Terms and Conditions

These Terms and Conditions form an agreement between you and Ismael Hernandez Jr., a California sole proprietor operating SConnect in Kern County, California. In these Terms, “SConnect,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to that operator.

These Terms govern the SConnect website, progressive web application, worker and tipper accounts, QR tip pages, invite-only pages, Stripe-hosted checkout, connected-account onboarding, payouts, dispute tools, and related communications (collectively, the “Service”).

By creating an account, accepting an invitation, using an authenticated feature, or continuing from a tip page after the Terms and total charge are presented, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not create an account, accept an invitation, or submit a payment. Our Privacy Policy explains how personal information is handled, and our Fee Disclosure is part of these Terms for all fee-related matters.

Worker is a product label for an eligible individual who independently chooses to use SConnect to receive voluntary tips in that individual's own name. The label does not mean that the person works for, provides services to, or is employed or retained by SConnect.

Tipper means a person with an SConnect account who may accept access to a worker's invite-only page. A guest may leave a tip through an unlisted tip page without creating an account.

Selected tip means the gratuity amount identified for the worker. Total charge means the selected tip plus the separately disclosed SConnect service fee and checkout processing charge.

Unlisted tip page means the tip-only page reached through a QR code or direct link. Invite-only page means the richer profile available only to a verified tipper account that has accepted a valid invitation and still has access.

Account holders must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter this agreement. A guest submitting a payment must be at least 18 or otherwise legally authorized to use the selected payment method and approve the charge.

During the California launch, a worker must be an individual who currently resides in California, uses SConnect only for work performed in California, receives tips in the worker's own name, and completes the identity and residential-address checks required by Stripe and SConnect. Registered businesses, corporations, nonprofits, and government entities are not eligible for the current worker flow.

Workers must provide a truthful California eligibility attestation and promptly notify support@sconnect.cc if they move outside California, perform work outside California through SConnect, or no longer satisfy these requirements. SConnect may pause onboarding, page sharing, invitations, and new tips while eligibility is incomplete, cannot be verified, or requires review. A restricted worker can still sign in and request withdrawal of an existing balance when Stripe permits it.

Use of SConnect must be voluntary. A venue or employer may not require a worker to open a particular financial account, surrender account access, or use SConnect to avoid wage, payday, tip-pooling, tax, or other employment obligations.

A worker's choice to use SConnect does not waive or alter any wage, gratuity, reimbursement, classification, collective-bargaining, or other right the worker may have against a venue, employer, customer, or other person. Those rights and relationships are determined by the facts and applicable law, not by the “worker” label used in this Service.

You must provide accurate, current information that you are authorized to provide, keep your verified email address current, protect your password and devices, and promptly report suspected unauthorized access. You may not share credentials, sell or transfer an account, impersonate another person, or create an account for someone else without lawful authority.

Worker payment and payout features require a Stripe connected account in the worker's own name. Stripe may collect identity, tax, bank-account, debit-card, and other compliance information directly. SConnect receives limited account status and transaction information needed to operate the Service but is not intended to receive or store full card or bank credentials in its application database.

Completing an application does not guarantee approval, payment acceptance, payout eligibility, or continued access. Stripe, a bank, a card network, an issuer, or SConnect may require more information or place an account or transaction under review as permitted by their agreements and applicable law.

An unlisted tip page is outside a public people directory, but it is not confidential. Anyone with its QR code or direct link may be able to open and reshare it. Workers should use a chosen display name and publish only information they are comfortable making available to anyone who receives that link.

An invite-only page requires a verified tipper account to accept a valid invitation. A worker can revoke accepted access or block an account. These controls reduce access but cannot guarantee that an authorized viewer will not copy, photograph, remember, or share information already seen.

Account and network risk controls may help prevent repeat access, but IP addresses and device signals can be shared, changed, or obscured. SConnect does not promise permanent identification or blocking of every person or device.

Workers may choose to publish profile text, venue details, schedules, service descriptions, price-board information, preferences, and external links. The worker remains responsible for that content and represents that it is truthful, lawful, current, noninfringing, and authorized. Workers should not publish a home address or other sensitive information unless they understand and accept the safety risk.

Service descriptions and prices are informational only. SConnect does not sell, book, reserve, guarantee, or perform the listed service, and a tip may not be required as a deposit, prepayment, invoice payment, or condition of receiving a good or service.

A worker, venue, employer, or other third party—not SConnect—is solely responsible for any underlying work, customer interaction, product, service, schedule, workplace, safety condition, representation, or promise. SConnect does not select the worker's venue or customers, set the worker's work hours or prices, supply tools or training for the underlying work, or evaluate how that work is performed.

You retain ownership of content you submit. You grant SConnect a limited, nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, reproduce, format, display, transmit, and remove that content only as reasonably needed to provide, secure, improve, and comply with legal obligations relating to the Service. This license ends when the content is deleted, except for copies reasonably retained in backups, transaction records, disputes, or legal holds.

Workers may invite only people they are lawfully permitted to contact. Invitations may not be deceptive, abusive, automated at scale, or sent to harvested addresses. Workers must honor revocation and suppression controls and may not use SConnect invitations for unrelated marketing.

A selected tip is intended as a voluntary gratuity for the identified worker. It is not a charitable donation and may not be used through SConnect to buy, book, reserve, or guarantee goods or services. Nothing in these Terms determines whether a payment is treated as wages, compensation, or taxable income under applicable labor or tax law.

Guest checkout currently accepts cards through Stripe Checkout. Before continuing, the tip page displays the selected tip, SConnect's service fee, the checkout processing charge, and the total charge. By continuing and completing Stripe Checkout, the guest authorizes that total charge.

Stripe and the card issuer determine whether card authentication, including 3DS, is performed. Authentication and fraud tools reduce some risk but do not guarantee approval, prevent every unauthorized payment, create a right to a chargeback, or ensure that SConnect will win a dispute. Payments may be declined, delayed, reviewed, refunded, or reversed under provider rules and applicable law.

Under the current California launch model, the full selected tip is allocated to the worker. The tipper pays a separate SConnect service fee equal to 5% of the selected tip and a separately displayed checkout processing charge. The exact total is shown before the tipper continues to Stripe.

The checkout processing charge is calculated by SConnect using the card-cost estimate disclosed for checkout. It is intended to cover payment-processing costs but may not equal Stripe's actual charge on a particular transaction. SConnect may retain or absorb the difference. It must not be understood as a government fee or as a statement of Stripe's exact cost.

SConnect does not charge its 5% service fee again and does not currently add a Standard or Instant cashout fee. SConnect currently bears the platform account and payout charges billed under its Stripe Connect pricing. Current examples, limits, and explanations appear in the Fee Disclosure.

A tipper authorizes only the total charge displayed for that specific checkout. Accepting these Terms is not advance authorization for an undisclosed charge, recurring charge, or future price. SConnect will disclose the applicable selected tip, service fee, checkout processing charge, and total again before each payment authorization.

SConnect may change its fee model prospectively, but it will not apply a new or increased fee to a completed transaction or deduct it retroactively from a selected tip or existing connected-account balance. Before any new worker-facing fee applies, SConnect will provide a clear description of its amount or calculation, when it is charged, its effective date, and how to avoid the fee by discontinuing the affected future feature. SConnect will require the worker's affirmative acceptance before enabling the fee-bearing feature. Declining a future fee does not forfeit funds already credited to the worker; withdrawal remains subject to Stripe availability, lawful holds, disputes, and reversals. No fee provision authorizes a deduction or practice prohibited by wage, gratuity, consumer, or payment law.

Stripe maintains the connected-account balance and reports which funds are pending, available for a Standard payout, or eligible for an Instant Payout. Pending and Instant amounts can overlap and must not be added together. A successful card payment does not mean the funds are immediately available for every payout method.

SConnect uses manual payout scheduling so a worker can choose when to request a payout from funds Stripe marks available. Automatic Stripe payouts are disabled for this flow. Stripe and the payout destination control availability, minimums, maximums, risk review, settlement, and arrival timing. SConnect currently bears the platform payout fees Stripe bills for this flow. Neither Standard nor Instant arrival is guaranteed.

A worker must review the amount, speed, and masked destination before confirming. A payout usually cannot be canceled after Stripe begins processing it. After Stripe reports a payout as paid, SConnect sends a receipt to the worker's verified email using the status, provider-fee, destination, time, and masked or approximate security details available to SConnect. A later provider failure or reversal can supersede an earlier paid status.

SConnect may pause a payout while funds are pending, a dispute is open, identity verification required for the payout is incomplete, fraud or security concerns exist, or a provider or legal requirement applies. Losing California eligibility disables new tips but does not by itself forfeit or block withdrawal of an existing available balance. Remaining or stale funds will not be forfeited to SConnect and remain subject to Stripe's rules and applicable payout, return, and unclaimed-property requirements.

A tipper seeking a refund should contact support@sconnect.cc promptly with the payment reference and reason. SConnect will review the request based on the transaction status, fraud risk, provider capabilities, card-network rules, and applicable law. These Terms do not waive any nonwaivable cardholder or consumer right.

If a payment is disputed or reversed, SConnect may pause related worker payouts, reverse up to the corresponding worker transfer or credit, and request truthful, relevant information from the worker. Under the current policy, SConnect does not add a separate worker dispute-handling fee; provider or network fees charged to SConnect are not added to the worker's recovered amount.

A worker authorizes SConnect to share relevant submitted information with Stripe, card networks, the issuer, and service providers involved in the case. Evidence must not be fabricated, altered, misleading, excessive, or unrelated. Stripe transmits the response, but the issuer controls the outcome. SConnect does not guarantee a win. If withdrawn worker funds are later reinstated, SConnect will restore the amount Stripe makes available for restoration.

A worker is an independent user of SConnect's payment and profile tools and does not perform labor or services for SConnect by using the Service. Creating an account, publishing a page, receiving a tip, or requesting a payout does not make a worker SConnect's employee, independent contractor, agent, representative, partner, joint venturer, franchisee, or fiduciary. A worker has no authority to speak for, contract for, incur an obligation for, or otherwise bind SConnect.

SConnect is not a venue, staffing service, employment agency, or hiring entity for the underlying work. SConnect does not hire a worker for that work; find or assign the worker's venue or customers; require exclusivity, minimum activity, or a number or value of tips; set work hours, wages, service prices, dress, methods, tools, or performance standards; supervise or evaluate underlying work; or provide the goods or services for which a patron may choose to leave a gratuity. A worker independently chooses whether, when, and where to use SConnect, what lawful optional profile information to publish, whom to invite, and when to request an available payout. Payment-security, identity, eligibility, content, and acceptable-use rules govern access to the platform; they do not give SConnect the right to control the worker's underlying work.

This platform relationship does not determine or change whether a worker is an employee, independent contractor, or otherwise classified in relation to a venue, employer, customer, staffing company, or any other third party. SConnect is not a party to those relationships. The actual conduct, agreements, and applicable law control, regardless of how any person describes the relationship.

Each person remains responsible for that person's own conduct and legal obligations. Any relevant venue or employer remains responsible for the wage-and-hour, lawful tip-pooling, payday, classification, workplace-safety, recordkeeping, reimbursement, and other employment duties that apply to it. Workers remain responsible for their own representations, permits, licenses, and reporting obligations. Nothing in these Terms authorizes SConnect, a venue, or an employer to take an employee's gratuity, deduct card-processing costs from a protected gratuity, credit a gratuity against wages, misclassify a worker, or evade any other nonwaivable duty. SConnect may not be used to conceal compensation or avoid those obligations.

Tips and other payments may be taxable. Workers are responsible for providing accurate tax information, reporting income and employee tips when required, and obtaining professional advice. SConnect or Stripe may issue information returns, report gross payment amounts, or apply withholding when required; reported gross amounts may differ from a worker's payout. SConnect does not provide legal, employment, accounting, or tax advice.

The Privacy Policy describes the information SConnect collects, how it is used and shared, and available choices. By creating an account, you consent to receive account, verification, invitation, transaction, payout, dispute, security, and legal communications electronically at your verified email address or within the Service. This consent does not waive a right to paper or another form of notice when applicable law requires a separate choice.

Keep your email address current and retain copies of important notices and receipts. Delivery can be delayed or blocked by email providers, network failures, security filtering, or an incorrect address. Contact support if an expected transaction or security message does not arrive.

You may not use or attempt to use SConnect to:

• process a sale, invoice, deposit, prepayment, payroll payment, charitable contribution, cash advance, money transfer, or other transaction disguised as a tip;
• commit fraud, card testing, money laundering, sanctions evasion, tax evasion, identity theft, harassment, discrimination, exploitation, or another unlawful act;
• impersonate a person or venue, misstate a relationship, manipulate tips or disputes, or submit information you know is false;
• publish unlawful, infringing, abusive, threatening, sexually exploitative, privacy-invasive, or malicious content;
• send unsolicited or deceptive invitations, scrape personal information, or use automated access without written permission;
• probe, bypass, disable, overload, reverse engineer, or interfere with authentication, access controls, rate limits, webhooks, accounts, or payment security; or
• use SConnect in a way that violates provider rules or exposes another person, SConnect, Stripe, or a financial partner to legal, security, or financial harm.

Worker connected-account services are also governed by the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which incorporates or references the applicable Stripe Services Agreement. Stripe handles card entry, identity verification, connected balances, and payout rails under its own agreements and Privacy Policy.

SConnect also depends on hosting, authentication, communications, banking, card-network, device, and internet providers. Their availability and decisions may affect the Service. SConnect cannot override an issuer decision, force Stripe to enable a capability, or guarantee a third-party service. External profile links are supplied by workers; SConnect does not control or endorse their content, safety, or privacy practices.

SConnect may limit, pause, or close access when reasonably necessary to investigate fraud or abuse, protect users or funds, address security risk, enforce these Terms, respond to a provider, preserve evidence, or comply with law. A worker page may also be paused when payment onboarding, identity verification, payout capability, or California eligibility is incomplete, withdrawn, or no longer verified.

Where appropriate and legally permitted, SConnect will provide notice and a way to contact support. Closing an account does not cancel a completed payment, an open dispute, a lawful reversal, a tax or recordkeeping obligation, or provider restrictions on remaining funds. SConnect may retain transaction, consent, security, dispute, and compliance records as described in the Privacy Policy and required by law.

SConnect will use reasonable care in operating the Service, but the Service may be unavailable, delayed, changed, or interrupted. To the maximum extent permitted by law, SConnect does not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation, a particular number or amount of tips, confidentiality of an unlisted link, successful delivery of an invitation or email, payment approval, payout eligibility or timing, dispute prevention, or a favorable dispute result.

Except for express commitments in these Terms and rights that cannot lawfully be excluded, the Service is provided as available without implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or noninfringement. Nothing in these Terms excludes a duty or remedy that applicable law does not allow SConnect to exclude.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SConnect is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, lost opportunities, or losses caused solely by a third-party financial service outside SConnect's reasonable control.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SConnect's aggregate direct liability arising from the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the SConnect service fees attributable to transactions involving you during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim or (b) $100. This limitation does not reduce an amount SConnect is required to transfer or refund. It does not apply to SConnect's fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, violation of law, or any personal-injury, property-damage, statutory, privacy, security, consumer, or other liability or remedy that applicable law does not permit SConnect to exclude or limit.

An account holder will reimburse SConnect for reasonable losses and third-party claims to the extent caused by that account holder's fraud, unlawful underlying services, unauthorized or unlawful content or invitations, infringement of another person's rights, breach of a duty owed to a venue or employer, or material breach of these Terms. This obligation does not apply to the extent a claim or loss was caused by SConnect's conduct, and it does not require anyone to defend or indemnify SConnect for liability that applicable law places on SConnect or does not permit SConnect to transfer by contract.

California law governs these Terms without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Subject to any mandatory right to bring a claim elsewhere, court proceedings relating to these Terms must be brought in a state or federal court with jurisdiction in Kern County, California. These Terms do not require arbitration and do not prevent either party from using an eligible small-claims court.

These Terms and the incorporated Fee Disclosure are the entire agreement about the Service, except for provider agreements that separately apply. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be enforced to the lawful extent and the remaining provisions will continue. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign your account or these Terms without SConnect's written consent. SConnect may assign these Terms as part of a lawful reorganization, financing, or transfer of the Service, subject to applicable notice and privacy obligations.

SConnect may update these Terms prospectively to reflect product, provider, security, risk, or legal changes. The updated page will identify its effective date. For a material change, SConnect will provide reasonable advance notice through the Service or by email unless an immediate change is reasonably necessary to address fraud, security, provider requirements, or law. When immediate action is necessary, SConnect will provide notice as soon as reasonably practicable.

If a material change affects account rights, obligations, dispute handling, worker eligibility, or fees, SConnect will require affirmative reacceptance before the user continues using the affected feature. Silence, failure to close an account, or acceptance of an earlier version is not advance consent to an undisclosed future fee. A person who declines may stop future use and request closure, while completed payments, existing balances, open disputes, lawful holds, and recordkeeping duties remain governed by the version accepted for the relevant activity and applicable law. Changes do not retroactively alter a completed transaction unless required by law or separately agreed by the affected parties.

Questions, complaints, refund requests, security reports, and legal notices about the Service may be sent to support@sconnect.cc. Include the account email and relevant transaction or case reference, but do not send full card numbers, bank credentials, passwords, government identification numbers, or other unnecessary sensitive information by email.

Operator: Ismael Hernandez Jr., California sole proprietor operating SConnect in Kern County, California.