Terms of Use

• TheTin is a cashless collection tin. Money goes to your Stripe account. TheTin never holds funds.
• Our fee is 1c–99c NZD per payment — no monthly bill from TheTin for ordinary use. Stripe’s processing fee is separate.
• Your main page address cannot be renamed once claimed, and nobody else ever gets it. We can remove a harmful page address; the address then stays reserved forever. Print QR codes carefully.
• Each Stripe account links to only one TheTin account. Pausing payments in TheTin does not free that Stripe account for another TheTin login. Disconnecting Stripe does not free it either. Once linked, it stays with that TheTin account. After account purge, every remaining linked Stripe account is disconnected from TheTin.
• Fake charity and scams are forbidden. Depending on the problem, we can take a page down (reversible), remove a harmful page address (permanent, does not freeze your account), or freeze the whole account (reversible) — see Enforcement.
• Givers don’t need a TheTin account and are not asked to tick these Terms to pay.
• The recipient sees a giver’s name and email — Stripe collects them at checkout for the receipt, and we show them in the recipient’s dashboard and nowhere else. Never in a payment alert. It is a courtesy, not a mailing list.

NZ CORNERSTONE LIMITED, a New Zealand company, operates the TheTin service. Contact us at Support (support@thetin.nz) for privacy, access, correction, deletion, and other requests.

TheTin (thetin.nz) is a cashless collection tin for face-to-face giving. Churches and charities get a personalised web page and printable QR code; individuals collecting occasionally may use the same product. A passer-by scans and pays through Stripe Checkout using an available payment method, and the money goes to the recipient’s own Stripe account — not to TheTin.

We are not a bank, wallet, or money-holding service.

These Terms are the agreement between you as a recipient with a TheTin account and NZ CORNERSTONE LIMITED, as operator of TheTin. If you act for a church, charity, or organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind that organisation.

The Privacy Notice applies from account creation. You accept these Terms when you claim your main page and select the acceptance checkbox. Creating an account or beginning setup before a claim does not record acceptance of a Terms version.

Givers do not need a TheTin account and are not asked to agree to these Terms to pay. How we handle a giver’s name, email, and optional message is in the Privacy Notice and on the pay page before checkout. Refunds are explained in section 8.

To receive money through TheTin you must complete TheTin account setup, complete Stripe Connect Standard onboarding (or link an existing Standard account) in a country TheTin currently offers, and meet Stripe’s identity, bank, and verification requirements. TheTin currently offers New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — not every country Stripe lists. TheTin does not collect date of birth or impose a separate 18+ gate. Stripe’s age and verification rules vary by country and may change. You must be legally able to accept these Terms or have any guardian authority required by applicable law, and Stripe makes the final onboarding decision. See Stripe’s current age requirement and country availability.

Givers must be able to complete payment with Stripe under their issuer’s and Stripe’s rules. No TheTin account is required to give.

TheTin is intended for churches and charities (offerings, appeals). Individuals who receive casual, face-to-face payments may also use it.

Charities, fundraising, and receipts

TheTin does not decide whether a recipient is a registered charity, approved donee organisation, tax-exempt body, or equivalent status in any country. A Stripe receipt or TheTin payment confirmation is not, by itself, a tax donation receipt.

Recipients are responsible for any charity registration, fundraising authority, required public disclosures, donation receipts, accounting, tax, and use-of-funds obligations that apply to them. Givers should ask the recipient for any donation receipt or tax documentation they need.

TheTin never holds anyone’s money. Payments go directly from the giver to the recipient’s own Stripe account using Stripe Connect Standard accounts and direct charges. We do not aggregate funds, hold balances for later payout, or act as a bank.

Stripe is the only payment provider. The recipient owns their Stripe relationship, completes Stripe’s terms and verification, receives payouts on Stripe’s schedule to their bank, and can disconnect TheTin and keep their Stripe account.

TheTin never collects bank account numbers, government ID documents, or card numbers — those stay with Stripe’s hosted flows.

Payment amounts and currency

Each page has its own minimum and maximum payment amount. Bounds are enforced on our servers before any Checkout Session is created. New pages start from product defaults (about $1–$1,000 NZD-shaped).

You choose the currency of each page. It is the currency your givers see and pay in, and you set it to suit where you are collecting — a visitor collecting in New Zealand sets their page to NZD so local audiences pay in NZD, then changes it when they move on. It is separate from your Stripe account’s own currency: funds settle to your account in its currency, and Stripe performs that conversion at its own rate under its terms, not TheTin. We do not act as a currency trader.

TheTin charges 1c–99c NZD per payment — no signup fee and no monthly bill from TheTin for ordinary use. That is 1% of the payment, rounded to the nearest cent (half a cent rounds up), always at least 1 cent and never more than 99 cents NZD.

So a $30 payment costs 30¢, and a $500 payment costs 99¢.

The fee is taken on the charge through Stripe, as a platform fee on that payment.

Two fees, not one: Stripe also takes its normal card/wallet processing fee from the recipient’s side before payout. TheTin does not set, hold, or absorb Stripe’s fee. Registered charities may apply to Stripe for any nonprofit card rate Stripe offers; TheTin’s 1c–99c fee stays the same.

Refunded payments: if a payment is refunded, our fee on it is returned as well — in full for a full refund, proportionally for a partial one. See section 8.

Using TheTin’s existing features yourself costs nothing beyond this per-payment fee. If you ask us to do something for you — raising your active sub-page quota, customization, or support beyond what the platform provides — we may agree a separate fee with you first, sized to the work. It is never taken from a payment.

One main page per account

One login owns exactly one main page at thetin.nz/<name>-<category> plus optional sub-pages at thetin.nz/<name>-<category>/<sub-name>. Main and sub-pages share the one Stripe account currently chosen for new payments.

Stripe accounts and TheTin accounts

Each Stripe account can be linked to only one TheTin account while that TheTin account exists. A TheTin account may hold more than one Stripe account over time, but only one of them is used for new payments. If you try to connect a Stripe account that is already linked to another TheTin account, the connection fails.

Pausing payments in TheTin does not free that Stripe account for another TheTin login. Stopping payments or disconnecting Stripe does not free a Stripe account for another TheTin login either. Once a Stripe account is linked to a TheTin account, it stays with that account. If you want to cut a Stripe account off TheTin completely, revoke TheTin’s authorization in your Stripe Dashboard. If you want to cut all your Stripe accounts off TheTin and stop using TheTin, close your TheTin account. After the purge deadline every remaining linked Stripe account is disconnected from TheTin; money already paid stays in those Stripe accounts.

Sub-page quota

Every account includes three active sub-pages by default. Retiring one frees the slot. Higher quotas may be granted by admin after a request — email Support.

Page addresses are permanent

• Main page addresses use the shape <name>-<category> (lowercase a–z, digits, hyphen; whole address at most 50 characters).
• Page addresses cannot be renamed after creation — main or sub. This protects printed QR codes.
• The display name on the page can be edited; the URL cannot.
• We may remove a harmful page address. That is not a rename and not a release: the address stays reserved forever and is never given to anyone else. See Enforcement.

Retiring a sub-page

Retire stops public payment and frees a quota slot. Content and history stay with the account. The sub-path is not released for someone else under your main page address while the account exists. Retire is not full delete — that is account deletion. A sub-page can also go dark because we removed its page address or took the page down, or because the whole account is frozen — see Enforcement for what is different about each of those.

Page addresses are never reused

Your page address is reserved permanently. If you delete your account, we erase your account, pages and content — but the address itself is kept as address text only, and is never released, reassigned, or given to anyone else. This applies whether or not your page ever received a payment.

We do this because your address is a payment destination. A printed poster or QR code can stay on a wall for years, and it may exist even if you never received a payment through TheTin. If we let someone else take your old address, a person scanning your poster could pay a stranger. Keeping every address reserved forever is the only way to make sure that cannot happen.

Reserved names

We may refuse a page address when it is claimed. We may also act on a page address, a page, or an account after it is already in use — see Enforcement. Removing a page address is never releasing it: the address stays reserved forever and is never given to anyone else.

Page customisation

You may customise pages within the structured fields TheTin offers — photos, display name, short bio, a longer About me section, preset amounts, curated themes, thank-you greeting and message, and limited links. Customisation is structured — you may not inject free-form HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. You are responsible for the accuracy and legality of what you publish (including claims of charity status, affiliation, or purpose).

You must not use TheTin for illegal, fraudulent, misleading, or abusive content or fundraising. In particular:

• fake charity
• impersonation
• scams or phishing
• illegal goods or services
• hate, extreme violence, or sexual content involving minors
• content that infringes others’ rights

Public-facing text may be screened by automated moderation, and we may screen a page address or a page again at any time after it was first created, not only when it was claimed. That is not a guarantee every bad submission is caught. If we act, we act under Enforcement below — a page taken down, a page address removed, or an account frozen, depending on what the problem actually is.

You must not use pages for card testing, credential stuffing, or other payment abuse. We throttle and challenge suspicious checkout traffic.

We may act if a page, a page address, or an account is being used in a way that breaks these Terms — for example fake charity, impersonation, a scam, or other harmful content. We may act on our own review or on a report from someone else, and we may screen a page address or a page again at any time after it was first created, not only when it was claimed.

We use three different tools. They are not the same thing and do not come bundled together. Which one we use depends on what the actual problem is.

Page takedown

If the problem is something you published — a page takedown. That one page goes dark: it stops loading (a plain “page not found,” with no content and no hint it ever existed), and nothing else changes. No other page and no account setting is touched. You keep full access, we tell you why, and you can edit the page while it is down. Once we are satisfied, we restore it and it serves again. A page that is down for a takedown does not count toward your sub-page quota while it is down, and it cannot be used as a source to start a new page (see below) until it is restored.

Address removal

If the problem is the page address itself — address removal. A page address (the path in your URL, main or sub) cannot be edited, so if the address itself is the problem, editing is not an option. We remove it: that address’s page goes dark permanently, and the address stays reserved forever — never given back to you, and never given to anyone else. This is the only one of the three tools we cannot undo. Removing a page address does not freeze your account and does not touch any of your other pages. If we remove your main page address, every sub-page underneath it goes dark at the same time — a sub-page’s address can never outlive its main page address — but those sub-pages’ own content and addresses are not deleted: they stay reserved and can be copied onto a newly claimed page address (see below). If the address we remove is a sub-page address on its own, only that one sub-page is affected; your main page and every other sub-page keep working, and you are under no obligation to replace it.

Account freeze

If the problem is the account — account freeze. We may freeze a recipient account for abuse, fraud, misleading use, legal risk, or serious breach of these Terms. Every page you own goes dark at once — a plain “page not found,” main and every sub-page. Freezing is reversible: you can still sign in, use the dashboard, and edit anything the whole time. The only thing a freeze stops you doing is claiming a new page address. When we unfreeze, every page comes back exactly as it was. Owner actions such as retiring a sub-page remain separate from operator freeze.

None of these three delete your content. A taken-down page, a page whose address was removed, and every page on a frozen account keep their content for as long as your TheTin account exists. The only thing that erases content is deleting your whole TheTin account yourself (see Account deletion below) — enforcement never does.

Starting a new page from one you already hold. If a page address you had is gone, or you want a fresh start, you can claim a brand new page address and copy the old page’s content into it — display name, bio, photos, preset amounts, theme, links. You can do this from any page you still hold, including one that is dark, as long as it is not currently down for a takedown that has not been restored. This never moves money history: past tips and their ledger records stay with the original page.

We try to notify you every time we act — email to the address on your account, saying what happened and why. If you believe this is a mistake, email us at Support.

Automated checkout defence may rate-limit or require a challenge; it does not take a page down, remove a page address, or freeze an account by itself. Every action above is a manual decision by us.

If a Checkout Session was already created before we acted, a giver may still complete that session for a limited time. New sessions will not be created for a page or account that is not payable. TheTin does not claw back money already paid to a recipient’s Stripe account (we never held it).

Refunds are initiated by the recipient (Stripe Dashboard or any TheTin flow that refunds on the connected account). TheTin does not hold funds to refund from.

If you gave and want your money back, contact the person or organisation you paid and ask them to refund it. TheTin never holds the money, so we cannot refund it for you. If that does not work, use your card issuer or wallet provider and the Stripe receipt. TheTin never stores card numbers.

We give our fee back when a payment is refunded. Refund in full and the whole TheTin fee on that payment is returned; refund part of it and the same proportion of our fee is returned. This happens automatically, including for a refund you make in your own Stripe Dashboard — you do not have to ask us. Stripe’s own processing fee is a separate matter between you and Stripe.

Under Stripe Connect Standard + direct charges, card chargebacks and disputes are handled through the recipient’s connected Stripe account. Disputed amounts and any applicable Stripe dispute fees are governed by Stripe’s terms and can vary by country, account, and Stripe configuration. TheTin may assist with platform logs; we do not cover dispute losses from platform money.

The TheTin name, brand, website design, software, and documentation are owned by the operator of TheTin or its licensors. You keep ownership of content you upload and grant TheTin a licence to host and process it solely to run the service. You confirm you have the rights to use the images and text you publish.

Our Privacy Notice explains what we collect from givers and recipients, the processors we use, cookies, NZ Privacy Act 2020 rights, and deletion. The Privacy Notice is part of the recipient agreement by reference.

Who gave to you. Stripe's checkout collects a giver's name and email address for their receipt, and we show them to you on your payments list. It is a courtesy so a gift isn't from a stranger — it is not a mailing list, and you must not use it as one. Treat it as what it is: someone else's personal information, held for the purpose of recognising their gift. You may not sell it, add it to a marketing list, or pass it on. It is stored against your account only, never copied into our long-term financial records, and erased with the rest of your data when you delete your account. Where privacy law applies to your organisation, you are responsible for handling it lawfully.

Optional giver messages. After we verify a successful payment, the giver may leave one optional plain-text message for you. We save the first message once as pending, then return the giver to TheTin's home page; later attempts through that payment cannot replace it. Our automated moderation job runs every five minutes and processes a limited queue, so approval is not guaranteed within five minutes. Until approval, we show you only “Message to be moderated” in your signed-in payment history. If approved, the message replaces that placeholder and is shown only to you there. If rejected, or if moderation cannot approve it after limited retries, we remove the message text and show no message. It is never included in notifications, operational or security logs, or the long-term financial ledger. Treat an approved message as the giver's personal information: do not sell it, add it to a marketing list, or pass it on. The message can be removed through the giver data-deletion process and is erased when your account is purged.

Recipients may delete their account from Profile → Delete account (email/password and Google / Microsoft sign-in). Deletion locks the account immediately, emails a confirmation, and has a 7-day grace window to cancel. Permanent deletion then happens at least 7 days after you confirm deletion and may take up to a further day — it is always permanent once it runs.

During the window there is one way to restore: sign in normally using the account's existing email/password or Google / Microsoft sign-in. You’ll see a confirmation to restore the account. Click Restore my account and the account is restored. Re-registering the same email does not restore the account.

After that deadline we erase the account, profile, sign-in identifiers, pages, images, payment history, support data, sessions, and event history from our live systems. Limited financial, security, fraud-prevention, and page-address records may remain after account deletion where necessary for those purposes:

1. Financial ledger — records of payments for books and disputes. These survive in our live systems. We remove them from those systems only after our operator has archived a batch and acknowledged it. The archive is ciphertext we encrypt ourselves and may rest outside New Zealand; plaintext records do not leave New Zealand. We do not delete these records on a calendar anniversary.
2. Path reservations for your page addresses — path text only, with no account, profile, or ownership information attached. These are kept permanently and are never released or given to another account, whether or not the page ever received a payment, so that a printed QR code can never come to point at someone else.
3. Payment integrity and abuse-prevention records — limited technical records needed to prevent duplicate processing, card-testing, bots, and repeated abuse.
4. Short-lived operational and security logs — an already-written redacted line cannot be selectively deleted when you delete your account. It may remain for the balance of our log processors’ short retention, then expires under those processors’ schedules. Details are in the Privacy Notice. Payer identity, account contact/profile content, full URLs, and credentials or secrets are prohibited from these logs.

Your Stripe account is yours and is not deleted by TheTin. Disconnecting Stripe does not free a linked Stripe account for another TheTin login. Once linked, it stays with this TheTin account. During the 7-day deletion window every Stripe account still linked to this account continues to block a new connection elsewhere. After the purge deadline every remaining linked Stripe account is disconnected from TheTin. See "Stripe accounts and TheTin accounts" above, User data deletion, and the Privacy Notice.

NZ consumer guarantees may apply to eligible consumers and cannot always be excluded.

We provide TheTin on an “as available” basis. We aim for high availability but do not promise uninterrupted service.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, TheTin is not responsible for: the truth of a recipient’s story or use of funds after payout; Stripe decisions; bank delays or FX; a giver’s motives or network fraud decisions; loss from misuse of a printed QR after you chose a page address; or third-party sites linked from a recipient page.

Subject to non-excludable rights, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability to a recipient in any 12-month period is limited to the total TheTin application fees we actually received from payments to that recipient in that period. Nothing excludes liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, or death/personal injury caused by negligence where that cannot lawfully be limited.

If your page or use of TheTin causes claims or costs to TheTin because of illegal content, fake charity, fraud, or breach of these Terms, you agree to indemnify TheTin for reasonable resulting losses and expenses, to the extent permitted by law.

These Terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand. Subject to mandatory consumer rights in your country, the courts of New Zealand are the preferred forum for disputes about these Terms.

The site may be reachable worldwide. That does not mean every local fundraising or consumer rule is covered. You remain responsible for laws that apply to your fundraising or collection activity.

Our no-custody, direct-charge model is intentional architecture. It is not a formal legal opinion that no registration or licence could ever be required in any jurisdiction.

We may update these Terms. Each version has an identifier and the date it takes effect. We will email recipient account holders. Please read them. If you keep using TheTin, you are agreeing to this version. If you do not agree, you can delete your account from Profile.

• If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• These Terms (plus the Privacy Notice and any separate written agreement for work we do for you) are the whole agreement for use of TheTin as a platform.
• Stripe’s terms govern the payment relationship between you and Stripe.
• Failure to enforce a right is not a waiver.
• You may not assign your account without our consent; we may assign the platform to a successor operator with notice.