These terms apply in addition to the General Terms and Conditions to everyone who offers products via merchavio (“sellers”). They are accepted when a seller account is created.
Sellers act in the exercise of their commercial or self-employed professional activity (as businesses). Private individuals who sell only occasionally are themselves responsible for checking when a commercial activity begins.
The seller is the vendor and contracting party of their customers (no sale “in the name of merchavio”).
The seller is solely responsible for: the lawfulness of their products and content; their statutory information obligations towards customers (in particular their own imprint/legal notice, price indications, withdrawal policy and mandatory distance selling information); fulfilling consumer rights (withdrawal, warranty); and their tax obligations (in particular VAT in the country of supply, the OSS procedure, income/corporate tax).
The platform provides tools (e.g. checkout with withdrawal checkboxes, receipt export) but does not replace the seller’s own legal and tax review.
Withdrawal function: in every shop, we provide the button “Withdraw from contract here” (in German-language shops “Vertrag widerrufen”) at the bottom of every page, through which buyers can declare their withdrawal without signing in (withdrawal function under § 356a German Civil Code or Art. 11a of Directive 2011/83/EU as implemented nationally). We receive the declaration as the seller’s messenger for receipt, immediately send the buyer, in the seller’s name, the legally required acknowledgement of receipt with the content of the declaration and the date and time of its receipt, and forward the declaration to the seller without delay (dashboard and email). We do not check whether the withdrawal is effective; the acknowledgement only confirms receipt. The seller may not deactivate the withdrawal function or make it harder to use. The seller includes the legally required notice of the withdrawal function in their withdrawal policy; the template in the dashboard contains it.
The seller checks every withdrawal received without delay. If the withdrawal is effective, the seller refunds the amounts to be repaid to the buyer no later than 14 days after receipt of the declaration (time stated in the acknowledgement of receipt), via the dashboard or directly via Stripe. If the seller considers the withdrawal ineffective, they inform the buyer with reasons, for example via the dashboard. Towards the buyer, the seller alone remains responsible for checking the withdrawal, the refund and all other consequences of the withdrawal. The seller treats withdrawals that reach them by other means (e.g. by email) in the same way.
Cancellation button: in every shop with subscriptions, we provide the button “Cancel contracts here” (in German-language shops “Verträge hier kündigen”), through which buyers can cancel without signing in (§ 312k German Civil Code). The buyer immediately receives a confirmation with the date and time of receipt and, where already determined, the date on which the contract ends. If the cancellation can be matched to a running subscription, it is carried out automatically; otherwise the seller handles it without delay. The seller may not deactivate this function either or make it harder to use.
Each seller receives a storefront under a freely selectable, available store URL (slug). Reserved and infringing names (third-party trademarks, name rights) are not permitted and may be withdrawn.
The seller ensures that the business data stored in the account (name, address, VAT ID) is correct and up to date (see also Art. 30 DSA and section 11 of these terms).
Own domain (custom domain): the seller can additionally run storefront and community under their own domain. The seller warrants that they are entitled to use this domain, sets up the required DNS records themselves and is responsible for the mandatory information there too (in particular imprint, privacy policy, withdrawal policy). We may suspend delivery under a domain if entitlement is not proven or the domain is used in an infringing way.
Team access: the account holder can invite further people as team members and assign them graded rights (role-based permissions). The account holder chooses the permissions on their own responsibility, is responsible for the actions of team members as for their own, and revokes access without delay when the basis for it ends.
Only digital products and services are permitted (courses, communities, ebooks, software/SaaS, memberships, coaching and similar).
Prohibited in particular: content that violates applicable law; infringements of copyright, trademark or personality rights; misleading promises of success or income; financial/investment products without the required licence; gambling; pornographic, violence-glorifying, discriminatory or content harmful to minors; malware; reselling third-party content without a licence.
The seller warrants that they hold all necessary rights (in particular rights of use and licences) to their content.
The plan conditions chosen at conclusion apply (monthly fee and transaction fee per plan according to the price overview on the home page). Prices are exclusive of any statutory VAT, where applicable.
New accounts receive a free 5-day trial with full functionality for shop, products, courses and community. During the trial, live streaming and hosting own course videos are only available as embeds of external content (no live hosting) and are unlocked with a paid plan. No payment is required during the trial.
Livestreams and voice rooms are available in the paid plans within a monthly live allowance. The allowance is the seller’s share of the platform’s shared live capacity: this capacity is distributed equally among all paying sellers, and the seller’s share is limited to a fixed portion of the revenue we earn from the seller’s plan and transaction fees. The size of the allowance therefore depends on the number of paying sellers and on this revenue and may change from month to month. Usage is measured by the duration, the number of participants and the extent of video transmission of the sessions; the number of simultaneous connections may be limited. If the allowance is used up or the shared capacity is exhausted, no further livestreams or voice rooms can be started until the end of the month, and running sessions are ended. A single session lasts at most 90 minutes.
If no paid plan is activated by the end of the trial, the account is frozen: the storefront is taken offline and checkout is paused. The content and data stored in the account are retained and become available again once a plan is activated.
We announce fee changes in text form at least 30 days in advance; they do not apply retroactively. In the event of an increase, the seller may terminate extraordinarily before it takes effect.
The paid plan is a subscription billed via the payment service provider Stripe. It renews automatically for the chosen billing period (usually monthly) unless cancelled.
Yearly plan: if the seller chooses yearly billing, the first twelve months are paid in advance at the yearly price. After that, the plan continues for an indefinite period and is billed monthly at one twelfth of the yearly price (rounded up to the cent); it can then be cancelled at any time with effect from the end of the current month. A cancellation within the first twelve months takes effect at their end.
The seller can cancel the plan at any time with effect from the end of the current billing period (account settings or point of contact). Fees already paid for the current period are not refunded pro rata, including for the yearly plan; businesses have no statutory consumer right of withdrawal. If the seller changes the plan via Stripe, the unused time of the previous plan is credited pro rata and offset against later invoices.
On cancellation or payment default, paid access ends at the end of the paid period; the account is then frozen (see section 5).
End customer payments are processed via Stripe. For this, each seller connects their own Stripe account (Stripe Connect, including identity verification by Stripe); without a connected account the shop cannot take payments. Payments go directly to the seller’s Stripe account, and Stripe pays out directly to the seller. Stripe retains our fee for us with each payment. We do not accept customer funds, do not hold funds for sellers and do not provide payment services.
PayPal connection (seller’s own account): the seller can connect their own PayPal business account. The seller is the merchant of record in this case as well; payments flow directly into the seller’s PayPal account, we do not move any money and do not provide payment services. We only technically create, change and end the subscriptions/payments at PayPal, using the credentials provided by the seller and in the seller’s name. The seller obtains approval for recurring payments at PayPal (“Reference Transactions”) themselves and is solely responsible for this and for PayPal’s terms of use, refunds, chargebacks and buyer protection. The connection can be removed at any time.
The seller makes refunds to buyers in the dashboard or directly at Stripe, in full or in part and to the original means of payment. In the dashboard, the seller can at the same time end access to the product and end subscriptions immediately. Chargebacks, refunds and payment defaults attributable to the seller’s offer are borne by the seller.
In the case of refunds, chargebacks and withdrawals, we retain the platform transaction fee incurred for the sale; it is not repaid in full or in part, unless the refund results from a platform error for which we are responsible. Fees of the payment service provider are governed by its terms; Stripe currently does not return its fees on refunds and may charge an additional fee for chargebacks.
Products only appear in the platform-wide marketplace if the seller enables the “Marketplace” visibility for the product (opt-in in the product editor). Selling via the storefront is possible without a marketplace listing.
By opting in, the seller warrants compliance with the mandatory consumer information applicable to marketplace offers.
The main parameters for the order in the marketplace are: sales figures (bestsellers first), the publication date when sorting by “Newest”, the price when sorting by “Price”, and the match with the user’s search term and category filter.
The platform’s own products (“MERCHAVIO”/“Merchavio Labs”) are labelled and not favoured in the ranking; the same parameters apply.
There is no way to obtain a better ranking in exchange for payment. Should this change, it will be labelled transparently.
We may restrict, suspend or terminate products or accounts if there are concrete indications of violations of the law or of these terms, on official/court orders, or on substantiated notices from third parties.
The seller is informed of measures with a statement of reasons. We announce an ordinary termination of the platform services for a seller at least 30 days in advance; in the case of serious legal violations, repeated violations or legal obligations, we may act immediately.
The seller can contest measures via the point of contact (team@merchavio.com); we examine complaints promptly and reply with reasons (internal complaint handling under Art. 11 P2B).
Upon termination, the seller receives their content and business data on request in a common, machine-readable format (export), to the extent permitted by law.
As platform operator, we may be legally obliged to report seller data and transaction totals to tax authorities (Directive (EU) 2021/514 “DAC7” or its national implementation; in Cyprus via the Cyprus Tax Department).
The seller must provide the information required for this (including name/company, address, tax identification number, VAT ID and, where applicable, trade register number) correctly and keep it up to date. If the seller does not cooperate, we may withhold payouts or suspend the account to the extent provided by law.
Where we process personal data of end customers for the seller (e.g. order and customer data in the seller dashboard), we do so on the basis of a data processing relationship (Art. 28 GDPR). The seller is the controller for their customer data; we process it only to provide the platform features.
The same applies to data the seller records in the finance and bookkeeping module, in particular uploaded receipts and invoices. If these contain personal data of third parties (e.g. name, address, tax or VAT identification number and bank details of the issuer), the seller is also the controller in this respect: the seller decides which documents to upload and ensures that they are entitled to do so and meet their information obligations towards the persons concerned. We store and display these receipts exclusively for the seller; we do not evaluate them for other purposes.
The Data Processing Agreement (DPA) is available on the page “DPA (Art. 28)” and becomes part of these terms when the seller account is created.
The seller indemnifies us against all third-party claims (including reasonable costs of legal defence) based on the seller’s products, content or breach of these terms, unless the seller is not responsible for the breach.
The law of Cyprus applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. The exclusive place of jurisdiction for disputes with sellers is Paphos, Cyprus.
Should individual provisions be invalid, the rest of the contract remains valid.