Terms of Service

Last updated: April 29, 2026

1. Introduction

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Circles ("Circles", "we", "us", "our") that governs your use of the Circles mobile and web applications and related websites (the "Service"). By creating an account, signing in, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. Eligibility

• You must be at least 13 years old to create a Circles account. If you are between 13 and the age of majority in your jurisdiction (typically 18), you may use the Service only with the consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian.
• You must be at least 18 years old to purchase a gift card through the Service.
• You must have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract.
• You must not be located in, or a resident of, any country subject to a U.S. government embargo, and must not be on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

3. Your Account

• You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information when you sign up (your real name and a valid email address) and to keep that information up to date.
• You may maintain only one account per person. Duplicate accounts may be merged or closed at our discretion.
• You are responsible for all activity that takes place under your account, including any gift card purchases. Keep your sign-in credentials and verification codes confidential.
• You agree to notify us promptly at support@joinmycircles.app if you suspect any unauthorized use of your account.
• We may suspend or terminate your account at any time for the reasons described in Section 17 (Termination).

4. The Service

Circles is a private group date-tracking and digital greeting service. You can:

• Create or join private invite-only groups called Circles.
• Add and share important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, custom events) within those Circles.
• Send eCards — digital greeting cards, which are free.
• Optionally attach a gift card from a participating brand to an eCard. Gift cards are an optional paid add-on.

Gift cards offered through the Service are issued and fulfilled by Tango Card, Inc. ("Tango") on behalf of the underlying brand. Circles is the merchant of record for the transaction you make with us; the underlying gift card itself is governed by Tango's terms and the issuing brand's terms, which control redemption, expiration, replacement, and use of the funds.

5. eCards and User Content

You may upload or create content when you use the Service, including written messages, photos, video messages, recipient names, and date entries ("User Content"). You retain ownership of your User Content. You grant Circles a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, transmit, display, and use your User Content solely for the purpose of operating, providing, and improving the Service — for example, delivering an eCard you composed to the recipient you chose.

You represent and warrant that you own your User Content or have all necessary rights to share it, and that your User Content does not violate any law, infringe anyone's rights, or breach any contract. You agree not to upload content that is unlawful, harassing, defamatory, hateful, sexually explicit, or otherwise objectionable. We may remove any User Content that violates these Terms or that we reasonably believe is harmful, without notice.

6. Gift Card Purchases — How They Work

When you purchase a gift card through Circles, here is exactly what happens:

1. You select a brand, an amount, a recipient, and an eCard design, then confirm checkout. Stripe charges your payment method for the face value of the gift card plus an activation fee (and, if applicable, the price of a paid eCard design).
2. Stripe sends Circles a confirmation that your payment succeeded. Circles records the gift in our system as paid but not yet redeemed. No gift card has been issued at this point. The recipient has not yet been notified beyond an in-app or email link to claim the gift.
3. When your recipient opens their eCard and chooses to claim the gift card, Circles places an order with Tango on the recipient's behalf. This is the moment Tango pulls the full face value of the gift card from our corporate Tango account and issues a redeemable gift card code to the recipient. Once issued, the code is cash-equivalent value in the recipient's possession.
4. The brand honors the gift card per its standard gift card terms (expiration, where it can be spent, replacement policy, etc.). Circles is not the issuer of the underlying card and does not control how the brand processes redemption.

The bright-line moment for refund purposes is step 3: before step 3, no gift card exists yet and we can refund. After step 3, the gift card has been issued and the funds have left our control. See Section 8 below.

7. Pricing, Activation Fee, and Taxes

• Face value — the dollar amount of the gift card itself. This goes to the brand via Tango.
• Activation fee — a flat per-transaction fee that covers payment processing, fraud prevention, gift card delivery, and our service. The fee is tiered by gift card amount and is shown to you before checkout. The activation fee is refundable only as set out in Section 8 (Refund Policy).
• eCard price — most eCard designs are free. If you choose a paid design, the price is shown to you before checkout. Paid eCard prices are refundable only as set out in Section 8 (Refund Policy).
• All prices are in U.S. dollars. You authorize Circles, through our payment processor Stripe, to charge the total amount to your selected payment method.
• You are responsible for any taxes that may apply to your purchase under your local law.

8. Refund Policy

Whether your purchase is refundable depends entirely on whether the gift card has been claimed and issued by Tango. Use the table below.

To request an eligible refund, email support@joinmycircles.app with your account email, the recipient's name, and the approximate purchase date. We aim to respond within one business day.

9. Chargebacks and Disputes

If you have a problem with a purchase, you agree to contact Circles support first at support@joinmycircles.app before filing a chargeback or payment dispute with your bank or card issuer. We will work in good faith to resolve eligible issues quickly under the refund rules in Section 8.

Nothing in this Section limits your statutory rights against your card issuer under applicable consumer protection law. This Section governs the contractual relationship between you and Circles only.

10. Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to, and not to attempt to:

• Use the Service for any fraudulent, deceptive, or illegal purpose, including money laundering, structuring, or terrorism financing.
• Use a stolen or unauthorized payment method or someone else's identity.
• Resell or attempt to resell gift cards purchased through Circles.
• Purchase gift cards in unusually large or rapid quantities, or use bots, scripts, or other automated means to interact with the Service.
• Impersonate any person or misrepresent your affiliation with anyone.
• Harvest, scrape, or otherwise collect information about other users without their consent.
• Circumvent rate limits, security controls, geographic restrictions, or any technical measure we use to protect the Service.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or attempt to discover the source code of the Service, except to the extent that applicable law prohibits this restriction.
• Upload viruses, malware, or any other malicious code.
• Use the Service to send spam, harassment, or unwanted solicitations to other users or recipients.
• Interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Service.

11. Our Right to Refuse, Hold, Cancel, or Reverse Orders

To protect Circles, our other users, our partners, and you, we reserve the right at our sole discretion, with or without notice, to:

• Decline, delay, hold, or cancel any gift card order before redemption — particularly if we observe fraud signals, an unusual purchase pattern, a velocity anomaly, a high-risk payment method, a sanctions or AML hit, or any other risk indicator.
• Require additional identity, payment, or address verification before completing an order.
• Freeze your account pending review of suspicious activity.
• Set or change per-transaction or per-account limits on gift card purchases.
• Refund and cancel any unredeemed order. If we cancel an order before redemption, we will refund your purchase in full.
• Refuse service to anyone for any lawful reason.

12. Third-Party Services

The Service depends on several third-party providers. Your use of the Service may be subject to their terms in addition to ours.

• Stripe — processes your payments under Stripe's terms. Card data is sent directly to Stripe; Circles never sees or stores your full card number.
• Tango Card, Inc. — issues and fulfills the underlying gift cards. Each gift card is also subject to Tango's terms and to the standard terms of the redeeming brand (e.g., expiration, where it can be spent, replacement policy).
• Apple and Google — provide Sign In, Apple Pay, calendar, and contacts permissions according to their own terms and your device settings.
• Other processors — see our Privacy Policy for the full list of processors (SendGrid, Twilio, PostHog, Branch, Google Cloud Storage, OpenAI, etc.) and what data each receives.

13. Intellectual Property

The Service — including the Circles name, logo, app design, original eCard designs and illustrations we created, source code, and all related content — is owned by Circles and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Service for your personal, non-commercial use, subject to these Terms.

Brand names and logos shown for gift cards are the property of their respective owners. Circles displays them solely to identify which brand of gift card is available for purchase, under the doctrine of nominative fair use. The display of any brand on the Service does not imply endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation.

You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, scrape, frame, mirror, rebrand, or create derivative works of any part of the Service, except as expressly permitted by these Terms or applicable law.

14. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, CIRCLES DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses. We do not guarantee that any particular gift card brand will remain available; that the catalog, pricing, or activation fee for any brand will not change; that a recipient will choose to claim a gift you send; or that a recipient will redeem the gift card before it expires under the issuing brand's terms. Tango's brand catalog and the underlying brands' redemption terms can change without notice and are outside our control.

15. Limitation of Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL CIRCLES OR ITS OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OR AFFILIATES BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR GOODWILL, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, TORT, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, AND WHETHER OR NOT WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL CUMULATIVE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100), OR (B) THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID TO CIRCLES IN THE SIX MONTHS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so the above limitations may not fully apply to you. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

16. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Circles and its officers, employees, agents, and affiliates from and against any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, costs, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your User Content; (b) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms or applicable law; (c) any bad-faith chargeback or payment dispute you file in violation of Section 9; or (d) your violation of any third party's rights.

17. Termination

You may stop using the Service or delete your account at any time from inside the app (Profile → Settings → Account → Delete Account) or by emailing us. Deletion is processed as described in our Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or terminate your account, or restrict your access to all or part of the Service, at any time, with or without notice, including for: violations of these Terms; suspected fraud, money laundering, or chargeback abuse; misuse that harms other users or the Service; or compliance with legal process. We may also discontinue all or part of the Service, with reasonable notice where practical.

Upon termination: your right to use the Service ends; eCards or gifts that have not yet been delivered may not deliver; and any paid-but-unredeemed gift cards canceled by us under Section 11 will be refunded. Sections that by their nature should survive termination — including Sections 5 (your User Content license to deliver content already sent), 8–9 (refunds and chargebacks), 13–16 (IP, disclaimers, liability, indemnity), 18 (governing law and disputes), and 20 (contact) — will survive.

18. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the {{GOVERNING_STATE}}, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. The U.N. Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Informal resolution first

Before filing arbitration or any legal claim, you agree to first send a written notice to support@joinmycircles.app describing the dispute and the relief you are seeking. We will try in good faith to resolve the dispute informally within 30 days after we receive your notice.

Binding arbitration and class-action waiver

If the dispute is not resolved informally, any dispute arising out of or related to these Terms or the Service will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, then in effect. The arbitration will take place in the county of your residence or another mutually agreed location, or by telephone or video conference where AAA rules permit. The arbitrator's award is final and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction.

You and Circles each waive the right to a trial by jury and the right to participate in a class action, class arbitration, or other representative proceeding. Disputes must be brought on an individual basis only.

Small-claims carve-out

Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court in the county of the defendant's residence or principal place of business, provided the claim qualifies under that court's rules.

30-day opt-out

You may opt out of the arbitration agreement and class-action waiver above by sending written notice to support@joinmycircles.app with the subject line "Arbitration Opt-Out" within 30 days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out will not affect any other part of these Terms.

If arbitration is held unenforceable

If the arbitration agreement is held unenforceable as to any dispute, that dispute will be resolved exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the {{GOVERNING_STATE}}, and you and Circles consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.

19. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top always reflects the current version. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or in-app notice before the change takes effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of the updated Terms means you accept the changes. If you do not agree, stop using the Service and delete your account before the effective date.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email support@joinmycircles.app.