Legal Certification

As a partner platform to WePay, you have certain legal obligations to your merchants who use WePay which you must comply with. These requirements may stem from applicable law, our transaction processors, card networks and member banks. Collecting each merchant's agreement with WePay Terms of Service and disclosure of applicable fees to each merchant are the first steps to compliance.

WePay Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

You must obtain the electronic signature of each of your merchants on the WePay Terms of Service and Privacy Policy - either separately or linked in your own terms of service - and send WePay the required data elements. You must also enable your merchants to view the WePay Terms of Service and Privacy Policy in the WePay Merchant Center, linked in your own terms of service, or elsewhere on your website.

WePay requires the following elements of an electronic signature:

• Date/time stamp
• Original IP address
• Legal Entity ID

Use the terms_of_service on the Legal Entity to send the electronic signature.

You should collect these at the time that your merchant clicks “Accept” or otherwise indicates agreement with your Terms of Service and the WePay Terms of Service.

Collecting agreements

When you onboard merchants, you are responsible for collecting your merchant's electronic signature to WePay's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and passing it to WePay. Platforms do this by linking to WePay's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy in the platform's own Terms of Service, and passing to WePay the merchant's electronic signature to the platform's own Terms of Service. In the event that you have existing customers who accept your Terms of Service before they included a link to the WePay Terms of Service, you must ensure that those customers re-accept your Terms of Service or separately accept the WePay Terms of Service before using the WePay payments service.

Your own Terms of Service must contain language substantially similar to the following (substituting your own name for [Platform] wherever it appears) below:

“[Platform] offers payments through WePay, Inc. (“WePay”), a third-party payment processor. In order for you to use WePay's payment processing services, you must register with WePay as a merchant. The WePay Terms of Service explain that process and are available here: https://go.wepay.com/terms-of-service-us. The WePay Privacy Policy is available here: https://go.wepay.com/privacy-policy. By accepting this agreement with Platform, you agree that you have reviewed the WePay Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for the country in which you are located and agree to them. If you have questions regarding the WePay Terms of Service or Privacy Policy, please refer to the WePay website www.wepay.com or contact WePay at https://support.wepay.com/hc/en-us.”

Enabling accessibility

If WePay Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are properly linked in your own terms of service and privacy policy, no further action is required.

Fees for Payment Processing

Fee disclosures provides transparency between the platform, the merchant, and the payer and encourages brand trust and loyalty. It is a fundamental principle of fair business practice that fees be clearly disclosed prior to the time when the purchaser makes the decision to buy a service, such as payment processing. During the onboarding workflow for merchants and payers, applicable fees should be displayed so that the user can take them into account when deciding whether or not to purchase the payment service. Furthermore, the fees should be accessible for review after payer and merchant initiation via terms of service, terms and conditions, dedicated fee disclosure documentation, or equivalent.

Fees described should include payer fees, merchant fees, app fees, chargeback fees, fees associated with refunds or any other fees relevant to WePay and payment processing. If the platform is processing payments with WePay in Canada, the fees applicable to those markets should be disclosed.

Here is a sample fee disclosure:

Processing fee for each transaction is 2.9% + $0.30.

Other fees may apply, as applicable:
$15.00 per chargeback (in addition to the amount of the chargeback).
$15.00 per ACH return (in addition to the amount of the return).
$25.00 research fee if an account is deemed abandoned.
Refunds: if a merchant refunds a payment in full, WePay and Platform will return its fees. If a merchant refunds a payment in part, neither WePay nor Platform will return its fees.

Canada Fee Disclosures

For usage in sites based in Canada, the FCAC (Financial Consumer Agency of Canada) requirement is that all merchant-acquirer agreements¹ will include a cover page containing the following using FCAC templates:

1. Information Summary Box: No platform action required.
   The Information Summary Box contains key elements of the merchant contract. This box is already presented at the top of WePay Canada Terms of Service, which merchants agree to as a function of onboarding. Therefore no partner action required for compliance.
2. Fee Disclosure Box: Platform action required.
   Platform needs to display the Fee Disclosure Box at the top of merchant/user agreement OR during onboarding where fees are currently presented to the merchant/user/payee. The entire Fee Disclosure Box should be placed where fees are presented during onboarding, or there should be a prominent link (with the words 'Required regulatory disclosure of fees in Canada') to the Fee Disclosure Box.

Please note the following:

• As required by FCAC², this exact template needs to be used.
• The template is already pre-populated with the card types that platforms accept in Canada as a function of using WePay, which are all Visa, Mastercard and Amex cards.
• IMPORTANT: Fees vary by platform and each platform needs to ensure their fees are accurately shown in the box. These are the fees the platform charges the merchant (payee) for accepting card payments. Added clarifications:
  • A platform may have multiple fees for different services they provide. This box should only contain the card payment processing fees as presented to the merchant (payee). If the platform does not separately list card payment acceptance fees, and instead have a single bundled fee for all their services, then that fee should be displayed in this box because the fee includes card payment acceptance.
  • To be clear, the fees to be displayed in this box are not platform's or WePay's cost of processing card payments. The fees to be displayed are those charged to the merchant (payee) for card payment acceptance.
• Even where fee is same regardless of card product type, as in the template below, FCAC requirement is that all the card product types have to be listed. In our case, platforms will have the same fees irrespective of card brand or type. Possible exception is that Amex cards may carry different fees and should be reflected accordingly in the box.

Sample Fee Disclosure Box

Required regulatory disclosure of fees in Canada:

• ^{[1](#footnote-1)}According to FCAC definition, "Acquirers are entities that enable merchants to accept payments by credit or debit card, by providing merchants with access to a payment card network for the transmission or processing of payments.” Therefore this is a compliance requirement on both WePay and platforms.
• ^{[2](#footnote-2)}FCAC has provided more details about Fee Disclosure Box [here](https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/industry/commissioner-guidance/guidance-16.html).

Merchant IC+ Fee Disclosures

Platforms must disclose pricing to merchants participating in Merchant IC+ pricing as part of the onboarding flow. Fees must be disclosed prior to the merchant entering an agreement with your platform.

Fee disclosures must include all fees that your platform will charge, including non-IC fees (like ACH fees). If your platform will be leveraging any of the fees nested in the pricing structure, they must be disclosed.

For instance, a fee disclosure for Merchant IC+ pricing which leverages all the above must follow this template:

For steps on how to implement fee disclosures for Merchant IC+, see the article here.

Refund Policies

The refund policy as defined by WePay below must be implemented by all partners (and merchants) leveraging the Merchant IC+ pricing model. Merchants on the blended pricing model can implement their own refund policy.

Refund Policy:

1. IC+ fees for credit card payments will only be credited back to the merchant if they are credited back by the network

• payers will receive a full refund, but the merchant will need to cover fees if the network does not credit them back
• this varies by network; some do refund their fees while others do not

2. IC+ fees are not applicable to ACH/eCheck payments, so the entire fee charged will not be credited back to the merchant
3. Platform markup fees will not be refunded to the merchant

• merchants pay the platform markup fees at the end of the billing cycle, discussed here
• Similarly, WePay fees debited from the platform do not get credited back to the platform

4. If a platform charges merchants a fee for refunds, this fee must be disclosed to merchants

• refund fees will be applied regardless of the refund amount (full vs. partial)

Find examples of how the refund policy works here.

Test Criteria

You must be able to provide and maintain links to pages where the above requirements are met. You may be required to present to WePay a working URL to the public facing documentation where WePay terms of service are accessible as well as the flow a payer and payee goes through when using your platform. This can be satisfied with a demo or screen shots of your site and application. If any of the requirements are accessible post-authentication, test credentials should be made available to WePay allowing access to the documentation.

Requirement Sources

• Visa Rules 1.5.2
• How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising
• FCAC Code of Conduct