Terms and conditions

By opening a merchant account, signing the Merchant Application or sending a live transaction, you accept these terms on behalf of the business you represent. Please read them together with the pricing page, the Privacy policy and the Anti Money Laundering Policy, which form part of the agreement.

01Definitions

A handful of words carry a specific meaning throughout this document and the agreement.

• Target, we, us — Target Financial Services Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with its registered office at 1 Poultry, London EC2R 8EJ, and, where the schedules to your agreement say so, its group companies in Riga and Limassol.
• Merchant, you — the legal entity named in the Merchant Application that accepts payments through the platform, together with the people who act on its behalf in the dashboard.
• Services — online acquiring, multi-currency processing, fraud monitoring, the merchant dashboard, payouts and recurring billing, as described in section 02.
• Transaction — any authorisation, capture, refund, reversal, payout or chargeback processed through the platform, in any currency.
• Settlement — the transfer of transaction proceeds, net of fees, refunds, chargebacks and reserves, to the bank account you nominate.
• Card schemes — Visa, Mastercard and any other payment network whose rules apply to a transaction.
• Plan — the Start, Business or Enterprise tariff you selected on the pricing page or in Schedule 2 of the agreement.

02Services

Target provides one contract, one integration and one settlement for the services below. Which of them are switched on for your account is set in the dashboard and listed in Schedule 1 of the agreement.

1. Online acquiring — hosted checkout, API, SDK and plugin integrations, 3-D Secure 2.2 and smart routing across 15+ partner banks and PSPs.
2. Multi-currency processing — acceptance in 150+ currencies and settlement in 25, with conversion at the ECB reference rate plus a 0.5% mark-up.
3. Fraud and risk monitoring — rules engine, machine-learning scoring, velocity limits and chargeback alerts.
4. Merchant dashboard — real-time reports, exports, user roles, API keys and webhooks.
5. Payouts — mass payouts and settlements to cards, IBAN and e-wallets.
6. Recurring payments — subscriptions, payment links and invoicing.

We keep improving the platform and may add to, change or withdraw parts of the Services on 30 days’ notice through the dashboard. We will not remove a service you rely on during the term of your agreement without offering an equivalent. Sandbox access is free, unlimited and covered by these terms as well.

03Onboarding and KYC

The card schemes, our partner banks and anti-money-laundering law in the UK and the EU require us to know who we work with. Onboarding usually takes 2–5 business days and follows four steps.

1. Application. Company details, trading name, website, products, expected monthly volume, average ticket and the countries you sell to.
2. Documents. Certificate of incorporation, proof of registered address, a passport or ID for each director and every beneficial owner holding 25% or more, and your latest bank statement.
3. Review. We check the business against the prohibited list in section 04, screen the people involved against sanctions and PEP lists and, for regulated or high-risk industries, ask for licences and six months of processing history.
4. Agreement. We sign the Merchant Agreement electronically, open the live account and issue the live API keys. Your personal manager runs the first real transaction with you.

You must keep this information current. Tell us within 10 business days if your ownership, directors, trading name, website, products or bank account change. We may repeat the checks at any time and request further documents; until we receive them we may hold settlement. How we assess risk is set out in the Anti Money Laundering Policy.

04Merchant obligations

In return for access to the platform you agree to:

• sell only the goods and services described in your application, from the websites and apps we approved;
• show your legal name, contact details, prices, delivery terms and refund policy on the checkout page and in the order confirmation;
• submit a transaction only when the cardholder has authorised it, and deliver what was bought;
• process refunds to the original payment method and never in cash or to a different card;
• follow the card scheme rules, including the ban on surcharging consumer cards in the UK and the EEA;
• not split a sale into several transactions to stay under limits, not process payments on behalf of a third party and not use the platform to obtain cash;
• answer retrieval requests and chargebacks with evidence within the deadlines in section 06.

Prohibited businesses

The platform may not be used, directly or through a customer of yours, for:

• counterfeit goods, unlicensed copies of software or media, or anything that infringes intellectual property;
• narcotics and drug paraphernalia, and pharmaceuticals sold without the required licence or prescription;
• weapons, ammunition, explosives and their components;
• gambling, lotteries, betting or binary options without a licence valid in the customer’s country;
• adult content without age verification, and escort services;
• unregistered investment schemes, pyramid and multi-level marketing, “get rich quick” programmes and unlicensed crypto exchanges;
• tobacco or vaping products sold to under-18s or into countries where their distance sale is banned;
• any business, person or country on the UK, EU, UN or OFAC sanctions lists.

Regulated industries — licensed gambling, forex, online pharmacies, travel and crypto — are not prohibited. They go through an extended review, may need a longer settlement cycle and usually carry a rolling reserve for the first months (section 06).

05Fees and settlement

Fees are the ones published on the pricing page on the day of the transaction or, if you have an individual offer, the ones in Schedule 2 of your agreement. For European cards that means 1.9% + €0.20 on Start, from 1.4% + €0.20 plus €99 a month on Business, and interchange++ on Enterprise; non-EU cards cost 1.0% more. Currency conversion carries a 0.5% mark-up, payouts start at €0.25 and a chargeback costs €15. Fees are deducted from each settlement, and the dashboard shows the gross amount, every fee and the net figure for each transaction. We may change list prices on 30 days’ notice; individual rates are fixed for the term of the agreement.

We settle transaction proceeds, net of fees, refunds, chargebacks and any reserve, to the account you nominated, in the settlement currency of your account and on the schedule for your plan:

Business days follow the TARGET2 calendar. We may delay a settlement while a transaction is under fraud review, while a card scheme or partner bank holds funds, or where the law requires us to. Bank charges on your side of the transfer are yours; ours are included in the fees.

06Chargebacks and reserves

A chargeback is a cardholder’s dispute of a transaction under the card scheme rules. When one arrives we debit the disputed amount and the €15 fee from your balance, and notify you in the dashboard and by e-mail. You have 7 calendar days to upload evidence — the invoice, proof of delivery, correspondence with the customer. If the case is decided in your favour, the amount and the fee are returned to your balance. Where we receive a pre-dispute alert, refunding the order within 72 hours prevents the chargeback and costs you nothing.

Visa and Mastercard monitor every merchant’s dispute ratio. If yours exceeds 0.9% of transactions by count in a calendar month, or 100 chargebacks, we will agree a remediation plan with you; if it stays above the threshold for three months in a row, the schemes may impose fines, which we pass on at cost, and may require us to stop processing.

A rolling reserve applies only to high-risk industries and to merchants whose ratio has crossed the threshold: up to 10% of each settlement, held for 180 days and released automatically on the same schedule. Where a long delivery period justifies it — pre-orders, event tickets, travel — we may instead hold a fixed reserve; its amount and release date are stated in your agreement. Reserves do not earn interest and are shown as a separate balance in the dashboard.

07Security and PCI DSS

Target is certified to PCI DSS Level 1, the highest level of the standard. Card data is tokenised at the moment of entry and, if you use the hosted checkout or the JavaScript SDK, never touches your servers. We run 3-D Secure 2.2 on every card payment where the issuer supports it and may apply Strong Customer Authentication exemptions on your behalf; the fraud liability follows the scheme rules for each outcome. On your side you agree to:

1. complete the PCI DSS self-assessment that matches your integration — SAQ A for the hosted checkout and tokenisation, SAQ A-EP or SAQ D if you collect card data yourself — and renew it every 12 months;
2. keep API keys, webhook secrets and dashboard credentials confidential, give each user a personal login with the narrowest role that fits, and switch on two-factor authentication for every account;
3. never store the CVV, the full card number or magnetic-stripe data, in logs or anywhere else;
4. use TLS 1.2 or newer, verify webhook signatures and rotate keys immediately if you suspect they have leaked;
5. tell us within 24 hours of discovering a suspected breach of card or customer data, and cooperate with the forensic investigation the card schemes may require.

08Data protection

Each party is an independent controller of the personal data it processes for its own purposes. You control the relationship with your customer; we control the data we need to authorise, settle and screen transactions and to meet our regulatory obligations. Where we process personal data solely on your instructions — for example a list of payout recipients you upload — we act as your processor under the data processing terms in Schedule 3.

The UK GDPR and the EU GDPR apply to everything we do with personal data. Transfers outside the UK and the EEA are covered by the International Data Transfer Agreement or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, and by the adequacy decisions in force. You must give your customers a clear privacy notice that covers passing their payment data to Target. What we collect, why, for how long and who sees it is set out in the Privacy policy; how we use cookies on the checkout and in the dashboard is in the Cookies policy.

09Suspension and termination

Either party may end the agreement on 30 days’ written notice. Enterprise agreements have an initial term stated in the agreement and renew unless one side gives notice. We may suspend processing or settlement with immediate effect, telling you as soon as the law allows, if:

• we find a prohibited business or a website we have not approved;
• your fraud or chargeback ratio exceeds the scheme thresholds and no remediation plan is in place;
• a card scheme, partner bank, regulator or court requires it;
• fees remain unpaid 10 business days after we have asked for them;
• information you gave us proves false or you fail to update it;
• you become insolvent, enter administration or stop trading.

A suspension is lifted as soon as the cause is removed. After termination we stop accepting new transactions, continue to process refunds and chargebacks on transactions already made, and settle the remaining balance. We may hold a final reserve for up to 180 days after the last transaction to cover chargebacks that arrive later. Sections 06, 08, 10 and 11 survive termination.

10Liability

Nothing in the agreement limits either party’s liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot be limited by law. Otherwise, each party’s total liability in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid in the 12 months before the claim, or €10,000 if that is more. Neither party is liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, however it arises.

We are not responsible for the decisions of card schemes, issuing banks or partner banks, for a cardholder’s failure to pay, or for events beyond our reasonable control. Our uptime commitment — 99.95% a month for the payment API and the hosted checkout, with service credits if we miss it — is in the service level schedule. You indemnify us against scheme fines, penalties and third-party claims that result from your breach of section 04 or of the scheme rules.

11Governing law

The agreement and these terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court. Before starting proceedings, both parties agree to try to resolve the matter through our complaints procedure: write to us, we acknowledge within 2 business days and reply with a final answer within 15 business days, and if you are still unhappy, senior management of both sides meet within 30 days of the final answer. If your business is a micro-enterprise, nothing in this section removes any right you may have to refer a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

12Contact

Questions about these terms, the agreement or a notice you have received go to:

Notices to you are sent to the e-mail address of the account owner in the dashboard and count as received on the next business day. We publish every new version of these terms with at least 30 days’ notice; continuing to process transactions after the effective date means you accept it. Version 4.0 replaces version 3.2 of 1 September 2025 and makes three changes:

1. the settlement table in section 05 now reflects same-day settlement on Enterprise and the 18:00 CET cut-off on Business;
2. section 07 adds the 24-hour breach notification deadline and the two-factor authentication requirement;
3. section 11 adds the 15-business-day deadline for a final answer to a complaint.

Target Financial Services Ltd is a member of the Visa and Mastercard networks through its partner acquiring banks. This summary is provided for convenience; the signed Merchant Services Agreement, including Schedules 1–3, is the binding document.