you don’t want to join, tap Not now on the join message. You won’t be bound by anything and you won’t get reminders.

6. Payments and turns

• Pay whoever’s turn it is, the way your group already does, and use the reference we give you. Then tap “I’ve sent it”. The person you paid confirms they got it.
• We record what members tell us. We can’t see bank accounts, so we can’t confirm a payment arrived. Only the person paid can.
• Before your turn, add the account your pot should go to and check your ID with Stripe. If the check doesn’t work for you, your organiser can vouch for you instead.
• Your payout account locks 3 days before your turn. If you aren’t ready by then, your turn usually swaps with the next member who is, and we tell you your new date. Sometimes the organiser decides instead.
• The members paying you see your account details only while their payment to you is open. When you pay someone, check that the name your bank shows matches, and tell us if it doesn’t.

Money moves between members, outside CircleSave. We aren’t responsible for a payment that’s late, missing or sent to the wrong account, though we’ll help you work out what happened where we can.

7. Late-payment flags

If a member is overdue two rounds running, or tells us twice that they’ll be late, their organiser sees a private flag. A flag is a prompt to check in with them. It doesn’t remove anyone, change a turn or affect anything outside CircleSave.

Flags help you spot trouble early. They can’t predict every miss, and we can’t promise that every member will pay.

8. Money owed

If a member stops paying after their turn, the member they owe can prepare a letter of demand and download the circle’s payment record from their dashboard. The organiser can prepare a letter on behalf of someone owed, but the letter always comes from the person owed.

We prepare documents. You decide whether to send them, and you send them yourself. CircleSave doesn’t collect debts, doesn’t contact the other member for you and doesn’t give legal advice. If you’re unsure what to do, talk to a free advice service or a solicitor before you go to court.

Use these records only to recover money you’re owed. Never use them to threaten, shame or harass anyone, or to contact their family or employer.

9. Messages from us

We send sign-in codes and messages about your circles on WhatsApp. Reminders only go to members who say yes to them, and you can turn them off from your dashboard at any time. Your mobile network’s usual data charges apply.

10. What it costs

Members never pay. During early access, circles are free for organisers too, right to the last turn. After early access, the organiser pays once for the whole circle: the first turn is free, then there’s a charge per person for each turn after it. Our pricing section shows the current prices.

We’ll always show you the price for your circle and ask you to agree before you pay anything. We’ll also set out your cancellation and refund rights before anyone is charged. We never take a cut of anyone’s pot.

11. Circle Makers

Circle Makers share CircleSave with people they know and earn a thank-you when a circle they brought gets going. The Circle Makers page sets out the rewards and ranks. If you become a Circle Maker, you agree to these rules:

• Share your link with people you know. Don’t message strangers, and don’t post in groups you’re not part of.
• Say you get a thank-you if they start a circle. The ready-made message does this for you.
• You don’t earn from circles you run or help run.
• We can take back rewards from circles that aren’t real.

Each reward is held for 14 days before it’s ready to pay. We pay Makers by hand once a month, when they’ve earned at least £10 or ₦5,000. You’re responsible for any tax due on what you earn.

12. Using CircleSave fairly

Please don’t:

• add anyone to a circle without their permission
• pretend to be someone else, or give an account that isn’t yours as your payout account
• use CircleSave for fraud, money laundering or anything else illegal
• send spam with your join or Maker links
• try to get into accounts that aren’t yours, copy our data in bulk, or interfere with how CircleSave works

If you break these terms, we can suspend or close your account. We’ll tell you why, unless the law stops us.

13. Our responsibility to you

We’ll run CircleSave with reasonable care and skill. We can’t promise it will always be available, and we depend on services we don’t control, such as WhatsApp and Stripe.

CircleSave is for personal use, so we aren’t responsible for any business losses. We also aren’t responsible for what members pay or fail to pay each other, or for losses we couldn’t have foreseen when you started using CircleSave.

Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn’t let us limit. Your legal rights as a consumer aren’t affected.

14. Your information and our software

The information you put into CircleSave stays yours. You let us use it to run CircleSave, as our privacy policy explains. The CircleSave software, name, logo and design belong to us.

15. Ending your use of CircleSave

You can stop using CircleSave whenever you like. To close your account, email hello@circlesave.app. Closing your account doesn’t cancel any promise you’ve made to members of a circle, and we keep payment records for as long as our privacy policy says.

If we ever stop offering CircleSave, we’ll give you as much notice as we reasonably can.

16. Changes to these terms

If we change these terms, we’ll update the version and date at the top. If a change affects you, we’ll tell you on your dashboard before it takes effect. If you keep using CircleSave after that, the new terms apply. If you don’t agree with them, you can close your account.

17. Law and disputes

CircleSave Ltd is a UK company, and these terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you have a complaint, please email us first so we can try to put it right. If we can’t, the courts of England and Wales can hear the dispute. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring a claim in your local courts.