Terms of Service

1. Acceptance & Binding Agreement

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) form a binding legal agreement between you and HOPEKESEGOTRUSTFIRM (PTY) LTD (“PulaIndex”, “we”, “us”, “our”), a company registered in South Africa. By creating an account, accessing, or using PulaIndex in any way you confirm that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you must not use PulaIndex. We may require you to re-accept updated Terms before continuing to use the platform; continued use after a version update constitutes acceptance.

2. Eligibility

• You must be at least 18 years old (or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction, whichever is greater).
• You must have full legal capacity to enter into binding contracts.
• You must not be barred from using the service under any applicable law or sanctions regime.
• Participants must be natural persons. Researchers may be natural persons or legal entities; the individual accepting these Terms warrants they have authority to bind that entity.
• One account per person. Creating multiple or duplicate accounts is grounds for permanent termination and forfeiture of any wallet balance.

3. The Service

PulaIndex is a research-recruitment platform that lets researchers design studies and have PulaIndex source, screen and reward suitable participants across Southern Africa. PulaIndex provides this as a service to researchers and contracts with each side separately and as principal; it is not a party to any study, an employer or paymaster of participants, an agent of researchers, a payment, money-transmission or escrow service, or a provider of professional, medical, legal or research advice. PulaIndex provides the platform “as is” on a pay-as-you-go basis with no service-level guarantees of uptime, throughput, participant supply, study completion rates, or data quality.

4. Researcher Obligations & Warranties

• You must pre-fund your wallet. Studies are only published once the full reward pool plus the platform fee is reserved.
• Studies must be lawful, ethical, accurately described, and free of deception (other than IRB-approved methodological deception). You warrant you have all necessary ethics approvals and rights to run the study.
• You may not run studies that involve illegal activity, target minors, collect sensitive personal information without lawful basis, or expose participants to physical, psychological or financial harm.
• You must review submissions in good faith within thirty (30) days. Submissions left unreviewed for over thirty (30) days will be auto-approved and rewards released. Bad-faith mass rejections may result in account suspension and refunds to participants at PulaIndex's discretion.
• Completion codes, study URLs and screening criteria are confidential. You are solely liable for losses caused by leaked codes, public study links, or weak fraud controls in your external survey tool.
• You are the data controller for any personal information you collect from participants in your external study. You must provide your own privacy notice and lawful basis to participants and comply with POPIA, GDPR and any other applicable law.
• You grant PulaIndex a perpetual, royalty-free licence to use de-identified, aggregated metadata about studies (counts, durations, response rates) for platform analytics, fraud prevention, and product improvement.

5. Participant Obligations & Warranties

• You must complete studies honestly, attentively, and in your own words.
• You may not submit fraudulent or guessed completion codes, use bots, scripts, VPNs to misrepresent location, AI tools to fabricate responses, or share/sell access to your account.
• You may not participate in your own studies or in studies run by anyone with whom you have a material conflict of interest.
• You warrant that all profile information (age, country, demographics, languages) is true and current. Misrepresentation is grounds for immediate termination and forfeiture of pending earnings.
• You are solely responsible for the accuracy of bank/payout details. PulaIndex is not liable for losses from incorrect details, intermediary bank fees, or payout reversals.
• You are solely responsible for any tax, social security, or other public charges payable on your earnings.
• Minimum technical requirements. A modern, supported browser (latest two major versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari), a stable broadband connection, a working device with sufficient performance to load study tools, and a valid email address. We may publish additional per-study requirements (e.g. specific device class, language proficiency) and you must meet them.
• No off-platform contact. You may not contact researchers, their staff, or their clients outside PulaIndex about a study, attempt to perform paid services for them off-platform, or use information obtained on PulaIndex for any purpose other than completing the study.

Reasons a submission may be rejected and the reward forfeited

• Misleading or false profile information, or qualifying for a study under a screener that does not match your actual profile.
• Duplicate, proxy or shared accounts, or accounts using VPN/proxy signals to misrepresent location.
• Substandard work, such as incomplete answers, off-topic responses, single-word filler, copy-pasted text, or output produced by AI generators.
• Failure to follow study tasks/instructions, including not entering the completion code as requested.
• Submissions outside the study window, or where PulaIndex never received the result from the external survey tool.
• Suspected fraud, abuse, or breach of these Terms identified by automated controls or manual review.

6. Pricing, Fees & Payments

PulaIndex operates on a transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing model with no subscriptions, no seat fees, no minimum spend commitments and no contractual lock-in. All prices below are inclusive of platform costs but exclusive of any applicable VAT, withholding tax, currency-conversion margins, card-network assessments, or third-party processor fees, which are payable by you in addition to the listed amount.

6.1 Currency & display

• The platform's internal accounting unit is United States Dollars (USD). All wallet balances, study budgets, platform fees and payouts are stored, calculated and audited in USD.
• Researchers are quoted, invoiced and charged in USD.
• Participants are shown earnings, balances and payout amounts in South African Rand (ZAR), converted from the underlying USD value at PulaIndex's prevailing internal indicative rate (currently 1 USD = 18 ZAR). This rate is set by PulaIndex for display and payout-conversion purposes only, is not a market FX quote, may be updated at any time without notice, and is not guaranteed to match any bank, card-network or interbank rate.
• Where a participant's payout is settled in a currency other than ZAR, the participant's receiving bank, card network or wallet provider may apply additional FX margins and fees outside PulaIndex's control.

6.2 Researcher charges

• Pre-funded wallet. Researchers must purchase platform credits (fund their wallet) before publishing a study. Funding a wallet is a purchase of prepaid PulaIndex platform services, not a cash deposit held on your behalf. The minimum single top-up is USD 15.00 and the maximum single top-up is USD 27,000.00. Larger or recurring top-ups may require enhanced KYC and source-of-funds documentation.
• Per-submission reward. Researchers set the reward paid to each participant for each approved submission. The platform-wide minimum reward is USD 0.25 per submission and the minimum effective hourly rate (reward × 60 ÷ estimated minutes) is USD 6.00 per hour. Studies below these floors cannot be published.
• Platform fee. PulaIndex charges a service fee of forty percent (40%) calculated on the participant reward of each approved submission. The fee is shown in-app before publishing and again at every reservation, approval and refund event. Example: a USD 1.00 reward costs the researcher USD 1.40 in total per approved submission (USD 1.00 to the participant + USD 0.40 platform fee).
• Reservations. On publishing a study, the full reward pool plus the 40% platform fee for every targeted submission is reserved from the researcher's wallet and held as “reserved balance”. Reserved funds cannot be withdrawn, transferred or used to fund other studies until they are released by an approval, rejection, slot expiry or study closure event.
• Total budget ceiling. A single study's total budget (reward × target participant count) is capped at USD 500,000. Larger studies require prior written approval from PulaIndex and may be subject to additional terms.
• Fee changes. PulaIndex may amend the platform fee, deposit minimums/maximums, reward floors and budget caps from time to time. Changes affecting new studies take effect on at least fourteen (14) days' prior notice (by email and/or in-app banner). Studies already published before the effective date are honoured at the original rate.

6.3 Participant earnings & payouts

• Participants are paid the full reward shown on the study (in ZAR-equivalent of the underlying USD reward) for each approved submission. PulaIndex does not deduct any fee from participant earnings.
• Approved earnings move to “available balance” and can be withdrawn subject to: minimum payout R 50.00, maximum single payout R 50,000.00, maximum daily total R 100,000.00, and a maximum of three (3) payout requests per rolling 24-hour period.
• Payouts above R 10,000.00 are subject to mandatory manual review and may take 1–2 additional business days. Payouts above R 25,000.00 are flagged as high priority but remain subject to the same review.
• Payouts are sent to the bank account, mobile-money wallet or PayPal address registered on the participant's account. Participants are solely responsible for the accuracy of these details. PulaIndex is not liable for funds sent to a misstated account.
• PulaIndex may withhold, delay, reverse or cancel any payout where we reasonably suspect fraud, abuse, identity misrepresentation, sanctions exposure, breach of these Terms, or where required by law or court order.

6.4 Taxes & regulatory charges

• All amounts are stated exclusive of VAT, GST, sales tax, digital-services tax or any equivalent. Where PulaIndex is required by law to collect such tax, it will be added to the invoice or wallet deduction and clearly itemised.
• Participants are solely responsible for declaring earnings to, and paying any income tax, social-security or other public charges due to, the relevant authority in their jurisdiction. PulaIndex does not withhold tax on participant earnings.
• Researchers are solely responsible for any withholding tax payable on participant rewards under their local law, and for any VAT or equivalent due on study spend.

6.5 Payment processors

Researcher wallet funding and participant payouts are executed by separate third-party payment processors and banking partners (which may include Stripe, Paystack, PayPal, local mobile-money operators and bank-transfer networks). Card processors used to take researcher payments are used solely to collect researcher purchases of PulaIndex platform services; they are never used to route a researcher's card payment onward to a participant. Use of the platform constitutes acceptance of the applicable processor's terms, and PulaIndex is not liable for processor outages, holds, reversals, FX conversions, interchange fees, or compliance actions taken by those processors.

6.6 Nature of payments; merchant of record; card processing & chargebacks

• PulaIndex sells a service as principal. When a researcher funds their wallet, the researcher is purchasing prepaid platform-service credits from PulaIndex (HOPEKESEGOTRUSTFIRM (PTY) LTD) acting as the seller and merchant of record. The charge is consideration for PulaIndex's research-recruitment, matching, anti-fraud, hosting, payment-administration, support and dispute-handling services. It is a completed sale of a digital service, not a transfer of money to any other user.
• Not a bank, e-money issuer, money transmitter or escrow. PulaIndex does not provide banking, payment, money-transmission, money-remittance, stored-value or escrow services. Wallet balances are prepaid service credits recorded for accounting convenience only. They are not bank deposits, not electronic money, not client funds held on trust, earn no interest, are not guaranteed, are not redeemable for cash on demand, and may only be applied toward PulaIndex services as set out in these Terms and the Refund Policy.
• Participant rewards are paid by PulaIndex as principal. PulaIndex determines participant eligibility, sets reward conditions, runs anti-fraud screening, and disburses participant rewards as an incentive payment from its own funds through dedicated payout rails. Participants are not paid by passing through a researcher's card payment. PulaIndex is not an agent, paymaster, employer or remittance service for either side, and is not a party to any arrangement directly between a researcher and a participant.
• Strong customer authentication. Card funding is subject to 3-D Secure / Strong Customer Authentication, address and CVC verification, velocity limits and fraud scoring. PulaIndex may decline, hold, step-up-verify or reverse any funding transaction it reasonably considers high-risk, and may require KYC and source-of-funds evidence before releasing services.
• Chargebacks are a breach of these Terms. Because wallet funding is a completed, non-refundable purchase of digital services governed by the Refund Policy (Section 6A), you agree not to initiate a card chargeback, payment reversal, or pre-arbitration dispute in respect of any PulaIndex charge, and to use the Section 6A refund process instead. Initiating a chargeback is a material breach. PulaIndex will contest illegitimate chargebacks using transaction, authentication and usage evidence, and any charged-back amount (plus the platform fee, the processor's chargeback fee, and PulaIndex's reasonable administrative and recovery costs) remains a debt immediately due from you. Pending resolution we may suspend your account, freeze balances, withhold payouts and report the conduct to the processor, card networks and relevant fraud databases.
• Acceptable use. You may use PulaIndex only for lawful market-research, user-research and survey activities that comply with these Terms, the acceptable-use policies of our payment processors and the rules of the relevant card networks. You may not use the platform for any activity that is illegal, that we or our processors reasonably classify as high-risk or prohibited, or that is designed to obtain cash advances, launder funds, or convert card balances to cash.

6A. Refund Policy

This section forms an integral part of these Terms and governs the limited circumstances in which PulaIndex will refund funds. By using the platform you acknowledge that PulaIndex's service is a digital marketplace consumed immediately on use and that, as a general rule, all platform fees and participant rewards are final and non-refundable once a submission has been approved (whether manually or automatically) or once funds have left the researcher's wallet by way of reservation, transfer or payout.

6A.1 No general right of refund

• Wallet deposits are credited as platform balance for the purpose of paying participants and platform fees. They are not held as a cash deposit on your behalf and are not refundable on demand.
• The 40% platform fee is the consideration for PulaIndex's sourcing, matching, anti-fraud, payment, hosting, support and dispute-handling services, all of which are rendered the moment a study runs, regardless of the researcher's downstream use of the resulting data. The platform fee on any approved submission is strictly non-refundable.
• Participant rewards on approved or auto-approved submissions are strictly non-refundable. You waive any right to claw back rewards from participants on grounds of changed business needs, dissatisfaction with the qualitative content of a response that nonetheless meets the study brief, or post-hoc revisions to your screener.
• To the maximum extent permitted by law, you waive any statutory right of withdrawal, cooling-off, cancellation or distance-selling refund in respect of wallet deposits, platform fees and approved rewards, on the basis that the service is a digital service supplied with your express consent and acknowledgement that you lose any such right once the service starts.

6A.2 Limited circumstances in which PulaIndex may issue a refund

PulaIndex will, in its sole and absolute discretion, consider a refund only in the following narrowly defined cases:

• Rejected submissions within the review window. Where a researcher rejects a submission in good faith within the thirty (30) day review window, both the reserved reward and the corresponding 40% platform fee on that specific submission are released back to the researcher's wallet as platform credit (not as a cash refund).
• Unfilled study slots. Where a study is closed (by the researcher or by PulaIndex) with unfilled participant slots, the reserved reward and platform fee for those unfilled slots are released back to the researcher's wallet as platform credit.
• Verified duplicate charge. Where PulaIndex's billing system has demonstrably charged the same wallet for the same deposit twice as a result of a PulaIndex platform error, the duplicate amount will be refunded to the original payment method within thirty (30) business days of verification.
• Confirmed platform-side fraud. Where PulaIndex confirms that a study's reward pool was paid out as a direct result of a verified platform-side security breach (and not a researcher-side leak of completion codes, study URLs, credentials or screener criteria), PulaIndex may, at its discretion, restore the affected balance as platform credit.
• Closure of unused wallet balance. Where a researcher requests permanent account closure and has an unused wallet balance that was deposited within the preceding ninety (90) days, has never been reserved against a study, and is not subject to any open dispute, investigation, chargeback, sanctions hold or legal process, PulaIndex may, at its discretion and subject to KYC re-verification, return the remaining principal to the original payment method less (i) any third-party processor refund fees, (ii) any FX losses, and (iii) a USD 25.00 administrative-handling charge per refund request. Balances older than ninety (90) days, or balances that have been used to reserve funds against any study (even partially), are not eligible for cash refund and remain available only as platform credit.

6A.3 Circumstances in which PulaIndex will not refund

For the avoidance of doubt, PulaIndex will not issue a refund, credit, or compensation of any kind in any of the following situations, and you waive any claim to one:

• You changed your mind, your research direction, your client's brief, your funding situation, or your internal approvals after publishing a study.
• You are dissatisfied with the qualitative depth, insightfulness, articulation, accent, demographic mix or any other subjective property of responses that nonetheless meet the screener and brief you submitted.
• You failed to review submissions within the thirty (30) day window and they were auto-approved under section 4.
• Your completion codes, study URLs, screener criteria, or external survey-tool credentials were leaked, guessed, brute-forced or otherwise compromised on your side, or your external survey tool failed to enforce your fraud controls.
• You experienced lower-than-expected fill rates, slower-than-expected recruitment, or any other commercial outcome of running a study.
• The platform, or any third-party service the platform depends on (including Clerk, Supabase, Stripe, Paystack, PayPal, mobile-money operators or banking partners) experienced downtime, latency, degraded performance or temporary unavailability, except to the extent expressly required by mandatory consumer-protection law.
• You initiated, or your bank/card-issuer initiated, a chargeback, payment reversal or pre-arbitration claim. PulaIndex will defend such claims, and any disputed amount remains a debt owed by you to PulaIndex along with associated processor fees and our reasonable cost of defence.
• Your account, balance or transaction has been frozen, withheld or reversed under section 7 (suspension), section 8 (AML/sanctions), or any applicable law, court order or regulatory instruction.
• You have breached any material provision of these Terms, in which case PulaIndex may, in addition to other remedies, set off pending refunds against losses caused by the breach.
• The refund request relates to taxes, FX margins, intermediary bank fees, processor fees, or any other charge imposed by a third party, even where those charges are passed through on a PulaIndex statement.
• The refund request is submitted more than sixty (60) days after the original transaction (this is a strict limitation period; later requests are time-barred and will be rejected on that ground alone).

6A.4 How to request a refund

• Submit refund requests in writing to support@pulaindex.com from the email address registered on the account, including: account ID, transaction ID(s), date(s) of the charge, the exact amount in USD, the section of this Refund Policy you are relying on, and any supporting evidence.
• PulaIndex will acknowledge the request within five (5) business days and aim to make a final determination within thirty (30) business days. Complex or disputed cases may take longer.
• All refund decisions are made by PulaIndex in its sole discretion, except where mandatory consumer-protection law in the participant's or researcher's jurisdiction provides otherwise. Where such law applies, this Refund Policy is read down only to the minimum extent strictly necessary to comply.
• Approved refunds are paid to the original payment instrument used for the original transaction. Cash refunds to third-party accounts, alternative cards, alternative bank accounts or third-party wallets are not supported.
• Refunds are paid net of (i) any third-party processor refund fees, (ii) FX losses on the conversion back to your original settlement currency, (iii) any platform credit that has already been consumed or reserved, and (iv) the USD 25.00 administrative-handling charge where section 6A.2 applies.

6A.5 No-liability acknowledgement

This Refund Policy is the sole and exclusive remedy available to you in respect of any monetary claim against PulaIndex relating to wallet balances, platform fees, study reservations, participant rewards or payouts. Without limiting section 12 (Disclaimers), section 13 (Limitation of Liability) or section 14 (Indemnity), under no circumstances will PulaIndex be liable for lost profits, lost research opportunity, lost client revenue, reputational harm, internal investigation cost, or any other indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damage arising out of any refund refusal, partial refund, or delay in processing a refund. PulaIndex's total aggregate liability for all refund-related claims in any twelve (12) month period is capped at the lesser of (a) the platform fees actually paid by you in that period, or (b) USD 1,000.

7. Account Suspension & Termination

PulaIndex may suspend, restrict, or terminate any account at any time, with or without notice, in its sole discretion, where we reasonably suspect fraud, abuse, breach of these Terms, harm to other users, or risk to the platform. During an investigation we may freeze wallet balances, withhold pending payouts, and reverse transactions. On termination for breach, you forfeit pending unpaid earnings linked to the breach and remain liable for any chargebacks, refunds and platform fees properly due. You may close your account at any time by emailing support@pulaindex.com; balances will be paid out subject to verification and minimum payout thresholds.

8. Anti-Fraud, AML & Sanctions Screening

• You warrant that you are not a sanctioned person and are not located in, or acting for the benefit of, a sanctioned country, organisation or individual under South African, UN, EU, UK or US sanctions regimes.
• We may at any time require identity verification (KYC) documents (government-issued ID, proof of address, beneficial-ownership information for entity researchers, or proof of source of funds) before allowing wallet funding, payouts, or large transactions.
• We screen accounts and transactions against fraud, anti-money-laundering and sanctions databases. Suspicious activity may be reported to the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) or other competent authority as required by law.
• We may freeze, hold, reverse or refuse to process any transaction we reasonably believe to be fraudulent, suspicious, in breach of these Terms, or in breach of any applicable law.

9. Prohibited Conduct

• Creating multiple, duplicate, or proxy accounts.
• Using automated tools, bots, scrapers, AI generators or scripts to participate in studies or scrape platform data.
• Attempting to defraud, deceive, threaten, harass or harm other users, researchers, participants or PulaIndex staff.
• Sharing, selling or trading account credentials, completion codes or study links.
• Re-identifying, de-anonymising, or attempting to combine PulaIndex data with external data sets to identify individuals.
• Probing, scanning, or testing the vulnerability of the platform without prior written authorisation.
• Using the platform to violate any law, regulation, or third-party right.
• Soliciting other users off-platform. Researchers may not recruit PulaIndex participants for their own commercial offerings outside PulaIndex, and participants may not pitch services to researchers outside PulaIndex.
• Copying, recording, screenshotting or redistributing study materials, prototypes, screeners, or completion codes.

10. Confidentiality

“Confidential Information” means any non-public information disclosed by either party that is identified as confidential or that a reasonable person would understand to be confidential, including study designs, screener questions, completion codes, pricing, technical information, security controls, and personal information of any user. Each party will (a) protect the other’s Confidential Information with the same care it uses for its own (and not less than reasonable care), (b) use it only to perform under these Terms, and (c) not disclose it to any third party except to employees, advisors and processors bound by equivalent duties. Obligations under this section survive for five (5) years after termination.

11. Intellectual Property

The PulaIndex platform, including all software, design, copy, trademarks, logos and documentation, is the exclusive property of Pulaindex (Pty) Ltd or its licensors. You receive a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the platform solely as permitted under these Terms. You retain ownership of content you submit but grant PulaIndex a worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce and process it solely to operate, secure and improve the platform.

AI & machine learning. PulaIndex does not use participant submissions, study content, screen recordings, audio or video to train third-party generative AI models, and we do not sell user data to model providers. We may use de-identified, aggregated platform metadata (e.g. counts, durations, error rates) to improve our own fraud-detection and matching systems. Researchers warrant that any AI use of their study data complies with their own privacy notice and applicable law.

PulaIndex-published studies. Where PulaIndex itself publishes a study (acting as Researcher, for example to collect data to train or evaluate our own models), it is bound by exactly the same obligations as any third-party researcher: the study is separately listed in the marketplace, the purpose (including any AI/ML training or evaluation use) is disclosed up-front in the study description and in the study-level consent, participation is voluntary, the same rewards and 40% platform fee apply, and no data from unrelated studies, your general profile activity, support messages or wallet history is repurposed. If you do not join a PulaIndex-published AI study, your content is never used to train AI.

12. Disclaimers

THE PLATFORM IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR UNINTERRUPTED OPERATION. PulaIndex DOES NOT WARRANT THE QUALITY, HONESTY OR LEGAL COMPLIANCE OF ANY STUDY OR PARTICIPANT, AND DOES NOT GUARANTEE STUDY FILL RATES, PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS, OR DATA RELIABILITY.

13. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, PulaIndex, ITS DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS AND AFFILIATES SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE PLATFORM, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

PulaIndex'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE PLATFORM, FOR ANY CAUSE OF ACTION AND REGARDLESS OF LEGAL THEORY, SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (a) THE PLATFORM FEES PAID BY YOU TO PulaIndex IN THE THREE (3) MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (b) ZAR 1,000 (ONE THOUSAND RAND).

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for fraud, gross negligence, or wilful misconduct.

14. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless PulaIndex, its directors, employees and affiliates from and against any and all claims, damages, losses, liabilities and reasonable legal fees arising out of or related to: (a) your use of the platform; (b) your studies, content, or submissions; (c) your breach of these Terms or any applicable law; (d) your violation of any third-party right, including data protection, intellectual property or contractual rights; or (e) any tax obligations arising from your earnings or study spend.

15. Force Majeure

PulaIndex is not liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, war, terrorism, civil unrest, pandemics, government action, internet or power outages, or third-party service provider failures (including Clerk, Supabase, Stripe, Paystack and payment networks).

16. Beta & Experimental Features

From time to time PulaIndex may make features available that are clearly identified as “beta”, “preview”, “experimental”, or similar (“Beta Features”). Beta Features are provided for evaluation only, on an “as-is” basis, may be modified, suspended or withdrawn at any time without notice, and are excluded from any warranties, service commitments or refund obligations. Use of Beta Features is at your sole risk.

17. Changes to the Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email and/or an in-product blocking re-acceptance prompt. Continued use of the platform after the effective date of the updated Terms constitutes acceptance of the change. If you do not agree, you must stop using PulaIndex and may close your account.

18. Governing Law & Disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The parties agree to first attempt in good faith to resolve any dispute through written notice and informal negotiation for at least thirty (30) days. Failing resolution, disputes shall be finally settled by arbitration administered by the Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa (AFSA) under its expedited rules, seated in Johannesburg, in English, before a sole arbitrator. Either party may seek interim or injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction. The parties waive any right to participate in class or representative actions.

19. Miscellaneous

• Independent parties. Nothing in these Terms creates an employment, agency, partnership, joint-venture or franchisee relationship between any user and PulaIndex. No user may bind PulaIndex or hold themselves out as authorised to do so.
• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and PulaIndex.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in force.
• No waiver. Failure to enforce any right is not a waiver of that right.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. PulaIndex may assign freely as part of a corporate reorganisation or sale.
• Notices. Notices to PulaIndex must be sent to legal@pulaindex.com. Notices to you may be sent to your account email.
• Survival. Sections 4 (Researcher Warranties), 5 (Participant Warranties), 6 (Fees), 6A (Refund Policy), 8 (AML), 10 (Confidentiality), 11 (IP), 12 (Disclaimers), 13 (Liability), 14 (Indemnity), 18 (Disputes) and 19 survive termination.

20. Contact

Questions about these terms: legal@pulaindex.com