opinvera legal terms
Sponsored Verification Terms
Effective Invalid Date · Version 0.1-draft · Draft — under legal review
Status: DRAFT — under legal review (LR-07). Version: 0.1-draft
Draft — under legal review. This text has not been cleared by counsel. It is published so that it can be read and tested before launch; it is accepted together with the Partner Terms and takes effect only when a cleared version is published.
This document forms part of the Partner Terms. It applies where the Partner sets a budget so that readers arriving from its property can verify their identity on the Platform at the Partner's expense instead of paying the identity verification fee themselves.
1. What sponsorship is
A reader who reaches the Platform from the Partner's property and chooses to verify is offered verification with the fee paid by the Partner. The reader goes through exactly the verification every member goes through — the same provider, the same documents, the same consent, the same outcome rules — and ends with the same verified status. Sponsorship changes who pays. It changes nothing else.
2. The price and the budget
The Partner pays $3.00 per completed verification, in US dollars, exclusive of taxes. The Partner sets a monthly budget, which is a hard ceiling: when the budget is spent, readers are offered verification at their own expense until the next month. The budget is prepaid, and a verification that does not complete is not charged. The price may change on thirty (30) days' notice as the Partner Terms provide; a change applies to budgets set after it takes effect.
3. Who may sponsor
Sponsorship requires a strong claim (control of the domain), because a sponsor is named to the reader.
4. What the reader is told
Before verifying, a sponsored reader is told that the verification is paid for by the named outlet, that the outlet learns only a count, and that verified status will weight their votes on every item on the Platform — not only the sponsor's — in the same way as any verified member's.
5. What the Partner learns, and does not
The Partner learns how many verifications its budget paid for in the period. It does not learn who verified, whether any particular reader verified, how a sponsored reader votes, or anything that would identify a sponsored reader, and it will not attempt to find out. The Data Processing Agreement §4 governs the data.
6. What sponsorship never does
A sponsored verification never obliges the reader to vote at all, to vote on the Partner's items, or to vote in any way; never weights a vote on the Partner's items differently from any other item; and never affects a score. Offering a reader anything of value in return for a vote, or conditioning sponsorship on how a reader votes, is a material breach of the Partner Terms and is handled under the Prohibited Content and Behavior Policy.
7. Refusals and refunds
A verification that is refused for a reason attributable to the reader (an unreadable or invalid document, a failed match) is not completed and is not charged. A verification that is refused because the reader was found to be a duplicate of an existing verified member is completed from the provider's point of view and is charged; the reader has the appeal every member has. Unspent budget is refunded when the Partner ends sponsorship, less any verification that completed before the end.
8. Ceilings
Beyond the Partner's own budget, OpinVera applies a daily ceiling on verifications across the Platform. When that ceiling is reached, sponsored verification pauses for the day; the Partner's budget is not charged for a verification that did not happen.