These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of GiftDesk, a platform that lets hospitality businesses sell digital gift vouchers from a branded online shop. GiftDesk is operated by Alex Walls, a sole trader trading as "GiftDesk" ("GiftDesk", "we", "us", "our"). By creating an account or using the service, you ("you", "the Merchant") agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.
1. What GiftDesk provides
GiftDesk is software. We give you tools to create a branded voucher shop, list vouchers, take payment, deliver vouchers by email or download, and manage redemptions and reporting. We are a technology provider. We are not the seller of your vouchers and not a party to the sale between you and your customers.
2. Your account
- You must provide accurate information and keep your login details secure.
- You are responsible for all activity under your account.
- You must be at least 18 and operating a genuine business (including as a sole trader) lawfully in the UK.
3. Payments, fees and payouts
- Payments are processed by Stripe. You connect your own Stripe account, and you are the merchant of record for every sale. Stripe pays you directly on its payout schedule. We never hold your funds.
- GiftDesk charges the commission set out on our pricing page (currently 5% of the value of each voucher sold), collected automatically as a Stripe application fee at the time of sale.
- We will not change the commission rate more than once in any 12 month period, and we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before a change takes effect. If you do not want to continue at the new rate, you can stop using GiftDesk before it applies.
- Stripe's own terms apply to your use of Stripe, and you are responsible for any Stripe fees.
- You are responsible for all taxes, including VAT, on your sales. Our commission is stated exclusive of any VAT that may apply to it.
4. Your responsibilities as the seller
Because you are the merchant of record, you are solely responsible for:
- Honouring and fulfilling every voucher you sell, in line with its terms.
- Setting accurate prices, descriptions, validity and terms for your vouchers.
- Customer service, and handling refunds, cancellations, complaints and payment disputes (chargebacks) with your customers.
- Complying with consumer law, gift-voucher rules, and all laws that apply to your business.
- Honouring vouchers already sold even if you later stop using GiftDesk.
Consumer cancellation rights are worth singling out. Because your customers buy online without meeting you, they generally have a 14 day right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. This applies to your sale, not to GiftDesk's service to you, so you decide how to handle it and you should say so in your voucher terms. If you are unsure how the right applies to your vouchers, take your own advice: we cannot give it.
5. Acceptable use
Your use of GiftDesk must comply with our Acceptable Use Policy. We may suspend or remove shops or vouchers that breach it.
6. Vouchers and liability to customers
A voucher is a commitment from you to your customer, not from GiftDesk. We are not liable for the redemption, value, expiry or honouring of any voucher. If you cannot honour a voucher (for example if your business closes), that is a matter between you and the voucher holder.
7. Availability and changes
We aim to keep the service available and accurate, but we provide it "as is" and "as available". We may change, suspend or discontinue features. We may also update these Terms: we will post the updated version with a new "last updated" date, and material changes take effect when posted or as otherwise notified to you.
8. Intellectual property
We own GiftDesk, including its software, brand and content. You keep ownership of your own brand, logo and content, and you grant us the licence we need to host and display your shop and operate the service. You must not copy, resell, reverse engineer or misuse the platform.
9. Confidentiality
Each of us may learn things about the other that are not public: your sales figures, customer lists and business plans on your side, and how the platform works on ours. Each of us agrees to keep the other's confidential information confidential, to use it only to run this agreement, and not to pass it to anyone else without permission.
This does not apply to information that is already public, that you or we already had, that a third party gave us lawfully, or that we work out independently. Either of us may disclose confidential information where the law or a regulator requires it, telling the other first where we are allowed to.
This section carries on after the agreement ends.
10. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law:
- We are not liable for your business decisions, your obligations to your customers, lost profits, lost sales, or any indirect or consequential loss.
- Our total liability to you for all claims is limited to the greater of £1,000 or the total commission you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.
- Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.
11. Indemnity
You are the seller, so the risks of selling sit with you. You agree to cover us for any claim, loss, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by someone else and arising from:
- Your vouchers, including honouring them, refusing them, their terms, their expiry, or a customer's experience at your venue.
- Anything you sell or promote through GiftDesk, and any breach by you of these Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy, or the law.
- Content you upload, including your brand, logos, images and voucher descriptions.
If a claim like that arises, we will tell you promptly, we will not settle it without asking you first, and we will give you reasonable help in dealing with it at your cost. This does not cover anything caused by our own breach of these Terms or our negligence.
12. Termination
- You can stop using GiftDesk at any time.
- We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, or where we need to in order to comply with the law.
- Either of us may end this agreement immediately if the other stops trading, cannot pay its debts, or enters administration, liquidation or a similar process. If that is you, your shop stops taking new orders straight away, and vouchers already sold remain your responsibility.
- On termination your shop stops accepting new orders, and you remain responsible for honouring any vouchers already sold.
- So that you can honour them, export your outstanding vouchers from Reports before your access ends. The export lists each voucher code, its remaining balance, status and expiry date. If you no longer have access, ask us and we will send you that export for 12 months after termination.
13. Data protection
This section forms the data processing terms required by Article 28 of the UK GDPR.
Roles. For personal data about your buyers and voucher recipients, you are the controller and GiftDesk is your processor. For your own account data (your name, email, login and billing records) GiftDesk is the controller, as set out in our Privacy Policy.
Subject matter and duration. We process that data to provide the service, for as long as your account is open, plus any retention period described below.
Nature and purpose. Operating your voucher shop, taking payment, issuing and delivering vouchers, recording redemptions and refunds, and producing your reports.
Types of personal data. Buyer and recipient names and email addresses, gift messages, delivery preferences, order and voucher records. We do not receive or store full card details: those go directly to Stripe.
Categories of data subject. Your customers, the people they send vouchers to, and your staff users.
Our obligations. We will:
- Process that personal data only on your documented instructions, which include your use of the platform and these Terms, unless the law requires otherwise.
- Ensure the people who can access it are bound by confidentiality.
- Apply appropriate technical and organisational security measures, including encryption in transit, database level tenant isolation so no merchant can access another merchant's data, access controls and audit logging.
- Assist you, so far as we reasonably can, with requests from data subjects and with your obligations on security, breach notification and impact assessments.
- Tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a personal data breach affecting your data.
- On termination, delete or return the personal data we hold for you, except where we must keep it by law.
- Make available the information you reasonably need to demonstrate we are meeting these obligations, and allow audits on reasonable notice.
Sub-processors. You authorise us to use the sub-processors we rely on to run the platform: Stripe (payments), Supabase (database and authentication), Vercel (hosting), Resend (email delivery) and Sentry (error monitoring). We will give you reasonable notice before adding or replacing a sub-processor, and you may object on reasonable data protection grounds, in which case you may terminate.
International transfers. Where a sub-processor processes data outside the UK, we rely on the transfer safeguards permitted by UK data protection law.
14. Force majeure
Neither of us is in breach of these Terms, or liable for a delay or failure, where it is caused by something outside our reasonable control. For us that includes failures at the services GiftDesk is built on, such as our hosting, database, email or payment providers. We will tell you if something like that is affecting the service, and we will do what we reasonably can to get it working again.
15. General
The whole agreement. These Terms, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between us. Nothing said before you signed up, in an email, on a call or on our marketing pages, forms part of it. This does not limit liability for anything said fraudulently.
Changes. We may update these Terms as described in section 7. Any other change to this agreement needs to be agreed in writing.
Not enforcing something. If either of us does not enforce a right straight away, that does not mean we have given it up.
If part of this does not hold. If any part of these Terms turns out to be invalid or unenforceable, that part is treated as removed and the rest continues to apply.
Transferring this agreement. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our written permission. We may transfer ours to a successor of the GiftDesk business, including to a company we set up to operate it. Your terms, your commission rate and your vouchers are unaffected by a transfer like that, and we will tell you if it happens.
No partnership. We are independent of each other. Nothing here makes us partners, or makes either of us the other's agent or employee, and neither of us can enter into commitments on the other's behalf.
Other people's rights. Only you and GiftDesk have rights under these Terms. Nobody else can enforce them under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. This does not affect any rights your customers have against you, which is where voucher obligations sit (see section 6).
Notices. Notices under these Terms can be sent by email: to you at the address on your account, and to us at hello@giftdesk.co.uk. An email sent on a working day counts as received that day, otherwise on the next working day. Notices about legal proceedings are excluded.
16. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.
17. Contact
Questions about these Terms: hello@giftdesk.co.uk.