Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Patrata is operated by CredSetu Technologies Private Limited (“Patrata”, “we”, “us”, “our”), a company incorporated under the Companies Act 2013, CIN U62090ME2026PTC475450, registered office C/o Renuka Khot, 143/8, Hirdao Road, Lonar, Buldhana – 443302, Maharashtra.

Patrata is the name of the app. CredSetu Technologies Private Limited is the company that operates it and the party you are contracting with.

2. Accepting these Terms

You accept these Terms by ticking the “I agree” box in the app. Continued use of the app without that active acceptance does not create an agreement, and we will not treat it as one.

Accepting these Terms also means accepting the Data Processing Agreement, which forms part of this contract, and the Refund and Cancellation Policy.

These Terms bind merchants only. A customer whose details you record is not a party to this agreement and is not bound by it. What we do with a customer’s information, and what rights that customer has, is in our Privacy Policy and in the customer notice the app shows before any customer information is used.

3. What Patrata is — and what it is not

Patrata is a record-keeping and information tool for merchants. It lets you record the informal credit (udhaari) you extend to your own customers, send payment reminders, verify a customer’s identity where they choose to, and — where a customer has consented — view a Trust Score reflecting their repayment behaviour.

Patrata is not:

• a bank, a non-banking financial company, or any other lender;
• a credit information company or a credit bureau, and the Trust Score is not a credit score, not a credit rating and not a credit information report;
• a provider of loans, and it does not arrange, broker or facilitate loans;
• a debt recovery agency, and it does not act as one on your behalf;
• a payment system, and it does not handle, hold or disburse the money your customers owe you;
• a provider of financial, legal, accounting or investment advice.

Patrata does not lend money and does not decide who receives credit. Every decision to extend credit, and on what terms, is yours alone.

4. Who can use Patrata

• You must be at least 18 years old.
• You must operate a genuine business and use Patrata for that business.
• You must be able to enter a binding contract under Indian law.
• You must use Patrata only for lawful purposes and in line with these Terms.

5. Your account

You sign in using your mobile number and a one-time password. You are responsible for keeping your phone and your account secure, and for everything done under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been used without your permission. The information you give us at sign-up must be true and kept up to date.

6. Customer data — who is responsible for what

By accepting these Terms you appoint Patrata as your Data Processor for the first two rows, on the terms of the Data Processing Agreement, which forms part of this contract. We process that data only on your documented instructions, keep it secure, do not use it for our own purposes, and return or delete it when you close your account.

7. Customer consent, and what you must collect

Before you record a customer in Patrata, you must obtain that customer’s consent using the consent step the app provides, and record it in the app. You may not enter a customer’s details without it, and you may not work around the consent step.

• The consent must be given by the customer, in a language they understand, and freely.
• You must not make consent a condition of selling goods for cash.
• You must tell the customer, truthfully, what the consent covers.
• You must give the customer the printed notice the app provides, or show them the on-screen version, before taking consent.
• If a customer withdraws consent, related processing stops going forward. It does not undo what has already happened, and it does not extinguish money they owe you.

Features that use a customer’s data outside your own shop — the Trust Score, cross-shop checks, payment timing alerts, and identity verification — require the customer’s separate consent given directly to Patrata. Until that consent exists, those features will not run for that customer, and no data about them will be shown to any other merchant.

8. Reminders — how they are sent, and what you promise us

In version 1.0 you send the reminder yourself. Patrata prepares a short, polite message in Marathi or Hindi carrying the amount and the due date. You send it from your own WhatsApp, from your own number. Your customer hears from you, the way they always have.

8.1 What you promise us

• That the amount is genuinely owed to you and the figures are accurate.
• That the customer agreed, through the consent step, to be contacted about the credit.
• That you will send a reminder only to the person who owes you the money — not a family member, not an employer, not a guarantor who has not separately agreed.
• That you will not send at unreasonable hours.
• That you will correct or withdraw a reminder promptly if you learn the amount is wrong or has already been paid.
• That you will stop messaging a customer who asks you to stop, and tell us so we can record it.

8.2 Language we will not draft, and you must not send

Patrata will not prepare, and you must not send, a message that describes any person as a defaulter, a cheat or dishonest; that threatens legal, social or physical consequences; that shames a person or refers to their family, caste, community or employer; or that is designed to be seen by anyone other than the person who owes the money. These words are blocked in the template service, not left to anyone’s judgement.

8.3 Messages sent by Patrata — reserved, not active

Patrata does not currently send messages to your customers on your behalf. We may introduce it later. Before we switch it on we will obtain each customer’s separate consent to receive messages from Patrata, register message templates under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations 2018, complete DLT principal entity registration in the company’s name, and update these Terms. Until all of that is done, every reminder to your customer comes from your own phone, in your own name.

9. Identity verification — reserved, not active

This section sets out the terms that will apply when the feature is switched on, so that you know in advance what will be asked of you. It does not describe anything available today, and nothing in it obliges you to do anything now.

When it is enabled, your obligations will be:

• You must not require it. If a customer declines, you must accept another form of identification, or none, and you must not refuse them credit for that reason alone. Regulation 5(3) of the Aadhaar (Authentication and Offline Verification) Regulations 2021 and Section 8A(2)(c) of the Aadhaar Act make offering a viable alternative a legal duty.
• You must not ask the customer for their Aadhaar number, and must not write it down. Section 8A(3)(b) of the Aadhaar Act forbids an offline verification seeking entity from collecting, using or storing an Aadhaar number for any purpose.
• You must not photograph, photocopy or keep the customer’s Aadhaar card.
• The customer must read the consent screen and tap it themselves, in Marathi if they prefer. Tapping it for them is not consent.

When enabled, Patrata will perform verification on its own account, never on your behalf and never through another entity acting on ours, and will store only the fact that a check was done, the date and the result — never an identity number.

10. The Trust Score and Trust Bands — reserved, not active

When enabled, and only where a customer has given Patrata their own separate consent, Patrata will calculate a Trust Score and Trust Band from repayment information reported by merchants in the network. A new customer may be given a starting score under our Trust Seed system rather than no score at all; that starting score reflects the absence of history, not a judgement about the person.

Before switching it on we will obtain each customer’s separate consent, give notice of the change, and update these Terms.

11. Cross-shop features and payment timing alerts — reserved, not active

Neither cross-shop checks nor payment timing alerts are active in version 1.0. Nothing you record is visible to any other merchant, and no alert is generated about any person.

When cross-shop checks are enabled, a merchant will be able to see a customer’s Trust Score or Trust Band only where that customer has consented directly to Patrata. The customer will be notified of checks and will be able to pause sharing at any time. Other merchants will never see your ledger, your customer list, your prices or your amounts.

When payment timing alerts are enabled, an alert will notify only merchants who have a live open credit exposure to the same customer that a payment timing concern has been detected. It will not reveal the shop, the amount, or any other detail. Alerts will be system-generated indicators based on merchant-reported data. They will not be verified factual statements and will not confirm a default. If a customer raises a dispute, related alerts will be paused while it is investigated, and you agree not to treat an alert as proof of wrongdoing by anyone.

We will obtain fresh consent from customers and update these Terms before switching either feature on.

12. Merchant Reliability Score — reserved, not active

The Merchant Reliability Score is not active in version 1.0. When enabled, Patrata will calculate a score about you from how accurately and promptly you record transactions, mark repayments and respond to disputes. It will weight the data you contribute and help detect misuse. You will be able to see your own score in the app and dispute it through the grievance process. It will not be shown to your customers, and we will tell you before it starts.

13. Acceptable use

When using Patrata, you must not:

• enter false, fake or misleading transactions, or data about a person you have no real dealings with;
• enter data to unfairly lower or raise any person’s Trust Score, or otherwise game the scoring system;
• use the app to defame, intimidate, blackmail or publicly shame any person;
• call, message or visit a customer at unreasonable hours, or contact their employer, family or neighbours about the debt;
• use Patrata to collect debts through unlawful, threatening or abusive means;
• describe any person as a defaulter, a cheat or dishonest, whether inside or outside the app;
• share another merchant’s or a customer’s information outside the app without a lawful basis;
• copy, scrape, reverse-engineer, resell, or attempt to extract the Trust Score methodology or the app’s data;
• upload malware, attempt to break security, or disrupt the service;
• use Patrata in a way that breaks any applicable law.

14. Fees, advances, renewal, refunds and taxes

14.1 Price

Patrata is a paid annual subscription. The price, what it covers and any included usage allowances are stated in the app and on the receipt we issue before you pay. We will never charge you an amount you have not been told in advance. Current pricing is on our Pricing page.

14.2 Advance payments

Where you pay an amount before the full annual fee, that amount is an advance against the subscription price. It is not a deposit, we do not hold it as one, and we pay no interest on it.

• The receipt states the total annual price and the amount still due.
• The advance is applied in full against the subscription price.
• The advance is appropriated against the service within 365 days of the date we receive it. This is a requirement of Rule 2(1)(c)(xii) of the Companies (Acceptance of Deposits) Rules 2014 — an advance for services that is not appropriated within a year stops being an advance and becomes a deposit, which a private company may not accept.
• If you decide not to proceed, we refund the advance in full within seven days of your asking, to the account you paid from.

14.3 Renewal

Your subscription does not renew automatically. There is no standing mandate on your account and we cannot take money from you without you paying it. At the end of your term, renewal is a fresh decision you make. We will remind you before your term ends, and that reminder is a reminder, not a charge.

14.4 Refunds

If you tell us within 30 days of paying that you want to stop, we refund the unused part of your subscription on a monthly pro-rata basis. After 30 days, subscription fees are not refundable. This does not affect any right you have under consumer protection law. Full terms are on the Refund and Cancellation Policy page.

14.5 Changing your plan mid-term

If you move to a higher plan during your term, you pay the difference for the remaining months, and a fresh twelve-month term starts on the date of the upgrade.

14.6 Usage beyond your allowance

Some features carry an included annual allowance. Usage beyond it is charged at the rate stated in the app. You are shown your remaining allowance and warned before you cross it. We will not charge overage you have not been warned about.

14.7 Taxes

CredSetu Technologies Private Limited is not presently registered under GST and does not currently charge GST. The price you are quoted is the price you pay, and we issue a receipt, not a tax invoice. If GST becomes applicable after registration, it will be added to future invoices and disclosed to you before payment.

15. Intellectual property

Patrata — the app, its design, brand, name, logo and the Trust Score methodology — belongs to CredSetu Technologies Private Limited and is protected by law. We grant you a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the app for your business while you comply with these Terms. The credit records you enter remain your business records; by entering them you allow us to process them to provide the service, as described in Section 6 and the Privacy Policy.

16. Third-party services

Patrata uses third-party services — one-time-password delivery, WhatsApp-based messaging, SMS delivery, payment processing and cloud hosting. They are listed in our Privacy Policy. Your use of those features may also be subject to the third party’s own terms. We are not responsible for third-party services we do not control.

17. Service availability and changes

We work to keep Patrata available and reliable, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may add, change or remove features, and we may carry out maintenance. Where a change materially reduces what you have paid for, we will tell you in advance and you may cancel for a pro-rata refund of the unused term.

18. Beta and pilot features

Some features may be offered as a pilot or beta and will be marked as such in the app. They may change, may be withdrawn, and may not work as intended. Do not rely on a beta feature for a decision you cannot afford to get wrong. Section 19 and Section 20 apply to beta features with particular force.

19. Disclaimers

To the extent permitted by law, Patrata is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that the Trust Score, alerts, reminders, verification results, or any other output is accurate, complete or fit for a particular purpose. You use Patrata, and make credit decisions, on your own commercial judgement.

20. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Patrata will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill or data, arising from your use of the app.

Our total liability to you, for all claims taken together arising in any twelve-month period, is limited to ₹50,000 (rupees fifty thousand). This is a fixed amount and it applies whether or not you have paid us anything.

In particular, Patrata is not liable for credit you choose to extend, or decline, based on a Trust Score, a Trust Band, an alert, a verification result, or any other information in the app.

Nothing in this section limits or excludes our liability for our own negligence, for our own failure to keep data secure, for death or personal injury, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be excluded under Indian law. Nothing in these Terms limits our obligations under data protection law or under the Consumer Protection Act 2019.

21. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold Patrata harmless from claims, losses and costs arising out of your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the app, the inaccuracy of data you entered, your failure to obtain a customer’s consent, your misuse of the identity verification feature, or your unlawful or abusive conduct towards any person. This does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our own breach or negligence.

22. Suspension and termination

You may stop using Patrata and close your account at any time.

We may end your access where you breach these Terms. Except where the breach is serious — fraud, harassment of a customer, deliberate falsification of records, misuse of identity verification, or where the law requires immediate action — we will tell you what the problem is and give you seven days to fix it before we suspend or terminate.

On termination the licence in Section 15 ends. You may export your ledger for 30 days afterwards. Handling of data after an account closes is described in the Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Agreement. Sections that by their nature should continue — disclaimers, limitation of liability and indemnity — survive termination.

23. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. For any material change we will give you at least 14 days’ notice in the app and ask you to accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, you may cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of your unused term.

24. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of India.

If you have a complaint, please raise it with our Grievance Officer first — see Grievance Redressal. We acknowledge within 48 hours and resolve within one month. Most problems end there.

Subject to any right you have under consumer protection law, the courts at Buldhana, Maharashtra will have jurisdiction over any dispute relating to these Terms or the use of Patrata. Nothing here takes away your right to approach a consumer forum where the law gives you one.

25. Company details and grievance contact

Published as required by Rule 4 of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules 2020, which apply to us because we sell our own service online.