Legal
Plain-language terms for using SenteMe. If you are creating a campaign or contributing to one, these apply to you.
Last updated .
SenteMe is operated by Mea Global Inc, a Delaware-registered corporation. When the words "we", "us", or "SenteMe" appear below, they refer to Mea Global Inc. Mea Global Inc operates the platform and holds the contracts with the licensed payment partners that actually process the money. Our current mobile-money partner is named on the /trust page; we may add or change partners over time and will update that page when we do.
SenteMe is a platform that lets a group of people pool money toward a shared real-world purpose (a wedding contribution, a funeral expense pool, a school-fees harambee, an equipment purchase) by sharing a single link instead of running a manual list on WhatsApp. We provide the campaign page, the running ledger, the share tools, and the dashboard. We are not a bank, a payment processor, an investment platform, a lender, an insurer, a broker, a money services business, a money transmitter, or a charity. SenteMe itself does not hold any funds raised on the platform, nor does it handle the actual processing of payments. Instead, every contribution and every disbursement is processed by a licensed third-party payment partner that holds the funds and moves them under its own regulatory licences in each operating country. SenteMe is the software interface that instructs the payment partner whose phone to credit; the partner does the regulated work. The specific payment partner(s) we are working with today are disclosed in our Privacy Notice for transparency, and the list is updated when a partner is added or replaced.
Contributions made through SenteMe are gratuitous transfers to the campaign and the people the campaign is for. They are not payment for any product, service, deliverable, or financial return. Coordinators must not offer, promise, or imply that contributors will receive goods, services, equity, a financial return, or a personal benefit in exchange for contributing. The platform features that contributors benefit from, receipts, the running ledger, automated pledge reminders, verified disbursement records, a refund path when a campaign is paused before withdrawal, are how SenteMe makes contributing safer and more transparent; they are not consideration for the contribution itself. If a coordinator and contributor have a separate commercial arrangement, that arrangement is between them and is outside the scope of these terms.
SenteMe does not perform, and does not intend to perform, any activity that would require licensure or registration as: a money services business or money transmitter under US federal or state law (the licensed payment partners we work with are the regulated transmitters); a professional fundraiser, commercial fundraiser, or professional fundraising counsel under any US state's charitable-solicitation laws; an investment platform, broker, or crowdfunding portal under the securities laws of any jurisdiction we operate in (campaigns offer no equity, no debt, no profit share, and no financial return); a charity, public benefit organisation, or NGO under Kenya's PBO Act, Uganda's NGO Act, Rwanda's Law N° 058/2021, or the analogous regimes in the other African markets we serve (we are a for-profit platform, not a charitable organisation, and we do not solicit donations to causes); a deposit-taking institution under any banking act in our operating markets (SenteMe holds no customer deposits, the licensed payment partner holds wallet balances on the merchant's behalf). If a regulator in any of these markets concludes that SenteMe's activity falls within a registration category, we will engage with that regulator directly to resolve the question.
You can create or contribute to a campaign if you are at least 18 years old, legally capable of entering a contract in your country, and not on a sanctions list maintained by OFAC, the UN, or the European Union. We may suspend or close accounts that we reasonably believe violate this, and we will not always be able to tell you why in detail when we do, the same restriction applies to our mobile-money partners and is required of any licensed payment institution we work with.
SenteMe charges 7.5% per contribution, all in. The 7.5% is taken at withdrawal: your ledger shows the gross amount raised, and the withdraw screen shows the breakdown (mobile-money network share, payment-partner processing, SenteMe platform) plus what will land in the recipient's mobile money. The 7.5% does not cover what your mobile-money provider charges when you spend or cash out the money once it has landed in your wallet, that is between you and your provider. Contributor tips on the contribution screen are optional and default to zero.
You can raise money on SenteMe for personal causes, family events, community projects, foundations, equipment, and similar real-world needs. You cannot use SenteMe to raise money for any of the categories on our prohibited list: sanctioned entities or persons; gambling and betting; controlled drugs and substances; pyramid, multi-level marketing or "get rich quick" schemes; defence and weapons; escort or adult services; unregistered pharmacies; shell companies; counterfeit goods; or unregistered charities soliciting contributions. The full list and the reasoning behind it live in our Acceptable Use Policy and our AML / CFT policy at /aml-cft. If we find a campaign running in any of these categories, we will pause disbursements and may refund contributors. We also reserve the right to pause or refund campaigns we believe are fraudulent or misleading, even when they are not in one of the categories above.
You are responsible for what you say about your campaign. The description, target, and any updates you publish need to be truthful. You are responsible for distributing funds in line with the purpose you announced, if the purpose changes (over-raising, the original need being met), log a public pivot from the dashboard so your contributors can see the new direction. You must respond to questions from contributors and from us in good faith. If we ask for documentation (your relationship to the beneficiary, payment reference, identity) before releasing funds for a particular campaign, you agree to provide it.
You are choosing to send money to a specific campaign based on the public description on its page. SenteMe is the conduit, not the guarantor, we have not personally vetted every coordinator and we do not promise that the funds will be used exactly as described. Once your contribution has landed in the campaign's running ledger, it is the coordinator's responsibility to use it as announced. If you believe a campaign is fraudulent, contact us and we will investigate; if we agree, we will pause further disbursements and refund where we can.
Contributions are domestic by default: a contributor in Uganda paying via Ugandan mobile money to a campaign whose coordinator's payout wallet is also Ugandan stays entirely within Uganda. SenteMe does not currently process cross-border mobile-money flows, if you attempt to contribute from a mobile-money wallet in a country other than the campaign's payout country, the contribution will be declined at the rails. For overseas contributors who want to support an African campaign, an international card path is on the roadmap and will be available in a future release; until then, those contributors are directed to a waitlist and the campaign sees no money from them. We will update this section when the cross-border path becomes generally available.
Contributions are intended to be final once they have cleared. We will refund contributions in three circumstances: (1) a technical error that took your money but did not credit the campaign, (2) a campaign we have paused or closed for a violation of these terms before the coordinator has withdrawn, or (3) the coordinator themselves issues a refund from the dashboard. Refunds go back to the original mobile-money number that paid and can take up to seven business days depending on the corridor. We do not refund the platform fee on Category 3 (coordinator-initiated) refunds; we do refund the platform fee on Categories 1 and 2.
SenteMe operates under our own written Anti-Money-Laundering and Counter-Financing-of-Terrorism (AML / CFT) policy, designed to meet the Uganda Financial Intelligence Authority's published guidance for non-bank payment service providers, US sanctions obligations applicable to Delaware-incorporated entities, and the equivalent guidance in every country we operate in. The full policy is available at /aml-cft. Practical points that affect you directly: (a) Every coordinator must complete identity verification before their first withdrawal, on every campaign, regardless of the amount raised or the campaign category: a government-issued identity document plus a biometric liveness check and face match, processed by our identity-verification provider. Until the verification is approved, no withdrawal is released; a declined verification blocks withdrawals until our support team resolves the case. (b) The coordinator's name, mobile-money number and country are additionally verified by the rails at payout time. (c) Withdrawals to a recipient phone number that the campaign has not paid before trigger an extra confirmation step. (d) A campaign that crosses USD 2,000 in cumulative raised or USD 500 in a single contribution will be asked for enhanced documentation before further withdrawals release. (e) We screen recipient phone numbers and beneficiary names against OFAC, UN and EU sanctions lists; matches block the payout. (f) We are required to report suspicious activity to Uganda's Financial Intelligence Authority and to our mobile-money partner(s); in those cases we may pause your account without immediate notice while the report is open.
We are liable for the mobile-money rails working as advertised, for not running off with your money, and for keeping our records accurate. We are not liable for: a coordinator misusing funds after they have been disbursed; outages or service disruption from our payment partners or from the underlying mobile-money carriers; your own mobile-money provider's withdrawal or send fees once funds are on your wallet; or losses arising from your decision to contribute to a particular campaign. To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim related to your use of SenteMe is capped at the total fees we have charged you over the prior twelve months.
We will update these terms when the product changes in a way that matters to you, a new fee, a new rail, a new prohibited category. When we make a material change we will email all coordinators and post a banner on the dashboard at least seven days before the change takes effect. Less material changes (clarifications, typos, structural rewrites that do not affect substance) take effect when we publish them; the "Last updated" date at the top of this page changes too.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, where Mea Global Inc is incorporated. Disputes that cannot be resolved by talking to us first go to the state or federal courts in Delaware. For users in countries with mandatory consumer-protection rules that override this clause, those rules apply on top of these terms, they do not replace them.
Email [email protected] for any question about these terms, a campaign you want us to look at, or a refund request. We aim to reply within two business days; complex cases take longer. For account-specific issues sign in first so we can see your event history.
See also: Privacy · Trust & safety · Pricing.
