Cleeng's Merchant - Branding Requirements

This article describes branding requirements for broadcasters using Cleeng's Merchant solution.

When you use Cleeng's Merchant solution, Cleeng acts as your merchant of record (MoR) and offloads you with merchant responsibilities. For example, Cleeng signs the contract with the payment facilitator, handles all the additional work concerning payments like consolidating the reports, tax management, and payouts, etc. 

Cleeng’s Merchant offers a number of benefits, but it also comes with an important responsibility: your web end users must be aware that they make a payment to Cleeng and it needs to be clear for tax authorities which organization is the one paying VAT, Sales tax or other taxes that might be applicable.

Therefore, when using Merchant, you should comply with certain requirements. In order to do so, please implement the following:

1. Let your end-users agree to the Cleeng User Agreement.  
2. Ensure that the Cleeng logo is clearly displayed on the purchase page.
3. Make clear that the official payment confirmation (receipt) is from Cleeng.
4. Have a direct communication channel with Cleeng Support (e.g. Hi5).

Cleeng, on the other hand, will ensure that the bank statement of the end user contains a reference to your brand as well as Cleeng, where possible. Please note that certain payment methods, or extra validation steps like bank confirmations do not always allow for the dual branding.

Note:
The guidelines above should help you to be compliant, but please note that final implementation considerations are at the discretion of the authorities. If in doubt, please consult your legal advisor.

Now, let’s move to the details of each guideline mentioned above that are explained in the following sections.

Accepting Cleeng User Agreement

To accept Cleeng User Agreement, the end user needs to explicitly agree to it. To make it possible, take into account the following points:

• Provide a check-box that the end user needs to select to accept terms and conditions in order to continue the payment process.
• The checkbox cannot be checked in advance, the end user has to explicitly click it in order to select.
• You can implement it in two ways:
  - you can incorporate Cleeng’s terms & conditions into your own terms (recommended), or
  - you can include two mandatory checkboxes in your registration form: Cleeng’s terms and conditions and your own terms and conditions.

If you go for a recommended option and incorporate Cleeng’s terms and conditions into your own, here is a default legal paragraph to incorporate:

“Our monetization partner Cleeng B.V. (“Cleeng”) handles the management of access to content and/or subscriptions and payment and billing on our behalf. For this purpose, Cleeng will act as the merchant of record on our request. The services of Cleeng are subject to the terms and conditions of Cleeng, which are hereby incorporated, please refer to https://cleeng.com/cleeng-user-agreement“.

Tip! When using the default checkout via MediaStore SDK, the terms & conditions fields are automatically available to you, and configurable through Cleeng Capture.

Example implementation of “Cleeng User Agreement”:

Cleeng Logo on Purchase Page

Here are requirements connected with placing Cleeng logo on your purchase page:

• Have clear “Powered by” - in order to make it explicit to the end user that Cleeng is the seller and the sale is managed by Cleeng.
• Use the Cleeng logo in line with our brand guidelines. Depending on your background color, you can use the logo in white (#FFFFFF) or green (#5DB98F).
• Make sure the logo is visible before the end user enters their payment details.
• The logo should link (in a new tab) to “what is Cleeng” page (https://cleeng.com/who-are-cleeng). This will let your end users better understand what Cleeng is about.

Tip! When using the default payment page via Media Store SDK, the logo is placed in the bottom left corner automatically.

Example implementation of “Purchase Page”:

Payment Confirmation (Receipt) from Cleeng

To meet the requirements, payment confirmation (receipt) that your end user receives should:

• highlight that Cleeng manages your end user’s payment and order,
• include the details of Cleeng: the official registered Cleeng address, chamber of commerce identifier and VAT/TAX Ids,
• be shared by email or be available through a “My Account” (for at least 6 months),
• be available for Cleeng Hi5 team - so that they can look up and resend receipts in case of issues,
• contain links to Cleeng Help Center (or your branded hep center), and the terms & conditions.

Tip! When using the default transactional emails from Cleeng, the correct receipts are being sent to your end users.

Note:

Avoid adding your company details, TAX number or other details not to confuse the end user from what entity they buy.

Example implementation of “Purchase Confirmation”:

Direct Communication Channel with Cleeng Support (e.g. Hi5)

When you sell your services, you should make sure that customers who have questions about your service can get proper support. If they don’t, it might lead to higher chargeback rates, lower billing acceptance, or even restrictions on the usage of Cleeng Merchant.

Your customers need to be able to reach Cleeng (directly or indirectly) to inquire about billing and payments.

Cleeng Hi5 offers support with this.

What else

Part of the go-live checklist, the following are essential elements to make using Cleeng’s Merchant even more successful:

• Captcha
  Use Captcha to avoid bots or cyber criminals trying to make payments with stolen cards, or abuse you to validate credit cards (e.g. card skimming).

• End user IP address
  In order for the fraud-filters to work effectively, please ensure you pass on the correct IP addresses of end users.

• Card holder name & postal code
  As an additional precaution, submit also a non-mandatory field “Card holder name” and "Postal code" next to actual credit card details (number, expiry date, CVC).