Terms of Service

Mishtatef (“we”, “us”, the “Service”) is a tool for organizing group gifts: shared Circles, an Event for each one, and a ledger that keeps track of who gave what. The Service is operated by Domino Solutions LLC, a New York limited liability company. By creating an account or joining a Circle you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

These Terms are an agreement between you and Mishtatef. They do not create any agreement between you and the other members of your Circle — how your family divides a gift is between you and your family.

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or contribute money through the Service.
• You sign in with your email address, a linked Google account, or a verified phone number. A password is optional and never required: you can set one from your profile if you want it, and the one-time email link signs an account in whether or not one is set. You are responsible for keeping access to those secure — anyone who controls your inbox, your phone, or a saved password can sign in as you.
• The information you give us (your name, email, timezone) must be accurate. Members of your Circle rely on it to know who is who.
• One person, one account. Do not impersonate anyone or create accounts for people without their knowledge.

We send statements, notices before a card is charged, receipts, and any notice the law requires in writing to the email address on your profile. When you signed up — or when we asked you inside the app — you agreed to receive those electronically. That agreement is recorded with the date and the version of these Terms it was given against.

• You can have paper instead. Ask us at any time and we will post a paper copy of anything we have sent you, free.
• You can withdraw the agreement in your account settings. Withdrawing does not undo deliveries already made, and it means anything we are required to put in writing has to go to you on paper — which is slower, and means some parts of the Service that depend on email stop working for you.
• Keep your address working. We cannot deliver to an address that bounces, and a notice we could not deliver is still a notice we were required to send.
• If there is no address on your account, nothing legally required goes to you by email, because there is nowhere to send it. Accounts opened by text start this way. Those notices go out on paper instead, and adding an email address and agreeing to this section is what switches them to electronic.

You can open and run a Mishtatef account entirely by text message, without ever using a web browser. This section is about what that means; the Privacy Policy describes what we send and what we keep.

• Your verified number acts as you. Instructions sent from a number you have verified count as yours, the same way a click in your browser does. If you lose the number, tell us — a recycled number is why a handset that has gone quiet for six months has to prove itself again before it can act.
• The assistant cannot move money. Only your reply can. When you ask for something that spends, the assistant writes down what it would do and texts it to you with the exact amount. Nothing happens until you reply yes. That is how the software is built, not only what it is told to do.
• One yes means one thing. We will not leave two questions waiting on the same word, and every reply that declines something says what declining does.
• Reply STOP at any time to end text messages, or HELP for help. Standard message and data rates apply.

When somebody in your Circle asks you to chip in and we text you the request, we may call the phone number on your account if you have not answered it within three hours. By agreeing to these Terms you agree to those calls, including calls that use a recorded or computer-generated voice.

• What a call is about. A request waiting on your answer, or, if you sent the request, how many people have not answered it yet. Never advertising.
• When. One call per request, between noon and 9 PM where you live, never on Shabbos or Yom Tov. If nobody picks up we try again on the next two days, and that is all.
• How to stop them. Press the key the call offers for stopping calls, tell the assistant by text, or change your notification settings on your profile. Stopping calls does not stop texts or email, and nothing else in the Service depends on keeping them.

A Circle is created and administered by its members. Some members hold roles (such as owner or treasurer) that let them invite people, open Events, request contributions, and name who receives an Event’s gifts. Those permissions are granted inside the Circle, by the Circle — we provide the machinery, not the judgment.

• Invitations may only be sent to people you actually know and reasonably believe want to join. Do not use invitations to send unsolicited mail.
• Leaving a Circle stops future requests to you, but does not erase your past contributions from the Circle’s ledger — the ledger is the shared record every other member relied on.
• A Circle’s code can be used by anyone who has it. Whoever joins with it becomes a full member and can see the Circle’s Events and its ledger. Where you post it is your decision. A code expires unless you say otherwise, and whoever can add members can replace or turn off the Circle’s code at any time.

Mishtatef is not a bank, and it never holds your money. Stripe is the regulated company that processes payments for the Service. When you give, Stripe charges your card straight into the Stripe account of the person receiving that Event’s gifts. From that moment the money is in their account, not ours. We never see or store your bank credentials or full card numbers — Stripe collects those directly. What we do is instruct Stripe and keep the record.

Three different things can appear beside your name, and they are not the same thing. Most questions about money here answer themselves once you know which one you are looking at.

• A gift — money charged to your card for an Event, paid straight into the account of the member that Event names as its recipient (section 04a). Once it is charged, you have given, and it is theirs.
• A promise — a yes you gave before the recipient had finished setting up to receive. Nothing has been charged. It becomes a gift when it is collected, as section 07 describes, and you can withdraw it until then.
• A balance held by us — there is none. We do not keep a shared pot, a wallet, credit, or any other balance for you or for your Circle, and there is no way to put money into Mishtatef that is not a gift to an Event. A family that keeps a fund opens an Event for it, with its treasurer as the recipient. If any of this ever changes, these Terms change first and you will be asked to agree to them.

Every Event names one recipient: the member whose own Stripe account its gifts are paid into. By default that is the member who opened the Event. A host of the Event may name another member who can see the Event instead. An honoree the Event is being kept a surprise from is never its recipient.

• The money goes to an account in your own name. To receive, you open an account with Stripe once, on Stripe’s own form, and agree to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement. Gifts land in your Stripe balance, and Stripe pays them out to your bank on Stripe’s schedule.
• We are a software platform, not a party holding funds. A gift is charged into your account and never passes through an account of ours. We do not take title to it. The processing & service fee in section 04b is the one part of a payment that comes to us, and Stripe separates it at the moment of the charge.
• You appoint us to accept gifts for you. By agreeing to these Terms, you appoint Mishtatef, and through us Stripe, to accept payments into your Stripe account on your behalf for the Events that name you as recipient, to collect promises made to those Events, and to refund those payments when you ask (section 07a). You can end that appointment at any time by turning off receiving in your account, or by writing to us (section 13); an Event that names you then needs another recipient before it can collect.
• Until you are set up, a yes is a promise. Nobody is charged for an Event whose recipient cannot yet receive. Their yes waits as a promise, as section 07 describes.
• What you receive is for what the Event is for. How it is spent is between you and your family, as section 01 says.

• Nobody is charged without saying yes. Every gift requires your explicit confirmation. A monthly gift sends you notice before each charge, with the option to skip or change it. A promise is charged only as section 07 describes, at the price you agreed to.
• What you pay is made up of two parts, and both are shown to you. When you give, the total at checkout is the gift amount, which is charged into the Event’s recipient’s own Stripe account, plus a processing & service fee, added on top, which covers payment processing and the operation of the platform. The exact split of every payment is shown at checkout under “View breakdown” and in your payment history. The total you see at checkout is the total you are charged — never more. Gifts are paid by card.
• What the recipient receives. We charge the recipient nothing. Stripe takes its card processing fee from the recipient’s account, and our fee is reduced by Stripe’s standard card fee to match, so a gift paid with a standard United States card reaches the recipient whole. A card issued outside the United States can cost more to process, and that extra is taken from what the recipient receives. When a gift is refunded, Stripe keeps its processing fee, and that is taken from the recipient’s account (section 07a).
• What we earn. Mishtatef earns the processing & service fee described above, net of the costs Stripe charges us. When a gift is refunded, the fee on the refunded part is refunded with it. When a leftover is returned, the fee stays with us, as set out in section 07a.
• Nothing is held, so nothing earns interest. There is no balance with us to earn interest, carry a fee, or wait for anybody.
• Every gift on the record was actually charged. There is no way to record money as given without it being charged, and a promise is shown as a promise until it is collected.
• Gifts are gifts, not purchases. Once your gift is charged it belongs to the recipient, for what the Event is for. Whether and how it is refunded to you is the recipient’s decision (section 07a), not a right these Terms create — though we will always help correct genuine processing errors.

Giving needs nothing but a card. Receiving is different: gifts can only be paid into an account in your own name at Stripe, our payment processor, and opening one is a step you take yourself, once.

• Stripe verifies you, because the law requires it of them. Opening the account means giving Stripe your legal name, date of birth, address and part of a government identifier, along with your bank details. That goes to Stripe directly, on Stripe’s own form, under their agreement with you and their privacy policy. It does not come to us and we do not store it.
• What we get back is status, not documents. The identifier of your Stripe account, whether it can receive money yet, and what is still outstanding. That is all we hold and all we need.
• Your Stripe account is yours. Its balance, its payouts to your bank and its closing are between you and Stripe, under Stripe’s agreement with you.

The ledger is a record, not a balance. It shows what was given, promised and refunded, and to which Event; it holds no money, because every amount on it was charged into, or refunded out of, a recipient’s own Stripe account. It is append-only: corrections are made by reversing entries, never by editing or deleting history. Every member of a Circle can inspect their Circle’s ledger. This is deliberate: the shared, undisputable record is the product. By using the Service you accept that your gifts, promises and refunds will appear in that record, subject to the visibility settings described in section 6 and in the Privacy Policy.

When an Event excludes an honoree, our servers withhold that Event — its existence, chat, ledger lines, and emails — from the excluded person’s account entirely. We build this seriously and test it before every release.

What we cannot control is people. If a family member tells the honoree, forwards an email, or leaves a laptop open, the surprise is gone and that is not something we can prevent or be responsible for. Circle organizers also control visibility settings — full amounts, percentages only, or hidden — and anonymous giving; those settings bind what other members see, not what people say to each other at the Shabbos table.

When the recipient of an Event can receive, your yes is charged at once. When they have not finished setting up, your yes is a promise: nothing is charged yet.

• A promise keeps your card. We keep the saved card you named on file until the promise is collected or withdrawn, even if you asked us not to keep it after one use. By promising, you authorize Stripe, on the recipient’s behalf, to charge that card for that gift when it is collected.
• It is charged at the price you were quoted. The total you agreed to when you said yes is the total charged — never more.
• When it is collected. Only once the recipient can receive: when the recipient or a host of the Event presses Collect, or automatically on the Event’s date, whichever comes first. An Event with no date is collected as soon as the recipient can receive.
• You can withdraw it at any time before it is collected. Nothing is charged and nothing is owed.
• If the recipient changes. If the Event names a different recipient, or its recipient can no longer receive, before your promise is collected, the promise is released: nothing is charged, and you are asked again, naming whoever receives now.
• If your card is declined, we try again at most once a day, three attempts in all. After that we ask you again, and nothing more is charged until you answer.
• A monthly gift is charged straight into the recipient’s account each month, with notice before each charge (section 04b). Stopping it stops the charges that have not happened yet.
• Collecting must be honest. An Event’s gifts are for what the Event says they are for. Opening an Event under false pretences to collect from your own family is fraud against your own Circle and grounds for immediate account termination.

A gift is in the recipient’s own Stripe account from the moment it is charged, so a refund comes out of that account and goes back to the card that paid. We do not move the money anywhere else, and nobody can send it to a different person or card.

• Only the recipient can refund a gift, in whole or in part: the person it was charged into, even if the Event has since named somebody else. It is their money, so a host of the Event cannot refund it for them.
• Money left over can go back to everybody. The recipient can return a leftover amount to all of an Event’s givers, divided in proportion to what each gave, as a partial refund of each gift.
• Only while the money is still in their Stripe balance. Once Stripe has paid it out to the recipient’s bank, a refund through the Service is no longer possible, and anything further is between you and them.
• Our fee is refunded with a gift, not with a leftover. When a gift is refunded, the processing & service fee goes back with it in proportion: a refund of half a gift returns half of the fee paid with it. When a leftover is returned, each giver gets back their share of the gift, and the fee stays with us, because the gift was collected and the Event took place. Either way, Stripe does not return its own card processing fee on a refund; that part comes out of the recipient’s Stripe account.
• Closing an Event moves nothing. What is in the recipient’s account when an Event closes stays there, unless the recipient refunds it.

State unclaimed-property laws reach money a company is holding for somebody. We hold none for you or for your Circle. Every gift is in the recipient’s own Stripe account from the moment it is charged, and Stripe’s agreement with the recipient governs it from then on.

• There is no balance here to go dormant, to carry a fee, or to be sent to a state. A promise is not a balance either: it is a charge that has not happened.

A gift that has been charged can still come back out — you dispute the charge with your card issuer. Disputes are handled by Stripe against the account that received the payment, which is the recipient’s. The ledger shows a reversal as a reversing entry rather than by editing what was there.

• Tell us first if something is wrong. A genuine error — the wrong amount, a charge you did not recognize, a payment that went twice — we will help put right with the recipient and with Stripe, and it is faster than a dispute.
• If you received the gift, a dispute takes the disputed amount back out of your Stripe account, under Stripe’s agreement with you. We may help you respond to it, and we will tell you what we know.
• A dispute can leave the recipient short. If they have already spent that money on what the Event was for, the shortfall falls on them. That is between you and your family, and it is why disputing a gift you did make is a serious thing to do to them.
• Disputing your own family’s gift in bad faith is grounds for closing your account, and we may recover what the reversal cost us.

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Break the law, launder money, evade sanctions, or move money for any purpose other than genuine group gifting and shared family expenses.
• Harass, deceive, or defraud other members — including pressuring people to contribute. The Service is built around asking once, gently.
• Probe, overload, or interfere with the Service, attempt to access other Circles or excluded Events, or scrape data.
• Resell the Service or use it to run a commercial collection operation.

There is no subscription and no limit on how many people a Circle may hold. Mishtatef is paid for entirely by the processing & service fee described in section 04b. A Circle is never billed for existing or for the number of its members, and a recipient is never charged by us for the gifts paid into their account.

We will give at least 30 days’ notice before any increase to the processing & service fee, and before introducing a charge for anything that is currently free.

A contribution here is a personal gift, not a charitable donation. Mishtatef is not a charity and nothing you give through it is tax-deductible, whatever the Event is for.

If you receive gifts through the Service, they are paid into your own Stripe account, and Stripe — not Mishtatef — may issue you a Form 1099-K and report it to tax authorities where your account crosses a federal or state reporting threshold. Those forms report the gross amount processed, which is not the same as income: family gift money collected for an Event, or money you laid out and were paid back, is generally not income to you. You are responsible for keeping records that show that if a tax authority asks. Your account keeps the record. We do not give tax advice; ask your own accountant.

You may close your account at any time, from your profile settings. Closing signs you out everywhere, stops every scheduled charge and every message, and marks you as departed in your Circles. Thirty days later your personal details are erased. You can take your own record with you as a file before you go, and we will always help if you would rather a person did it for you.

Closing does not touch your Stripe account. Gifts already paid into it are yours and stay with Stripe under your agreement with them; close that account with Stripe if you want it closed. An Event that named you as its recipient needs another before it can collect. If you are the only owner of a Circle that still has other members in it, hand that role to somebody before you go, so the Circle is not left without anyone who can run it.

We may suspend or terminate an account that violates these Terms, creates risk for other members, or that we are required to close by Stripe or by law. If an account holding a role in a Circle is closed, the Circle’s remaining members keep the Circle and its ledger.

What you put into the Service is yours: your messages, your photos, the receipts you upload, the notes on an Event. You keep them. You give us only the permission we need to run the Service with them — store them, show them to the people in your Circle under the visibility rules you set, back them up, and carry them across the systems that serve the product to you.

• We do not train AI on your family’s content, we do not advertise from it, and we do not sell it. The Privacy Policy says the same thing and neither document may be weakened without the other.
• You are responsible for what you post, and for having the right to post it. We may remove content that breaks section 08.
• The Service itself is ours — the software, the Mishtatef name and mark, and the design. Using the Service does not give you any right to those beyond using the product as it is offered.

The Service is provided “as is”. We do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we are not a party to — and will not arbitrate — disagreements between Circle members about gifts, amounts, or who should have been invited.

To the maximum extent the law allows, Mishtatef’s total liability to you for any claim arising out of the Service is limited to the greater of $100 or the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages — including a spoiled surprise. Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited by law, or your rights against Stripe under its own terms.

If we are sued or fined because of something you did — breaking these Terms, breaking the law, or a fight with another member of your Circle — you cover what that costs us, including reasonable legal fees. This is narrow on purpose: it is about your conduct, not about anything that goes wrong on our side.

These Terms are governed by the law of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

• Write to us first. Almost everything is a misunderstanding about a number, and we would rather sort it out than argue about it. Give us 30 days from the day you tell us before starting anything formal.
• Otherwise, the courts in New York. Any claim that cannot be settled goes to the state or federal courts sitting in New York, and we both agree those courts may hear it.
• Small claims stays open. Either of us may bring a claim in small claims court instead, if it qualifies.
• There is no arbitration clause here, and no class-action waiver. We know most services this size make you sign one. We would rather earn the trust than take away the recourse.

We may update these Terms as the Service evolves. Each version carries the version string printed at the top of this page, and your agreement is recorded against it. For material changes we will email every account holder at least 14 days before the new terms take effect, and ask you to agree the next time you open the app. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept the updated Terms; if you do not, close your account before they take effect.

• If a court strikes one sentence, the rest stand. Losing a clause does not lose the agreement.
• Not enforcing something once does not give it up. If we let something go, we can still hold you to it another time.
• We may hand this agreement on with the Service — in a merger or a sale, on the terms in section 12. You may not hand your account to somebody else.
• The money sections outlive your account. Sections 04a, 07, 07a, 07d and 11 keep applying to anything that happened while you were here.
• This is the whole agreement between you and us about the Service, together with the Privacy Policy. Anything said anywhere else — a help page, an email, a marketing line — does not change it.
• Formal legal notices to us go to contact@dominosolutionsny.com. Notices to you go the way section 02a describes.

Questions about these Terms, or about a gift: support@mishtatef.com. We read everything. Formal legal notices go to the address in section 12a.