Terms & compliance

Approved Commerce is a web design, development and infrastructure service. We specialise in merchants in high-risk and regulated categories, and we also work with businesses outside them. We design and build websites and online stores, write custom themes, plugins, web applications and integrations, and help our clients obtain and connect third-party services such as payment processing, hosting, domains, and business email.

We're not a bank, a payment processor, an acquirer, a payment facilitator, or a money services business. We never take custody of your customers' funds. Money moves between your customers, your processor, and your bank, and we're not a party to it.

Every engagement is quoted in writing before work begins, with a fixed scope and a fixed price. That written quote, together with these terms, is the agreement between us. Anything outside the agreed scope is quoted separately before it's built.

On completion we hand over the site and every account we set up on your behalf. All accounts are opened in your name and remain your property. Where we hold access to maintain something for you, we hold it as your service provider, never as the owner, and we surrender it on request.

When you request a free design, we design your website, starting with the homepage, and send it to you to review. You can ask for changes. You don't pay anything, and you aren't committed to anything, until you've approved the design and accepted a written quote for the build.

If you decide not to go ahead, you owe us nothing. The design stays ours until the build is paid for, so please don't hand it to another developer to build.

We may decline a request, for example when the project is outside what we do or the business is one we won't work with under section 06. We'll tell you if so. Approving a design doesn't change anything in section 07: payment processors and other third parties still make their own decisions.

Custom themes, plugins, web applications and integrations are quoted in writing after a call, like any other engagement. The written quote sets out what will be built and what it will connect to.

Once the engagement is paid in full, the code we wrote specifically for you is yours.We may keep using our general know-how and any tools or building blocks we already had or that aren't specific to your project. Third-party software we install, such as open-source plugins or paid services, stays under its own licence.

We test what we build against the requirements in your quote. Changes made later by other developers, or updates to third-party software and platforms we don't control, can affect how custom code behaves. Fixing that is covered by an ongoing care plan or quoted separately.

You're solely responsible for the products you sell and everything you say about them. Specifically, you're responsible for:

• Confirming that your products are legal to sell and ship in every market you serve.
• Holding any licence, registration, or permit your category requires.
• The accuracy of your product descriptions, labelling, and any claim about what a product does.
• Your compliance with the rules of your payment processor, acquirer, and card networks.
• Fulfilment, shipping, refunds, chargebacks, and customer service.
• The accuracy of the information you give us during onboarding and underwriting.
• Having the right to use the text, images, logos and other material you give us for your site.

For regulated categories, we'll build the compliance scaffolding a category normally needs, such as age verification, required disclaimers, and research-use-only notices where they apply. Putting that scaffolding in place doesn't transfer responsibility for your products or claims to us.

We only take on products that are legal to sell in the markets our client ships to. We decline categories that are unlawful where they would be sold, regardless of what a platform's policy says.

We won't write or publish false or unsubstantiated health, medical, or earnings claims,and we won't present a research-use product as fit for human consumption. This isn't us being squeamish. Unsupported claims are one of the most common reasons a merchant account is closed, so refusing them protects your processing.

If you instruct us to publish something we believe crosses that line, we'll tell you, and we may decline to publish it or end the engagement under section 10.

This is the most important section on this page. It applies to every client, including businesses using mainstream processors such as Stripe or PayPal.

Payment processors, acquiring banks, gateways, hosts, and registrars are independent third parties with their own underwriting standards. We introduce you, prepare your application properly, and advocate for you. We can't guarantee that any of them will approve you, how long a decision will take, what rates or reserve they'll set, or that an approval already granted will continue.

A third party may suspend, freeze, hold funds, impose a reserve, or terminate an account at its own discretion, often without notice and without explaining why. That's a defining feature of high-risk commerce and the reason we recommend a backup processor. When a third party takes an action like that, it isn't a failure of our service and doesn't entitle you to a refund of work already performed. We'll still help you respond and, where you have ongoing care with us, move you to a backup.

Build work is invoiced in milestones set out in your quote, typically a deposit before work starts and the balance on completion. If the work began with a free design, nothing is invoiced before you've approved that design. Ongoing care plans are billed monthly in advance and can be cancelled with 30 days' notice.

Third-party costs such as hosting, domains, and processor fees are either included in your plan where your quote says so, or billed to you directly by that provider. We tell you which before you commit.

Deposits are non-refundable once work has started, because the work is scheduled and performed against them. Where your quote says a Groundwork fee is credited against a later package, the credit applies only within the period stated in that quote.

We provide our services with reasonable skill and care. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we're not liable for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, or business interruption, including losses arising from a third party suspending, freezing, or terminating your account.

Our total liability for any claim is limited to the fees you have paid us for the engagement giving rise to it.

You agree to indemnify us against claims brought by third parties, including regulators and customers, that arise from your products, your claims, or your failure to hold a required licence.

Either of us may end an ongoing care plan with 30 days' written notice. We may end an engagement immediately if you ask us to build or publish something unlawful, if you make claims we've told you we can't support, or if the information you gave us during onboarding turns out to be materially false.

However an engagement ends, you keep the site and the accounts, and we hand over any credentials we still hold.

When you submit an application or a free design request, we collect what you put in the form: your contact details and information about your business or project. We use it to assess and respond to your enquiry and, if you become a client, to deliver the work. We don't sell it, and we don't share it with anyone beyond the providers we need to involve to do the job you hired us for.

Our forms are delivered to our inbox by a third-party email delivery provider, so your answers pass through their systems on the way to us. Our site also measures traffic using a cookieless analytics service that records page views, referrers and a few anonymous events, such as a form being submitted or a pricing option being selected. It sets no cookie, builds no profile, and doesn't track you across other websites.

Your browser's local storage remembers whether you've closed the free design popup or already sent a request, so we don't keep showing it to you, and whether you chose light or dark mode. That information stays on your device and isn't sent to us.

We keep enquiry data only as long as it's useful and delete it on request. Write to the address in section 12 to ask what we hold or to have it removed.

Questions about these terms go to hello@approvedcommerce.com.

The governing law and venue for any dispute are set out in your signed engagement agreement, which takes precedence over this page if the two ever conflict.

Not legal advice.This page describes how we work. It isn't legal advice and it isn't a substitute for it. Your labelling, licensing, and regulatory obligations depend on your products and your markets, and you should confirm them with a qualified attorney in your jurisdiction. We build to whatever your attorney confirms.