Terms of Service

1. What Relay is

Relay ("the Platform") is a technology service that connects independent Runners with Clients, verifies their identities, and records what happens on each job. Relay is not a transportation carrier, a courier company, a logistics provider, a bank, a payment processor, an escrow agent, or an insurer.

Runners are independent people, not employees, agents or contractors of Relay. Relay does not direct how, when or by what route a Runner performs a job.

1a. Who the parties to a job are

A Relay job has exactly two parties: the Client who posted it, and the Runner who accepted it. Both hold verified Relay accounts, and both agreed to these terms.

Real errands frequently involve other people who are not Relay users — the shopkeeper handing over goods, a friend releasing a parcel, the relative receiving a delivery, a neighbour signing for it. These people are third parties. They have no Relay account, no agreement with Relay, and no standing to raise or answer a dispute on the platform.

If you involve a third party in a job — as a sender, a recipient, or a point of collection — then as between you and Relay:

• you speak for them on the platform, and their account of events reaches us through you;
• you confirm you are entitled to have goods collected from, or delivered to, that person, and to share the details you provide about them (see section 4a);
• you remain responsible to the other party for the job, including where a third party you chose is the cause of the problem.

Relay cannot adjudicate a claim between you and someone who is not a Relay user. If a shop gave a Runner the wrong item, or a recipient denies receiving a parcel, Relay can record it, weigh it as evidence, and tell you what the record shows — but any claim you have against that third party is yours to pursue directly.

1b. Relay is not a party to your agreement

The agreement to do an errand is between the Client and the Runner. Relay introduces you to each other and writes down what you agreed; it is not a party to that agreement and takes no side in it.

Relay does not set the price. The Client decides what they will pay and enters it themselves. Relay does not calculate it, suggest it, cap it or recommend a figure, and the Runner receives it in full — Relay's own fee is charged separately to the Client and nothing is taken out of the Runner's money.

Relay does not assign work. Runners see available jobs and choose which to accept. Nothing is allocated to anybody, and declining a job carries no penalty.

Relay promises nothing about the job itself. It does not guarantee that a job will be accepted, completed, completed on time, or completed well, and it does not compensate anybody when one is not. What it offers is a record of what happened, which is what a dispute is decided on.

1c. Licences are the Runner's responsibility

Carrying goods for other people is licensed work in Zimbabwe under the Postal and Telecommunications (Postal Services) Regulations. Licence classes run from an individual intra-city registration up to a Regional licence, which is the class required to carry between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

If you are a Runner, holding the right licence for the work you accept is your responsibility, not Relay's. Relay lets you record the class and number of a licence you hold and shows it to Clients as your own statement. Relay does not verify it with any authority, does not claim to have verified it, and does not require one — but it also will not pretend the requirement does not exist.

If you are a Client, a licence shown on a Runner's profile is something that Runner told us. You are free to ask to see it.

2. Payments — Relay holds no funds

• Relay never receives, holds, escrows, routes or releases the money for a job. The price shown in the app is an amount you and the other party have agreed between yourselves.
• You pay the Runner directly — in cash, by mobile money, by bank transfer, or by whatever method the two of you agree. That transaction happens entirely outside Relay.
• Relay does not charge your card for a job, does not "lock" or reserve your funds, and cannot freeze, reverse, refund or claw back a payment. We have no ability to do so, because the money never passes through us.
• When a Runner marks a job as paid, that is their claim, timestamped and recorded. It is not Relay confirming that money changed hands. Only your own confirmation does that.

Relay's own fee. Relay charges a small matching fee when a job is accepted by a Runner. The fee is a fixed amount that depends on what the job is worth, shown to you before you post and unchanged afterwards — it is not a percentage of the job and it does not grow with the price. That fee is the only money Relay ever collects, it is charged to the Customer, and nothing is ever deducted from what the Runner is paid. During the closed beta the fee is set to nothing.

We store no card numbers and no bank account details, because we never need them.

3. Identity and verification

You must provide accurate, legal identity information — your name, date of birth and gender as they appear on your government-issued ID. Runners must complete identity verification, including an ID document and a selfie, before accepting any job.

Providing false identity information, using someone else's identity, or holding more than one account is a serious breach of these terms and will result in immediate suspension.

Verification means we have checked that a real, identifiable person is behind an account. It is not a character reference, a background check, a criminal-record check, or a guarantee of anyone's honesty or competence.

Third parties are not verified. Relay verifies account holders only. A shopkeeper, sender or recipient involved in your job has not been identity-checked by us, and their presence in a job record is not a Relay verification of who they are.

4a. Information you give us about other people

When you post a job you will often need to include details about someone else — a recipient's name and address, a contact number, a shop and the person to ask for. You may also photograph places, goods or people when submitting evidence.

By entering that information you confirm that you are entitled to share it with us for the purpose of getting the job done, and you accept responsibility for letting that person know their details have been shared with Relay and a Runner.

Share the minimum necessary. Do not enter other people's identity-document numbers, financial details, health information, or anything else the job does not actually require. How we handle information about non-users is set out in our Privacy Policy.

4. Your responsibilities

• Agree the price and the payment method clearly, before the job starts.
• Use the in-app chat for anything that matters. If it is not on the record, we cannot use it as evidence later.
• Confirm completion honestly, and promptly, once you have received what you agreed.
• Do not use Relay to arrange anything unlawful.

5. Disputes

Either party may raise a dispute on a job that is in progress, where payment has been claimed, or within 48 hours of completion. Raising a dispute requires selecting a reason and describing what happened; you may attach photographs as evidence.

The other party then has 24 hours to respond with their own account and evidence. Not responding is treated as an adverse signal, but is not by itself treated as proof — a human always reviews before any determination is made.

Only the two account holders can raise or answer a dispute. Where a third party is involved — a shop that handed over the wrong goods, a recipient who says nothing arrived — that account reaches us through whichever account holder involved them, and is weighed as their submission. Relay will not contact a non-user to take a statement, and a third party cannot open a dispute against you here.

This means some disputes cannot be resolved in anyone's favour. Where the decisive fact sits with someone who is not on the platform and whose account we cannot test, Relay may record the dispute as unresolved rather than make a finding against either account holder. We would rather leave a record honest than manufacture certainty we do not have.

Relay's Trust & Safety team reviews the job record: timestamps, GPS check-ins, chat history and any evidence submitted by either side. Possible outcomes are:

• the dispute is dismissed as unsubstantiated;
• a warning is recorded against an account;
• an account is suspended pending further investigation;
• an account is permanently banned, and the associated identity document is blacklisted to prevent re-registration;
• the matter is escalated to law enforcement.

What a determination does and does not do. It records a finding against a verified identity, and it may end someone's ability to use Relay. It does not move money, order anyone to pay, or compensate a loss — Relay has no power to do any of those things. Relay's determination is not an arbitration award and does not replace your right to pursue the other party directly or through the courts.

6. Evidence and police referral

Where a dispute involving theft, fraud or non-delivery is substantiated, Relay can compile an incident packet — the verified identity details of the account holders involved, the full job record, timestamps, GPS data, chat history and photographic evidence — formatted to be handed to a police officer or attached to an affidavit.

A packet reproduces the job record as it stands, so where a third party was named in that record — in a job description, an address or a message — their details will appear in it too. Relay verifies account holders only, so any third-party detail in a packet is unverified information supplied by a user, and is presented as such rather than as something Relay has confirmed.

You may request your own incident packet and take it to the police yourself at any time. In serious cases, or where there is a pattern of substantiated findings against one identity, Relay may approach law enforcement directly. Relay does not file police reports automatically or on the basis of unverified claims.

7. Records are permanent

Job records, disputes and verification history are retained permanently and cannot be deleted, including by you, and including after you close your account. This is what makes reputation on Relay meaningful. See our Privacy Policy for the full detail.

8. Prohibited use

You may not use Relay to transport or arrange: illegal substances, weapons, hazardous materials, large sums of cash, live animals, stolen goods, or anything whose transport requires a licence you do not hold. You may not use Relay to harass, threaten, defraud or endanger anyone.

9. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or permanently close an account for breach of these terms, for substantiated fraud or theft, for a safety concern, or where we are legally required to. Where an account is closed for substantiated fraud, a permanent mark is recorded against that verified identity and their ID document is blacklisted against re-registration.

You may close your account at any time. Closing it does not remove your job history.

10. Limitation of liability

By using Relay you acknowledge that:

• Runners are independent freelancers, not employees of Relay;
• Relay provides identity verification, record-keeping and dispute review — it does not insure goods, guarantee performance, or guarantee payment;
• Relay is not liable for goods lost, stolen, damaged or delayed during a job;
• Relay is not liable for a party failing to pay, since Relay never held the money;
• Relay has no agreement or relationship with third parties involved in a job — senders, recipients, shops or anyone else who is not an account holder — and is not liable to them or for their conduct;
• to the maximum extent permitted by law, Relay's total liability to you for any claim is limited to the matching fees you have paid to Relay in the six months preceding the claim.

This is closed beta software provided "as is". It will have defects. Do not rely on it for anything where failure would cause you serious harm or loss.

11. The app itself

Your right to install and use the Relay application is governed by our End User Licence Agreement.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Zimbabwe. Where a job crosses a border, or where a user is located in South Africa, the mandatory consumer and data-protection laws of that jurisdiction may also apply, and nothing in these terms limits rights you have under them.

13. Changes

We will update these terms as Relay changes. During the closed beta, expect that to happen reasonably often. The "Last Updated" date above will always reflect the current version.

14. Contact

Questions about these terms: [email protected].