Terms of service

What the service does

The service issues payment links. A business raises an invoice, sends the link to the person or company being invoiced, and that person pays it by card, digital wallet or bank transfer. The payer needs no account, no password and nothing installed.

We are not a bank and we do not hold your money. Payments are processed by Stripe, which is the regulated payment institution in the arrangement, and funds settle to the account the business holds with Stripe. We provide the software that raises the invoice and records what happened to it.

The service does not offer credit, lending, currency exchange, escrow or investment of any kind, and nothing on this site is financial or tax advice.

Paying an invoice

A payment link shows who is being invoiced, the amount, the currency and a description of what is being charged. Read them before paying. If any of it is wrong, do not pay: contact the business that sent it, because we cannot alter an invoice raised by someone else.

Payment methods available depend on the business and its Stripe account, and typically include credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH bank transfer within the United States. Card details are entered into fields operated by Stripe and never reach our servers.

By paying you confirm that you are authorised to use the payment method, and that the details you give are accurate and your own. For a bank transfer you additionally authorise a debit of the stated amount from the account you nominate.

A link may carry an expiry date, and may be cancelled by the business before it is paid. Once an invoice has been paid in full the link stops accepting payment, which is what prevents the same invoice being paid twice.

When a payment is final

The amount recorded is the amount Stripe actually took. Card payments usually confirm within seconds.

Bank transfers (ACH) can take several business days, and can fail after they first appear to have succeeded. A payment is only final once it is shown as settled. Until then, treat it as in progress: if you are the business, do not release goods or services on the strength of a pending bank debit, and if you are the payer, do not assume an invoice is closed until the status says so.

Where a payment is later reversed by the bank or the card network, the invoice returns to being unpaid and the underlying obligation to the business is unaffected.

Fees

We do not add a surcharge to the amount shown on a payment link. You pay the amount on the invoice, and nothing else is taken from you by us.

Stripe deducts its processing fee from the amount that settles to the business, which is why the business sees a net figure lower than the invoice total. That deduction is between the business and Stripe and does not change what the payer owes or pays.

Your own bank or card issuer may charge you separately, for example for a foreign transaction. We have no control over and receive no part of such a charge.

Refunds, chargebacks and disputes

Refunds are the business’s decision, not ours. The service records a refund once it has been issued, but we do not issue one on our own initiative and cannot compel a business to. If you believe a payment should be returned, contact the business that raised the invoice first, since that is both the fastest route and the one that avoids fees for everyone.

A refund may be partial. It is returned to the payment method used for the original payment, and the time it takes to appear is set by your bank or card issuer, not by us.

Your right to dispute a charge with your bank or card issuer is unaffected by these terms and nothing here asks you to give it up. Where a chargeback is raised, we may provide the business and the card network with the records described in our privacy policy, including the time of the payment, the network address it came from and the last four digits of the payment method, so that the claim can be assessed on evidence.

Staff accounts

This section applies to staff who sign in, not to payers.

• An account is for one named person. Do not share it, and do not let someone else use it. An audit trail attributes actions to accounts, and a shared account makes that record worthless in exactly the situation it exists for.
• Keep the password to yourself and use one you do not use anywhere else. Tell us at once if you think it has been exposed; changing it immediately signs out every session that account has open.
• You are responsible for what is done through your account. Administrators are additionally responsible for who they grant access to and for removing it promptly when someone leaves.
• Raise only invoices that are genuinely owed, for goods or services actually supplied or agreed, and describe them accurately.

Acceptable use

The service may not be used to:

• take a payment that is fraudulent, unauthorised, or for anything unlawful;
• launder money, evade sanctions, or disguise the source or destination of funds;
• impersonate another business or person, or raise an invoice designed to deceive the recipient about who is being paid;
• attempt to gain access to an account, a record or part of the system you are not entitled to;
• probe, scan, overload or interfere with the service, or attempt to defeat a security or rate limiting measure;
• copy, scrape or resell the service or the data in it, or use it to build a competing product.

Security research is welcome and is not a breach of these terms where it is carried out against your own account and data, does not degrade the service for anyone else, does not access another party’s data, and is reported to us before it is published. Write to admin@pinnaclemutualconsulting.com.

Availability

We aim to keep the service running and available, but we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error free. It depends on providers we do not control, including Stripe, and it needs occasional maintenance.

We may change, suspend or withdraw features. Where a change materially reduces what the service does for a business using it, we will give reasonable notice unless the change is required for security or by law.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account, or refuse a payment, where we reasonably believe these terms have been breached, where there is a serious risk of fraud or unlawful use, or where we are required to by law or by Stripe.

Where we do, we will say why unless we are legally prevented from doing so. Suspension does not affect a payment already completed, and records we are required to keep are retained for the periods set out in the privacy policy.

Intellectual property

The service, its software, design and content belong to us or to our licensors, and nothing in these terms transfers any of it to you. The data a business enters, and the records of payments made to it, belong to that business.

Disclaimers

The service is provided as it is. To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all implied warranties, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the service will meet your requirements, that it will be available at any particular moment, or that every defect can be corrected.

Liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, business or data, however caused.

Our total liability arising out of or in connection with the service is limited to the greater of $100 or the fees you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded. If you are a consumer, nothing here affects your statutory rights.

Indemnity

If you are a business using the service to invoice others, you agree to cover us against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from invoices you raise, goods or services you supply, or your breach of these terms. This does not apply to a payer settling an invoice.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. The state and federal courts located in Fulton County, Georgia have exclusive jurisdiction, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer resident in the United Kingdom or the European Union, this does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory laws of your country of residence or of the right to bring proceedings there.

General

If any provision of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest continue to apply. A delay in enforcing a term is not a waiver of it. You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our consent; we may transfer ours as part of a transfer of the business, on notice.

Changes

If these terms change, the date at the top changes with it. A payment is governed by the terms in force when it was made, so a later change cannot alter the basis on which you already paid.

Contact

Write to admin@pinnaclemutualconsulting.com, or to Pinnacle Merchant Payments LLC, 933 Spring Creek Way, Douglasville, Georgia 30134. For a question about a particular invoice, contact the business that raised it, which will usually resolve it faster than we can.