Terms of use

1. Your account

An account belongs to one organisation, and whoever registers it administers it. You are responsible for everything done under your account and under the accounts of colleagues you invite to it, including quotes they send and orders they accept.

The information you give us has to be accurate and has to stay accurate — your legal name, your country, and the contact details we reach you on. Verification, payouts and tax reporting all read those fields, and a stale one fails quietly rather than loudly.

Keep your password to yourself. Tell us promptly if you believe somebody else has used your account.

You may close your account at any time. Closing it does not cancel orders already placed, money already held, or fees already incurred.

2. Buyers and suppliers

An organisation registers either as a buyer or as a supplier, and that choice decides what it can do here. A buyer sends sourcing requests, compares quotes, places and funds orders. A supplier publishes listings, answers requests, issues quotes and is paid for consignments.

An organisation that wants to do both registers a second organisation for the other side. We do this deliberately rather than letting one organisation act as both: verification, payouts, fees and plan caps all attach to the organisation, and a single record trying to be both parties to a trade is a record that cannot say who owes what to whom.

3. Listings

A supplier is responsible for its listings. Everything stated in one — origin, grade, crop year, moisture, packing, HS code, minimum order, lead time, certifications — must be true of the goods actually offered, and the supplier must have the right to sell them.

Do not list anything you may not lawfully export, anything subject to sanctions that apply to you, counterfeit goods, anything requiring a licence you do not hold, or any of the categories we publish as prohibited.

Photographs must be of the goods being offered. A stock photograph of somebody else's consignment presented as your own is a misrepresentation and we will remove it.

We may remove, pause or refuse a listing, and we review listings before they appear. Review is not an endorsement and it is not an inspection: we check a listing against our rules, not the goods against the listing.

4. Requests, quotes and orders

A sourcing request is an invitation to quote, not an offer. A quote is an offer by the supplier, open until the validity date it carries. An order exists when a buyer accepts a quote, and the terms of that order are the terms of the quote it came from — price, quantity, incoterm, destination, lead time and currency.

Those terms bind the buyer and the supplier to each other. They do not bind us, and we give no warranty about the goods, the supplier, the buyer, or whether either of them will perform.

Customs clearance, import and export licences, duties, taxes and any inspection either party requires are the responsibility of whichever party the agreed incoterm places them on.

5. Secure Payment

Secure Payment is our name for an order settled through the platform rather than directly between the parties. A buyer pays into an account held by a licensed payment service provider; the money is released to the supplier after the buyer confirms the goods arrived, or automatically seven calendar days after delivery is confirmed if the buyer says nothing.

Savanna Trade never takes custody of buyers' funds. They are held by the payment service provider throughout. We operate the ledger, the release workflow and the dispute process on top of it.

A fee applies, at the percentage shown on the supplier's plan at the time the order is raised. It is taken from the supplier's proceeds when the money is released, never when it arrives, and an order that is cancelled or refunded carries no fee at all. The fee schedule attached to an order is the one that decides its fee; a later change of plan or schedule never moves it.

Secure Payment is not insurance, and it is not a guarantee against every outcome. It holds the money until delivery is confirmed and gives both sides a documented process if something goes wrong. It cannot make a supplier ship, and it cannot recover money already released.

6. Direct trades

Buyers and suppliers may agree to settle directly, outside the platform. Where they do, we hold nothing, charge nothing, see nothing of the payment, and can recover nothing if the trade goes wrong.

This is the riskier path and we say so wherever it is offered. If you take it, verify who you are dealing with independently, do not pay in advance to an account you cannot trace, and keep your own records. A dispute about a direct trade is between you and the other party; our dispute process does not cover it.

7. Verification levels

A supplier's verification level says what we have checked, and nothing more. Registered means the organisation gave us its details. Verified means we checked company documents and a director's identity against a registry. Audited means somebody visited and reported on the premises. Each level states its own scope on the trust and safety page.

A verification level is not a credit rating, a quality assurance, or a prediction that a supplier will perform. It expires, currently 24 months after it is granted, and lapses if it is not renewed. Verification can be withdrawn.

A supplier must tell us if anything we verified stops being true.

8. Plans, fees and invoices

Supplier plans are sold by subscription. The price, what each plan includes and the caps that come with it are published on the pricing page and shown again on the supplier's own plan screen before anything is bought.

A paid plan is invoiced for the year. Caps and entitlements change when the payment clears, not when the order is placed. Moving to a smaller plan takes effect immediately and is refused while the organisation is over one of the smaller plan's caps.

Prices are stated exclusive of any tax that applies to you. Where a buyer is charged in a currency other than the order's settlement currency, the converted amount and the cost of converting it are shown as their own line before payment.

We may change prices. A change applies from your next renewal, and we will tell you before it does.

9. Disputes between buyers and suppliers

A buyer may open a dispute on an order settled through Secure Payment, within the window stated on the order. Both parties are asked for evidence, we look at the record the platform holds, and we decide whether the money held is released, returned, or split.

That decision binds how we release the funds we hold. It is not an arbitral award and it does not decide the underlying contract: either party remains free to pursue the other.

We do not decide disputes about direct trades, and we cannot reverse a payment made outside the platform.

10. What you may not do

Do not use this platform to deceive anyone. In particular: do not misrepresent who you are or who you act for; do not post listings for goods you cannot supply; do not take a buyer off-platform to avoid a fee on an order that began here; do not write or solicit false reviews or references; and do not use the platform for money laundering, sanctions evasion or any other unlawful purpose.

Do not attempt to break, probe or overload the platform, scrape it at scale, or access data belonging to other users.

Contact details released to you through a trade are for that trade. Do not add them to a marketing list or pass them on.

11. Content you give us

You keep ownership of what you upload — listings, photographs, documents, messages. You give us permission to host it, display it on the platform and use it to operate and promote the marketplace, for as long as your account exists and for a reasonable period afterwards in our records and backups.

You confirm you have the right to give us that permission for everything you upload.

The platform itself — the name, the logo, the software, the design and the structure of the catalogue — belongs to us.

12. Your data

How we handle personal data is set out in our privacy policy at savannamarketplace.com/privacy, which forms part of these terms.

We release a counterparty's contact details to you when a trade requires it, and we release yours to them on the same basis. Business documents you upload for verification are seen by the staff who assess them and by any auditor we appoint.

The data controller is Savanna Marketplace, reachable at support@savannamarketplace.com.

Privacy policy

13. Availability

We work to keep the platform available but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted. We may take it down for maintenance, and we may change or withdraw features.

Where a feature is paid for and withdrawn, we will refund the unused part of what you paid for it.

14. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that we reasonably believe is being used fraudulently or unlawfully, or that exposes other users to serious risk. Where it is reasonable to do so we will say why and give you a chance to respond first; where the risk is immediate we may act before explaining.

Suspension does not cancel an order already funded. Money held against it is dealt with through the dispute process.

15. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that: we are not liable for the acts or omissions of a buyer or a supplier, for the quality, safety, legality or delivery of any goods, for a trade that fails, or for loss of profit, loss of contracts, loss of anticipated savings or any indirect loss.

Our total liability to you in connection with the platform is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, or 1000 USD.

The platform is provided as it is. We give no warranties beyond those stated here and those that cannot lawfully be excluded.

16. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. A changed version is published with a new date and does not alter the version you accepted: the wording you agreed to stays available, and your acceptance is recorded against it.

Where a change materially affects you we will tell you and, where the law requires it, ask you to accept the new version before continuing. Continuing to use the platform after a change that does not require acceptance means you accept it.

17. Law and disputes with us

These terms, and any dispute arising out of them, are governed by the law of the Republic of Cameroon, and the courts of the Republic of Cameroon have exclusive jurisdiction.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of them continue to apply.

Questions about these terms go to support@savannamarketplace.com.