1Agreeing to these service terms of use
You must agree to all these terms to use our service. They explain the service and how we supply it to you.
2Who we are
We are Hope Macy Ltd, registered in England & Wales with company number 11621440 and registered office at W2 Business Centre, Wellington House (First Floor), Wellington Street, Cardiff, CF11 9BE.
We are authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority as an Authorised Payment Institution under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (Firm Reference Number 934392). This covers our payment initiation and account information services. We are also regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as a consumer credit firm (Firm Reference Number 962292). You can check our status and permissions on the Financial Services Register on the FCA website: www.fca.org.uk (opens in a new tab)
You may contact us by email: support@hopemacy.com and we will respond to you via email.
If you have a complaint, please refer to: Complaints | Hope Macy
3About you
In these terms we use “you” to refer to you as the individual that registers or uses our service. You must be an ordinary resident of the United Kingdom to use our service.
4Registration
Some of our services require you to register. During registration you must provide details that are true, accurate and complete. You must keep these details up to date.
5Account information service
We offer an account information service (‘AIS’) that allows you to share certain details from your bank account including balances and transaction information such as payment or income descriptions, dates, and amounts (“account information”) with a third party on a read-only basis.
To use this service, the third party will send you a link either by email or as a text. You must be sure that the link is from the third party before you select it, and you recognise the third party and were expecting it. You should always check that the link is genuine by checking with the third party before you select the link.
By clicking on the link, you agree to use the AIS and authorise the sharing of your account information through a process known as open banking. This information will be used by the third party to assess your eligibility for the products or services they offer.
Using the AIS
By using our AIS, you give us explicit permission to share your account information with the third party. We will redirect you to your bank’s authentication process, where you must grant permission for us to access your account information. This step is known as authorisation. If you do not wish to share your information, simply do not proceed with the AIS link or do not grant permission to share your account information when asked to do so by your bank.
Accuracy of account information
We do not verify the accuracy of your account information before passing it to the third party, and we are not responsible for any decisions made based on the account information. Once your account data (including any personal information) is transmitted, the third party becomes fully responsible for its handling, processing, and storage. Please review the privacy policies of both the third party and your bank, as well as our own privacy notice, to understand how your data will be used.
Products and services from the third party
Any products or services offered (‘offerings’) by the third party are subject to their own terms and conditions. We are not involved in these offerings and are not liable for any issues, damages, or losses that may arise from your use of such products or services. We are not responsible to you if you are declined by the third party to use or purchase their offerings.
6Payment Initiation Service
This service lets you ask us to initiate a payment from your bank or building society account. This is sometimes called ‘pay by link’ or ‘pay by bank’. A merchant or service provider such as another financial services company may send you a link by SMS, email, or WhatsApp. If you recognise and trust the sender and were expecting the link, follow the instructions to settle a bill or make a payment. In other situations, you may pay for goods or services from a web site at a check-out.
We do not receive or hold your money at any point. Payments go directly from your bank or building society account to the recipient.
You will need to choose the account you want to pay from. We will then direct you to your bank or building society, using its website or app, so that you can log in.
Before the payment is sent, you will be asked to check and confirm the payment details, including:
- the amount to be paid;
- the payment reference; and
- the recipient details.
Your consent
We will not initiate a payment unless you have given your explicit consent.
Before confirming the payment, you will be shown the payment amount and recipient details and will be asked to authorise the payment through your bank or building society.
You may stop the process at any time before you complete that authorisation. Once the payment has been authorised, it may not be possible to cancel it.
We will keep a record of your consent and the payment instruction as required by law.
We will not store any sensitive security details that you use to give that consent.
Checking the payment details
You must check that the payment amount and recipient details shown to you are correct before authorising the payment.
If the details you authorise are incorrect, it may not be possible to recover the payment. We will not be responsible for a loss that arises solely because you authorised incorrect payment details. This does not exclude or limit any responsibility we may have where a payment is not properly initiated by us or where liability cannot lawfully be excluded.
Once you have authorised the payment, you will not be able to cancel it. Your funds will be transferred instantly unless your bank or the bank receiving your funds rejects the payment.
If we are able to initiate the payment, we will confirm this and return you to a confirmation page. This means your bank or building society has accepted the payment. It does not mean the recipient has received the funds. Transferring the funds to the recipient is carried out by your bank or building society and the recipient’s bank, not by us. In most cases, the funds will be transferred instantly. In rare cases, the recipient’s bank may reject the payment. If this happens, your bank or building society should return the funds to your account.
We do not offer a chargeback scheme, and payments made using our service are not covered by the chargeback protection that some card payments have. If you want a refund for goods or services you have paid for, you must contact the person or business you paid. This does not affect your rights if a payment was unauthorised or carried out incorrectly, or any rights you may have against your bank or building society if you were tricked into making it (see ‘Unauthorised or incorrectly executed payments’ below).
When we may refuse a payment
We may refuse to initiate a payment for you if:
- the information you give us is incomplete or incorrect;
- your bank or building society tells us there are not enough funds available;
- we reasonably suspect fraud, unlawful activity or misuse of the service;
- the payment is not being made from an eligible UK sterling account; or
- we need to do so to comply with the law or a regulatory requirement.
Unauthorised or incorrectly executed payments
If you believe that a payment initiated through our service was unauthorised, initiated for the wrong amount or otherwise carried out incorrectly, contact your bank or building society as soon as possible, and in any event no later than 13 months after the payment left your account.
You should also contact us at support@hopemacy.com so that we can investigate whether the issue relates to our service. We will cooperate with your bank or building society and provide any information reasonably required to investigate the payment.
If you think you have been tricked into making a payment, contact your bank or building society straight away. It may be able to help you and, in some circumstances, may be required to reimburse you.
Your bank or building society may contact you directly if there is a problem with a payment we have initiated, for example if there is an issue with your authorisation. Be aware that fraudsters may try to trick you by pretending to be your bank or building society, or us. We will never ask for your online banking passwords or security codes, and a genuine bank or building society will never ask you to move money to a ‘safe account’. If you are unsure whether a message or call is genuine, do not respond to it. Contact your bank or building society using the details on its website or on the back of your card.
Your rights and our responsibilities will be determined in accordance with the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and any other applicable law.
Our responsibility to you
We will provide the payment initiation service with reasonable care and skill and in accordance with the legal and regulatory requirements that apply to us.
We will not be responsible for a loss caused solely by:
- circumstances outside our reasonable control;
- an act or omission of your bank, building society or another third party over whom we have no control, including any application through which you access this service;
- incorrect information that you provide or authorise; or
- your failure to follow reasonable security instructions.
We will remain responsible for losses that arise from our failure to provide the service with reasonable care and skill or to meet a legal or regulatory obligation that applies to us.
If we do not comply with these terms, we will only be responsible for losses that were reasonably foreseeable when we entered into this agreement with you.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.
Charges
Hope Macy does not charge you for using the payment initiation service.
7The Family Connect service
This service allows a registered person known as a “trusted person” to view the recent bank transactions and to receive transaction alerts about another registered person known as an “account holder”. Once registered, you may act as an account holder, a trusted person or both.
A link between an account holder and a trusted person is established by the account holder sending an invitation to the trusted person and the trusted person accepting the invitation.
When an account holder has linked to a trusted person and has also linked to a bank account, the trusted person is able to view the last three months of bank transactions on the account holder’s bank account. Either person can end the link between themselves at any time, and remove links to their bank account.
Trusted Person
As a trusted person, you can view the account holder’s last three months of bank account transactions, their bank sort code, last four digits of their account number, and their personal details consisting of their username, email address and telephone number. You may also choose to receive regular email alerts of new transactions.
You must at all times act in the best interests of the account holder, and not disclose this information to anyone else. The service does not permit you to access the account holder’s bank account, initiate a payment instruction or obtain their bank login details.
As a trusted person you must only accept an invitation to link with an account holder who you know well, who is expecting you to link with them, and who was not in a marriage or civil partnership with you that has legally ended.
As a trusted person, you must link to your online bank account so that we can verify your identity. We will direct you to your bank’s website where you follow the online instructions. We do not monitor this part of the process and we do not ask for your login details. We only record, to the extent available, your bank account number, sort code and name on the account. We provide the account holder the name on your bank account in order that they can identify you. We do not share any other data with anyone else unless we are compelled to do so by a law enforcement agency.
Account Holder
As an account holder you can link to your bank accounts. We will direct you to your bank’s website where you follow the online instructions. We do not monitor this part of the process and we do not ask for your login details. As an account holder you are authorising us to store your bank account transactions and display them to you and your trusted people. If you are a joint bank account holder with another person, you must obtain the permission of the other person before you link the joint bank account.
It is the responsibility of the account holder to appoint only trusted people who are suitably qualified, trusted and known. The account holder is responsible for the actions of any trusted people they appoint. We do not endorse or approve anyone to act as your trusted person. Once a trusted person has accepted an invitation from an account holder, they are deemed to have been appointed by the account holder.
If you are an account holder, you can remove a trusted person and stop them from viewing and receiving alerts about your transactions. You do this by logging in to our website.
An account holder can permit a trusted person to view at most a total of eight bank accounts from three different banks.
Account holders and their trusted people can choose to receive email alerts about recent transactions and information related to their bank account.
We will send you email messages to inform you about the availability and status of the service, changes made by the account holder or their trusted people and improvements that we make to the service.
Anyone with access to your email can view the content of alerts or messages. You should therefore ensure that your email account is private and secure.
Email alerts and messages from us may contain confidential information and you should not forward them to others.
Your use of the service
Your right to access and use the service is personal to you and is not transferable to any other person. You are only entitled to access and use the service for lawful purposes. You must not: use the service unless you have registered; share login details; share the service with an unregistered person; or use the service in a way that we reasonably believe might harm us, others, or our ability to provide the service.
We may: limit how many links you have with trusted persons or account holders; limit the number of invitations you may send; prevent you acting as a trusted person or an account holder; or delay, revoke or stop a registration.
Service availability
Our communication with you is in English.
We try to ensure that the service is available for normal use 24 hours a day but we shall not be liable if it is unavailable. We may suspend the service temporarily and without notice in the case of system failure, maintenance, repair or for reasons beyond our control.
To use the service, you must have access to the internet and maintain your email account and telephone number.
If your bank is unavailable, then we will be unable to provide you the latest account transactions to view.
We obtain information related to new account transactions up to twice per day. Your bank will have more up to date information about your bank transactions than we do. You should check with your bank for your latest balance and account transactions before you make any decisions.
If you are an account holder and have linked to a bank account, you will need to confirm every three months that you wish to continue to use the service. We shall send you instructions on how to do this.
Security
When you register with us you choose a password to access the service. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password. If you become aware of any unauthorised access to the service, you must notify us, and you should change your password immediately. You are solely responsible for all activities that occur with the use of your password.
You, or any other concerned person, can email us to remove an account holder or a trusted person. If we receive an email instruction from a person expressing concerns about an account holder or trusted person, we shall review the instruction before acting upon it. If we remove an account holder or a trusted person from our service, we will notify them, but we may not necessarily inform you of our actions.
Fees
There are no fees if you are a trusted person.
From time to time, we partner with certain organisations that may offer their customers free use of our service. If you qualify, then you will not incur any fees whilst the offer is available.
Otherwise, you can choose one of two price plans:
There is an initial 21-day free period which begins when a fee would otherwise become due. If you continue with the service after the free period ends, then the fees for the first month are calculated pro-rata. We shall let you know when the free period ends.
Once paid, a monthly fee is not refundable except as set out under “Stopping your use of our service” and “Effect of stopping your service” below.
Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013
The maximum fee that you will pay to use the service is £2.95 per month for the Standard price plan or £4.95 per month for the Extended price plan.
Our contact details are on our website.
We provide a free period for using our service during or after which you can terminate with no liability. This meets our obligations to give you a right to cancel under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.
Payments of monthly fees
With your agreement, we take any recurring fees which are due for the service using major credit or debit cards.
Payments are processed by our third-party payment partner. We do not see or store your card details. Our partner is certified by the card schemes as having secure systems with which to process your card using encrypted payment mechanisms.
Card payments are subject to authorisation by your card issuer. We will check your card details when you provide them by getting an authorisation for no value. We will only debit your card when you have started to use the service in the way specified above.
Stopping your use of our service
You can stop using our service whenever you want.
We may stop you from using the service immediately if you fail to follow any term of this agreement including non-payment of fees, if we consider you are dishonest towards us, if we consider you are a risk to us or other users of our service, or if we consider the service is not suitable for you.
We may also terminate the service for any other reason by giving you at least two months’ written notice. If we terminate in this way, or if we discontinue the service for any reason other than any legal requirement, we will refund you the relevant proportion of your fee.
If we are unable to make contact with you using your email account or telephone number, we reserve the right to suspend your account.
Effect of stopping your service
When the service has been stopped: you will no longer be able to view your bank transactions using the service; you will no longer receive email alerts; and we will remove all data relating to you from our systems, other than data we may need to retain for legal reasons or other statutory purposes.
If we stop the service for our convenience or because we do not consider use of the service is suitable for you, we will refund to your payment card the relevant portion of any prepaid fee remaining.
Changes to the agreement
We may change the service terms of use. If this is due to a change in the law, we will give you as much notice as possible. Otherwise, we will notify you at least eight weeks before the change.
If you do not agree with these changes, then you must delete your registration within five weeks of receiving notification of the change. If you do not delete your registration, we shall be entitled to assume you have agreed to the change.
Help
If you need help with the service, you can email us at support@hopemacy.com. We aim to respond to all emails within 48 hours.
Privacy and transactions
By using the service, you agree that you are the legal owner of and entitled to access your bank account transactions and that you have the authority to appoint, and do expressly appoint, us and our partners and/or any relevant third party providers as your agent to access and retrieve such transactions on your behalf and for the use of any trusted people as indicated in this agreement.
Our policies relating to how we use your personal data can be found in our Privacy Policy.
8Disputes
If you have any complaint about us or our service, please email us at support@hopemacy.com. We will acknowledge your complaint promptly and try to resolve it as quickly as possible.
For complaints about our payment initiation service or account information service, we will send you our final response within 15 business days of receiving your complaint. In exceptional circumstances, if we cannot do so for reasons beyond our control, we will send you a holding reply explaining why and telling you when you will receive our final response. This will be no later than 35 business days after we received your complaint.
For all other complaints, we will send you our final response within eight weeks of receiving your complaint.
If you are unhappy with our final response, or we have not sent it within these timescales, you can refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service free of charge. You must normally do this within six months of the date of our final response. The Financial Ombudsman Service provides a way of resolving disputes if you are unhappy with something we have done. Details are available from us on request, or you can get further information at www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk (opens in a new tab)
If your complaint relates to how we have managed your information, you may also contact the Information Commissioners Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint (opens in a new tab)
9Things outside our reasonable control and liability
We will not be liable to you if we are prevented from or delayed in performing our obligations under this agreement, or from carrying on business, by an event of force majeure. Where there is an event of force majeure, we shall notify you giving full particulars of the event and how it will affect our service.
The provisions relating to warranties, liability and intellectual property as set out in our website terms of use shall also apply to these service terms of use. If there is any conflict between those provisions and section 6, section 6 will apply to the payment initiation service.
Your legal rights
These terms do not affect any rights or protections that you have under payment services, consumer protection or data protection law.
If any part of these terms conflicts with a legal right that cannot be excluded or restricted, that legal right will take priority.
10Exclusions
If any of the following apply you must not register, or if you have already registered you must delete your registration immediately: you are a citizen or a permanent resident of Canada or the United States of America; you are bankrupt; you are subject to a debt relief order, an individual voluntary arrangement, trust deed or debt arrangement scheme; or you have had a conviction for domestic abuse or domestic violence.
11The country laws that apply to disputes
These service terms of use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed exclusively by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction except that if you are a resident of Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in Northern Ireland, and if you are resident of Scotland you may also bring proceedings in Scotland.
12Transfer of this agreement
We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under the agreement.