Terms of Service

1. Agreement to these terms

By using Emani, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use our services. These terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and nothing in them takes away rights you have under Nigerian law, including the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018 (FCCPA).

2. What Emani does

Emani provides SafeCheckout-protected payments for social commerce. You pay Emani, not the vendor. We hold your money until you confirm delivery, or until the auto-release period expires. Your money is held in dedicated accounts with our licensed payment partner, Paga — Emani is not a bank and does not use your money for anything else while it is held.

3. How SafeCheckout works

• Holding the money: when you pay for an order, we hold the money until the order is complete. The vendor is only paid after you confirm delivery or the auto-release period passes.
• Confirming delivery: once the vendor confirms delivery, you have 48 hours to confirm you received the item as described, or to open a dispute.
• Auto-release: if you do nothing within those 48 hours, the money is released to the vendor automatically. Opening a dispute before then pauses the release until the dispute is resolved.
• Service fee: we charge a service fee (currently 1.5% (capped at ₦2,500) of the order value), added at checkout, for SafeCheckout protection, payment processing, and dispute mediation. The service fee is the cost of the protection itself and is not refunded — including when an order is cancelled, refunded, or resolved in your favor.

4. Your Emani wallet

Money can enter your wallet when you top up, when you pay more than an order requires, or when a refund is issued to you. Wallet balances:

• can be used for any purchase on Emani, at any time — they do not expire;
• are held in dedicated accounts with our licensed payment partner, Paga;
• do not earn interest;
• are for use within Emani and are not withdrawable to a bank account. Where applicable law requires us to return money to you directly, contact support@emani.app and we will honor it;
• are subject to transaction and daily limits, which we may adjust to comply with our partners' and regulators' requirements.

5. Disputes

Didn't arrive, or not as described? Open a dispute from your order page before the auto-release period ends. Every dispute follows the same three stages:

1. Triage: we review the order details and the evidence both sides provide. AI tools help organize the evidence — they never make the final decision.
2. Vendor response: the vendor has 24 hours to respond to your claim.
3. Human mediation: if you and the vendor don't reach an agreement, an Emani mediator makes a final, binding decision. Real humans, not bots, on every dispute — resolved within 24–48 hours.

Provide honest, complete evidence: photos or video of the item, the listing or conversation that describes what you ordered, and delivery details. Disputes made in bad faith may lead to account suspension.

6. How dispute settlements work

• Resolved in the buyer's favor: the purchase amount is refunded to the buyer's Emani wallet, ready to use for another purchase. The service fee is not included in the refund.
• Resolved in the vendor's favor: the held money is released to the vendor.
• Partial resolution: where responsibility is shared, the mediator splits the held money between buyer and vendor in the proportions set out in the decision.
• Returning the item: the mediator's decision states whether the item must be returned. Where goods are defective or not as described, the return is at the vendor's risk and expense, in line with section 132(2) of the FCCPA — the buyer does not pay to return a defective item.

7. Your statutory rights

Nothing in these terms limits your rights under the FCCPA, including the right to goods that are of good quality, in good working order, and free of defects (section 131); the right to return goods that don't match what was agreed (section 122); and the right to return defective goods within three months of delivery, at the vendor's risk and expense, for repair, replacement, or a refund (section 132(2)). Vendors on Emani may not use their own policies to take these rights away — any term that tries to is void to that extent (section 129). If these terms and the law ever conflict, the law wins.

8. Vendors and payouts

• You'll get paid as soon as the buyer confirms delivery, or when the auto-release period passes. Released money appears in your available balance.
• Payouts go to the bank account you add in your dashboard and are processed through our payment partner — usually within minutes. We currently do not charge a payout fee.
• You are responsible for the accuracy of your bank details, for the quality and legality of what you sell, and for honoring buyers' statutory return rights described above.
• We may hold back payouts connected to an open dispute, suspected fraud, or a legal requirement, until the matter is resolved.

9. Prohibited use

You may not use Emani for illegal transactions, for goods or services that violate Nigerian law, or to defraud anyone. We may suspend accounts involved in suspected fraud, and we may hold related money while we investigate or as the law requires.

10. Our responsibility

Emani holds the money and mediates disputes; the sale itself is between you and the vendor. Emani is not a party to that sale and is not responsible for the quality, safety, or legality of the items — those duties sit with the vendor, including their duties under the FCCPA. What we promise is what these terms describe: your money only moves when it's supposed to.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the product and the law evolve. When we make a material change, we'll tell you before it takes effect. Continuing to use Emani after a change means you accept the updated terms.

12. Contact

For legal inquiries, contact legal@emani.app. For anything about an order, dispute, or your wallet, contact support@emani.app.