Acceptable Use Policy

01Scope

This policy applies to every merchant, team member and integration. It is part of the Terms of Service. The lists are examples, not a full catalogue: we also act on anything that is illegal where you or your customers are, or that exposes payers, us or our partners to serious harm. Our payment provider and other partners may add rules of their own, and we pass them on.

02Prohibited businesses

You may not use Ravelo to take payments for, or to fund:

• illegal goods or services in the places where you or your customers are, including illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia;
• fraud, scams, phishing, Ponzi or pyramid schemes, fake investments, or get-rich-quick or guaranteed-return schemes;
• sexual content involving minors or any exploitation of people, including trafficking;
• weapons, explosives, and items designed to harm;
• terrorism or violent extremism, or the financing of either;
• stolen goods or data, hacked accounts, leaked databases, malware or ransomware, and hacking-for-hire;
• counterfeit or pirated goods and services that infringe others' rights;
• mixing, tumbling or other services whose purpose is to hide the source or destination of funds;
• businesses owned, controlled by or serving persons or places that are under sanctions that apply to us or our partners;
• any business we or our payment provider have told you in writing we will not support.

03Businesses that need our approval first

These can be higher risk. Tell us during onboarding, and do not start until we have agreed in writing. We may refuse, or approve with conditions such as limits or country restrictions.

• Gambling, betting, lotteries and gaming with real-money prizes.
• Adult content and services.
• Crypto-related businesses: exchanges, brokers, token sales, wallets, custody and fund-raising.
• Money transfer, remittance, payment aggregation and any use of the service to receive funds for other businesses or to pool customers' money.
• Prescription medicines, supplements and regulated or age-restricted goods.
• Investment, trading and financial-advice services.
• Multi-level marketing and similar recruitment-based models.
• Charities and fundraising, and anything involving large one-off sums.

04Prohibited activities on the platform

• Giving false or misleading information, or hiding who owns or controls the business.
• Using the service for someone else's business, or letting a third party use your account or keys.
• Splitting or disguising payments to avoid limits, screening, holds or reporting.
• Using funds from, or sending funds to, an address you know to be linked to crime or sanctions.
• Using a test key or sandbox to take real payments, or trying to reach real money, a real provider or a real chain from the sandbox.
• Sharing API secrets, passkeys or sign-in codes, or storing secrets in code that is public or client-side.
• Probing, scanning or testing the security of the service without our written permission; overloading it; bypassing rate limits, approvals or kill switches; or interfering with other merchants.
• Scraping or reverse engineering the service beyond what the law permits.
• Using the service to harass or mislead payers, or to impersonate Ravelo or our provider.

05What we may do

If we think a rule has been broken we may ask questions, limit or pause payments or payouts, hold funds under review, revoke keys, suspend or close the account, return funds to their origin, tell our partners, and report the matter to authorities. Where we can, we will tell you what we found and give you a chance to respond, but we may act first if risk is serious. We do not refund fees for an account closed for breach.

06Reporting a problem

To report abuse of Ravelo, or a merchant you think breaks this policy, write to [Compliance contact email]. To report a security weakness, write to [Security contact email] with enough detail to reproduce it, and give us reasonable time to fix it before you make it public. Do not access other people's data or disrupt the service while you test.

See also the AML, KYC and Sanctions Policy.