Terms of Service

1. Who these terms are between

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between Varo (“we”, “us”) and the business signing up to use the Varo platform (“you”, “your organisation”). By creating an account, you're agreeing to these Terms on behalf of that business, and confirming you're authorised to do so.

2. What Varo is, right now

Varo is a private beta: an admin assistant — Mercial and a set of specialist agents behind it — for small and medium South African businesses in mining, accounting, real estate, and software/services, reached through a web app, phone calls, and WhatsApp.

Being a beta means, plainly: features change, sometimes without much notice; things will occasionally break or go down; the app tells you directly, in-app, what it can and can't actually do, and these Terms don't override that — if it's honest that a feature doesn't exist yet, it doesn't exist yet. You need an invite or beta access code to sign up, and we can change who gets access, or end the beta, at our discretion.

3. What Mercial is — and isn't

Mercial is an AI assistant. It drafts, summarises, tracks deadlines, and answers questions based on what you and your team tell it and what's already in your account. It does not replace your accountant, attorney, tax practitioner, or any other professional adviser, and nothing it says is professional accounting, legal, tax, or compliance advice. You are responsible for reviewing what Mercial produces before relying on it or sending it, the same way you'd review a colleague's work before it goes out under your name.

Mercial is built to say “I don't know” or “I can't do that yet” rather than guess or promise something the product can't deliver. Mercial does not, on its own, send messages, file documents, or take an action outside the conversation, unless a specific feature explicitly says otherwise and someone in your organisation has approved it.

4. Your account

You're responsible for keeping your login details secure and for what happens under your account. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has access to it who shouldn't. If you administer your organisation's account, you're responsible for who you invite and what role you give them.

5. Your data and content

Whatever your business puts into Varo — client records, reports, chat messages, call recordings and transcripts, uploaded documents — stays yours. We process it to run the product, as described in our Privacy Policy, and don't use it for anyone else's benefit or sell it. Letting us use it to improve the underlying AI is a separate, optional, off-by-default choice in Settings.

You're responsible for making sure you have the right to put information into Varo in the first place.

6. Acceptable use

Use Varo for real business admin, not to: break the law, send unlawful or harassing messages through it, try to access another organisation's data, overload or attack the service, or reverse-engineer it. We can suspend or close an account that does any of this.

7. Fees

Pricing is not finalised. The current beta tier is free. If we introduce paid plans, we'll tell existing users in advance and clearly show real pricing before anything is charged.

8. Third-party services

Varo relies on other companies to work — to carry phone calls, transcribe speech, generate voice replies, send email, and, only if you connect it yourself, save a file to your Google Drive. These are described in our Privacy Policy. We choose them carefully, but don't control them, and aren't liable for their outages or mistakes beyond what the law requires.

9. No warranty

Varo is provided “as is”, especially during this beta. We don't promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for a particular purpose beyond what we've told you it does.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Varo is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from your use of the product — for example, a missed statutory deadline Mercial was tracking remains, ultimately, your business's own legal responsibility to meet; Varo is a tool that helps you track it, not a party to your compliance obligation.

11. Ending the agreement

You can stop using Varo and close your account at any time — contact founder@varotech.org. We can suspend or end an account for a real breach of Section 6, for non-payment once paid plans exist, or if we discontinue the beta, with reasonable notice where practical.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as the product changes. We'll update the date below when we do, and tell active users directly about a change that meaningfully affects their rights or obligations.

13. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

14. Contact us

founder@varotech.org