Terms and Policies: Summary of Amendments, Advice, and Action Items

Overview

Following a review and revision of the full terms and policy suite, this summary sets out, in full and numbered form, the amendments and additions made, the advice, the recommendation on the Legal Authority Matrix, and the steps to take before publication. The work had two objectives: (a) to align the documents with UAE law, principally the E-Commerce Law (Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2023); and (b) to ensure that, given Alkhiidma's role as a neutral intermediary, legal and commercial risk sits with users rather than with the Company.

1. Payment handling: the most important change

• Removed the original structure under which Alkhiidma collected and held buyers' funds in its own account as a non-licensed intermediary, which was the single biggest legal risk (holding third-party funds is a Central Bank-regulated activity).
• All transaction funds (deposit and balance) are now collected and held by a CBUAE-licensed payment service provider in a segregated client account.
• Alkhiidma no longer holds user funds and only instructs the provider to release them.
• Added a deemed-confirmation / auto-release backstop: if the buyer neither confirms collection nor raises a rejection or dispute within five business days, collection is deemed confirmed and the seller can be paid, while preserving the buyer's non-waivable return rights.

2. Key E-Commerce Law compliance additions

• Affirmative 'I agree' tick-box acceptance, confirmation that electronic acceptance forms a binding contract, and retention of an electronic acceptance record (1.1).
• A company identity and license disclosure block, comprising legal name, trade license number, issuing authority, registered address, website, and contact. Completed details: Alkhiidma is a brand managed under G8WAY TECH; legal name G8WAY TECH; trade licence number 1619851; issuing authority Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET); registered address Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City District One, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, P.O. Box 334424; website https://www.alkhiidma.ae/; contact email Contact@Alkhiidma.ae.
• A complaints mechanism with a two-business-day acknowledgement and fifteen-business-day response target (1.27).
• A returns, rejection, and refund clause based on the E-Commerce Law return grounds and forfeiture cases (4.5).
• A fair reservation-fee position: refunded where a valid rejection is established; retained only where the buyer has no valid ground or cancels for reasons not attributable to the seller or platform.
• Fee transparency: all fees disclosed before a transaction is confirmed, with no undisclosed logistics or other charges (11.5).
• Electronic invoicing obligations for the Company's fees and for sellers' material sales (1.29, 5.5).
• A secure-payment and cybersecurity clause on a reasonable-endeavors basis, with no warranty of absolute security (1.28).
• A revised jurisdiction clause that preserves the statutory dispute-resolution routes rather than imposing exclusive jurisdiction (1.18, 12.3).

3. Company-protection provisions

• A restructured limitation-of-liability section (1.10.1 to 1.10.5), comprising: a twelve-month time-bar on claims against the Company; a right to suspend, withhold, or freeze transactions and fund releases pending investigation; extension of the protections to affiliates, officers, agents, licensors, and the payment provider under a single, non-multiplied cap; the aggregate liability cap, exclusion of indirect loss, payment-flow carve-outs, and the savings line preserving non-excludable liabilities; and a user assumption-of-risk and release for other users' conduct.
• Indemnities extended to deposits, refunds, chargebacks, reversals, and payment-provider instructions (1.11).
• Force majeure extended to payment-provider, banking, gateway, and infrastructure failures (1.12).
• A set-off and recovery right, including interest on overdue amounts (1.30).
• A tax/VAT allocation clause placing responsibility on users for their own taxes (1.31).
• A payment-service-provider clause confirming users agree to the provider's terms and the Company is not liable for the provider (1.32).
• An environmental and waste-status clause confirming Alkhiidma is not a waste operator and placing all environmental licensing and liability on users (1.33).
• Reinforced business-to-business eligibility, with users confirming they act as businesses and not consumers, which strengthens the enforceability of the caps and indemnities (1.3).

4. Boilerplate, data protection, and AML

• Completed standard protective clauses: confidentiality (1.22), assignment (1.23), no-waiver/no-agency (1.24), language (1.25), survival (1.26), and a non-reliance statement added to the entire-agreement clause (1.21).
• Added marketing consent and data-ownership provisions (2.4A).
• Added PDPL-compliant cross-border data transfer wording (2.5).
• Qualified the data-security clause with a no-absolute-security disclaimer (2.8).
• Added a personal data breach notification clause, with a no-admission-of-liability qualifier (2.9).
• Added cookie-consent wording for non-essential cookies (3.1).
• Added an AML reporting and cooperation clause allowing the Company to report to the authorities and freeze transactions without liability (6.7).
• Renumbered the documents into a clean, sequential structure and confirmed all cross-references; defined 'E-Commerce Law' and 'TDRA'; and corrected the Prohibited Materials Policy heading.

5. Legal Authority Matrix (Section 15): recommendation to remove

• We recommend removing the Legal Authority Matrix from the published, website-facing version.
• It is an internal drafting aid, not a contractual term, and publishing it would expose the Company's own uncertainty (it flags several items as 'Verify' / 'Medium confidence' with unverified article numbers), which could be used against the Company and undermine confidence.
• Retain it internally as a compliance checklist, use it with counsel to verify the flagged items, and then exclude it from the live documents.
• No public replacement is required, as the operative clauses already cite their governing laws.

6. Action items before going live

• Ensure that the clauses on payment, refund, deposits, releases, and related transaction terms are reviewed and agreed before going live.
• Complete the company identity details in 1.1 (legal entity name, trade license number, issuing authority, registered address, website, and contact email). Completed details: Alkhiidma is a brand managed under G8WAY TECH; legal entity name G8WAY TECH; trade license number 1619851; issuing authority Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET); registered address Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City District One, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, P.O. Box 334424; website https://www.alkhiidma.ae/; contact email Contact@Alkhiidma.ae.
• Contract and activate the CBUAE-licensed payment provider before enabling the paid reservation/payment feature, and confirm their system supports the deposit, hold, release-on-confirmation, refund, and five-day auto-release flow.
• Make the promised operational processes real: the tick-box acceptance with logging, the KYC/verification flow, a staffed complaints inbox, electronic invoicing, a cookie-consent manager and marketing opt-in, and a data-breach response capability.
• Confirm with the relevant environmental authority whether facilitating hazardous waste, e-waste, medical waste, or asbestos requires any operator-level approval under Federal Law No. 12 of 2018. Keep the environmental clause regardless and restrict those categories at launch if the position is unconfirmed.
• Adopt good launch practice: make all policies easily accessible, update the version and date on each at publication, require fresh acceptance when terms change materially, and schedule an annual compliance review.

7. Key advice

• The documents protect the Company only as long as operations match them; keep Alkhiidma's conduct consistent with the neutral-intermediary model.
• Never hold user funds directly; always route them through the licensed provider.
• Do not adjudicate disputes or vouch for sellers; act only as the technology intermediary.
• Stay genuinely business-to-business, as the caps and indemnities are far stronger between businesses than against consumers.
• Note that the liability cap, while strong and enforceable between businesses, will not protect against fraud or gross negligence, because liability for such conduct cannot be excluded or limited by contract as a matter of UAE public policy.

8. Status

From a drafting standpoint the suite is complete, internally consistent, and ready to issue once the action items are completed.