Credit Terms

Effective: August 7, 2026 · v2026-08-07

These Credit Terms govern your purchase and use of HoldFast credits, which are used to run audience tests. They form part of, and are incorporated into, the HoldFast Terms of Service. Where these Credit Terms conflict with the Terms of Service on a credit-specific question, these Credit Terms control. Capitalized terms not defined here have the meaning given in the Terms of Service.

1. What a credit is

A credit is a prepayment for services HoldFast provides to you. Buying credits reserves an amount you can later apply to audience tests at the prices then published on our pricing page. Credits are recorded in your workspace ledger.

Credits are not legal tender, not a deposit, not a bank or stored-value account, not a gift card or gift certificate, and not a general-purpose payment instrument. They carry no interest, and you have no property right in them beyond the contractual right to apply them to our services as described here. Nothing in this paragraph limits a right you have under applicable law that cannot be waived by agreement.

We sell credits only to account-holding HoldFast workspaces for business use. Credits are not offered or marketed to the general public as a gift, and cannot be purchased as one.

2. Credits do not expire

Purchased credits do not expire and are not subject to dormancy, inactivity, or maintenance fees. Your balance stays available for as long as your workspace exists.

If we ever introduce an expiry period, it will apply only to credits purchased after the change takes effect, never retroactively to a balance you already hold, and we will give you at least 30 days notice first.

Promotional credits are different. Credits we grant free of charge, whether as a trial, a goodwill gesture, or part of a promotion, may carry an expiry date and other conditions. Where they do, we will tell you at the time we grant them. Promotional credits are never refundable or redeemable for cash, and they are applied to a test before purchased credits.

3. The three states a credit can be in

Because your credits pay real people to take part in research, it matters exactly when a credit stops being yours to reclaim. There are three states:

• Available. Purchased, sitting in your balance, not attached to anything. Fully refundable on request under Section 4.
• Committed. Attached to a test you have launched. When you launch, we obligate payment to a panel provider so participants can be recruited and paid. Committed credits are not refundable, because the obligation to those participants is not something we can take back.
• Settled. The test has finished and participants have been paid. Settled credits are spent.

Your credit ledger shows each of these, so at any moment you can see what is still yours to reclaim.

4. Refunds

Unspent, uncommitted credits

Ask us and we will refund available credits you have not committed to a test, to the original payment method where we can. Email [email protected]. We may deduct payment-processing fees that we cannot recover, and we will tell you the amount before we process it.

Committed credits

Once credits are committed to a launched test they are not refundable, exchangeable, or redeemable for cash, except where applicable law requires otherwise or where we choose to make an exception. This is not a convenience for us. At launch we place real money with a panel provider so that people who give us their time are certain to be paid for it.

When a test does not fill

If fewer people take part than you paid for, we return the difference to your balance as available credits when the test settles. You do not have to ask, and there is no charge for it.

If something goes wrong at our end

If a problem on our side stops a test before participants have been paid, the credits go back to your balance. Where our system detects it, that happens on its own; if it does not, tell us and we will do it.

Once a test has settled, the participants have been paid and that money has left our hands too, so those credits cannot be returned. If you think a settled test went wrong, tell us within 30 days and we will look into it properly. Anything we offer in that situation is a goodwill gesture at our discretion, and these Credit Terms do not entitle you to it.

5. Credits are yours alone

Credits belong to the workspace that bought them. They cannot be transferred, sold, assigned, gifted, or moved to another workspace or person, and they cannot be pooled across workspaces.

If credits are obtained by fraud, by a chargeback or reversed payment, or by a method that breaks the Terms of Service, we may remove them and, where the conduct warrants it, suspend or close the account. Nothing here limits a right you have under applicable law that cannot be waived by agreement.

6. What a credit buys can change

A credit is a prepaid amount, not a locked-in rate. What a test costs depends on the prices published on our pricing page at the time you launch it, which reflect what research participants are paid and what our panel providers charge.

We may change those prices. If a change increases what a test of a given size costs, we will give you at least 30 days notice before it takes effect. Your existing balance is unaffected in amount; it will simply buy a different quantity of testing. If you would rather not continue at the new prices, Section 4 lets you ask for your uncommitted balance back.

7. Closing your account

If your workspace closes, whether you close it or we do, you have 90 days from closure to ask us to refund your available, uncommitted credit balance. We will honour that request.

After 90 days, unclaimed credits lapse, except where applicable law requires otherwise. Tests already launched will run to completion and settle normally, since participants have to be paid.

If we close your account because of a serious breach of the Terms of Service, we may withhold a refund of credits connected to that breach. We will tell you the reason.

8. Taxes

Prices for credits exclude tax unless we say otherwise. You are responsible for any sales, use, VAT, GST, or similar taxes on your purchase, other than taxes on our income. Where we are required to collect tax, we will add it at checkout.

9. Changes to these Credit Terms

We may update these Credit Terms. If a change materially reduces your rights over a balance you already hold, it will not apply to that balance without your agreement. For other changes we will give notice by email or in the product before they take effect, and the effective date and version at the top of this page always reflect the current version. We keep prior versions available on request.

10. Questions

Email [email protected]. If you want a refund under Section 4 or Section 7, that is the address to use, and a plain sentence is enough.