Holdback terms of service

Last updated: 21 October 2026

These terms are an agreement between Aprilfourteen Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 13109333), registered office 2 The Willows, Buntingford, England, SG9 9EN, which provides Holdback ("Holdback", "we", "us"), and the business that installs the Holdback app on its Shopify store ("you"). By installing or using Holdback you accept these terms. If you're installing for a business, you confirm you're authorised to accept them for it.

1. What Holdback is

Holdback is a Shopify app that lets hire and rental shops agree a deposit at checkout: the customer's card is saved, and no part of the deposit is taken then. In the standard way your customer pays the hire fee when they check out, and Shopify records the deposit as a deferred payment on the order, with their card saved against it. Nothing is authorised or held on the card at checkout. You then release the deposit, take a late fee from the saved card (never more than the deposit), or send a claim for your customer to approve and pay, with a reason. Holdback emails the customer each time anything is taken or released, to the address on the order whenever there is one.

Holdback is software. Holdback is not a payment provider, bank or money transmitter, and never holds your money or your customers' money. Payments are processed by a provider that supports deferred payments, usually Shopify Payments, under your agreement with Shopify. Holdback only asks Shopify to take a charge from the saved card when you press the button for a late fee or for an item that isn't coming back or that is lost (and Keep more from the deposit, or Resume of an interrupted one). Shopify Flow can release a deposit but never takes a fee. An extension fee your customer approves is paid by Shopify payment link, never from the saved card.

2. What you need

A Shopify store on a plan that supports apps, with the Online Store channel.
A payment provider that can save a card for a later charge, which is what a deposit is. In practice that means a provider that supports deferred payments, usually Shopify Payments. Holdback checks on install and daily after, and tells you plainly if your store hasn't got one — until it has, cards can't be saved for deposits at checkout.
A theme that supports app embeds (any Online Store 2.0 theme), with the Holdback embed switched on.

You're responsible for your Shopify account and for complying with Shopify's terms, including the Shopify Payments terms and Shopify's rules for purchase options.

3. Plans and payment

Holdback is billed through Shopify, on your Shopify invoice. Plans and their prices, including a free plan, are shown on Holdback's App Store listing and on the plan page in your Shopify admin, and Shopify asks you to approve any charge first. Paid plans can be billed yearly. Prices are in US dollars and exclude VAT where applicable.
Every plan includes every feature. Plans differ by how many deposits they cover each month, or across the year on a yearly plan. A month is a calendar month in your store's time zone, and a deposit counts in the month its order was placed; on a yearly plan it counts in the plan's billing year. If you open more deposits than your plan covers, Holdback keeps recording them and lets you settle every one, and asks you to move to a plan that covers your use.
Charges, renewals, currency conversion and refunds of app fees are handled by Shopify's billing under Shopify's terms. Uninstalling Holdback stops future charges.
We may change prices with at least 30 days' notice in the app or by email. The change takes effect from your next billing period after the notice.
If your plan lapses, this doesn't stop your checkout saving cards for deposits, and Holdback keeps recording them. While you still have open deposits, the Rentals page stays available so you can settle every one of them — no customer's card stays saved against a deposit because a plan lapsed. The rest of the app, including adding or changing deposit rules, needs a current plan. Choose a plan again to get it back.

4. Your responsibilities towards your customers

You're the seller and the hirer. Holdback provides the tool; the decisions and the customer relationship are yours. In particular:

Your hire terms. Tell your customers the deposit amount, when and why a fee may be taken against it, the hire period, and how they can cancel, before they pay. Holdback's product-page notice helps, but your own hire terms must cover this.
Fair and lawful charges and claims. Only take a fee for a late return, at the daily rate your customer agreed to at checkout, or an extension fee your customer approved, or, on an order whose checkout agreement says so, up to the deposit for an item that isn't returned (only where the checkout agreement and the card allow it), and only send a claim for damage or a missing part (or a non-return on an order that didn't agree to the above) with a genuine, proportionate estimate your terms cover. Every fee must reflect your genuine loss or a price your customer agreed to: a late fee is a fair daily rate for the time the item wasn't available to hire again, not a penalty for being late, and a claim is what the repair or replacement really costs, with any saving refunded if it comes in lower. Holdback sends a claim to your customer to approve and pay; it never takes one from their saved card, and a claim can't be more than what's left of the deposit. Comply with consumer law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and their equivalents where your customers are.
Honest reasons. The reason you enter is shown to your customer on their order and in their email. It must be accurate.
Settle on time. Settle every deposit before the date shown at checkout. That date is the latest Holdback will take anything from the saved card. Holdback releases any deposit still open the day before that date, and sends your customer a payment link for any extension fee they approved. After the date Shopify marks the order's payment overdue and allows the full remaining balance to be collected from the order page without a reason, so a deposit left open past it is yours to settle. Also, once the hire's return date and inspection window have passed with no problem recorded, and that comes more than a day before the latest charge date (the booked return date when a booking app gives one, otherwise the hire period counted from the order), Holdback emails you the day before and then releases the deposit. Use Keep a late fee while the deposit is still open: once it is released, a late fee can't be kept from the card.

Holdback reminds you by email in advance, but settling on time is your responsibility.
Disputes and chargebacks. Customer complaints, refunds and card disputes about hire fees, late fees and claims are between you, your customer, and Shopify Payments.
You're responsible for every charge and claim. That includes a late fee you keep with Keep a late fee, an amount you keep for an item that isn't coming back, and every claim you send. Holdback carries out your instruction within the limits described here; the decision, and the amount, are yours.
Damage waivers. If you turn on Holdback's optional damage waiver, it is your promise to your customer, not insurance. Holdback doesn't insure anything, isn't an insurer, and doesn't arrange insurance. When a customer buys the waiver, Holdback limits the damage claims you can make on that deposit to the amount you set. Make sure your hire terms say what the waiver covers (accidental damage) and what it doesn't (late return, a missing part, loss, theft, non-return). You're responsible for the waiver being lawful where you trade, including not describing it as insurance.
Your customers' data. You're the controller of your customers' personal data. Holdback processes it for you as set out in section 7 and the privacy policy. Make sure your own privacy notice covers it.

Why charges and claims work the way they do (the card rules, in plain English)

Card schemes (Visa, Mastercard and the rest) let a business charge a saved card later, without the customer taking part, only for amounts the customer agreed to in advance: the kind of charge a customer can check against what they signed up to. A late fee at a rate agreed at checkout is that kind of charge. So Holdback lets you take it from the saved card, never more than the deposit. An extension fee your customer approves is paid by Shopify payment link. Holdback emails the reason for each charge to the address on the order.

A non-return is handled by what the customer agreed to. From 21 October 2026 checkout says that if the hire item isn't returned the shop can take up to the full deposit from the card the customer pays with, and a shop does that by pressing It's not coming back (or Mark as lost), choosing how much to keep (never more than the deposit) and confirming; the customer is emailed why. It only applies to an order whose recorded checkout agreement says so; for an order placed before that, and where the card does not allow it (or Holdback can't read the card), a non-return is a claim instead. If the item turns up, you refund the difference in Shopify. Late fees can be taken again after a first take, and so can a later amount, up to the deposit in total and only for a reason your customer is told.

Damage and a missing part are different. Their amount isn't known when the customer agrees, and a charge for them made without the customer's own approval is the kind most often disputed and reversed. So Holdback sends them as a claim: your estimate and photos, which your customer approves and pays themselves on Shopify's own payment page. Their bank may ask them to confirm it's them there; that's the bank's decision, not something Holdback or Shopify controls. This is how Holdback keeps the money you recover from being clawed back.

Holdback never holds funds, including claim payments: every payment goes through Shopify Payments to your own payouts.

5. What Holdback does and doesn't promise

A charge can fail (for example an expired card, insufficient funds, or a card the issuer declines). Holdback records the failure, shows it to you, and lets you ask the customer to update their card or try again. We don't guarantee that any charge will succeed or that any amount will be collected.
Holdback depends on Shopify, Shopify Payments and email delivery. If they're unavailable, Holdback may be too. We aren't responsible for their failures or for changes Shopify makes to its platform.
We work to keep Holdback available and correct and to fix problems promptly, but Holdback is provided "as is", without any service level commitment.

6. Acceptable use

Don't use Holdback to:

charge customers amounts they didn't agree to, or charge without a genuine reason;
sell prohibited goods under Shopify's or Shopify Payments' rules;
attempt to access other shops' data, interfere with the service, or reverse engineer it beyond what the law allows.

We may suspend Holdback for a store that breaches this section, and we'll tell you why.

7. Data protection (this section is our data processing agreement)

For personal data about your customers, you're the controller and Holdback is your processor under UK GDPR (and EU GDPR where it applies). This section is the data processing agreement (DPA) between us, in the form Article 28(3) requires. It applies automatically — you don't need to sign anything separately.

Subject matter and duration. Holdback processes your customers' personal data to provide the app to you, for as long as Holdback is installed on your store, plus the 48-hour retention window after uninstalling described below.
Nature and purpose of processing. Collecting, storing, and using the data listed in clause 4 to open a deposit record from a customer's order, let you take a fee, release it or send a claim, email the customer when you do, and remind you and the customer before a deadline. Holdback doesn't process this data for its own purposes — only on your instructions, which these terms and your use of the app are.
Duration of processing. For as long as you have open deposits, and the 48-hour window after uninstalling.
Types of personal data. Customer name, email address and Shopify customer and order references; references to the saved card's payment mandate on the order (never full card details); the words your customer was shown and agreed to at checkout, and when; and, where you add them, handover and return photos. Photos you send with a claim are shown to your customer on their claim page and attached to your own copy of the claim email. For a claim, Holdback also keeps your customer's approval of it (when, the amount they saw, and the exact words they approved) and Shopify's payment record for their payment as the gateway supplied it, which can include the card's brand and last four digits. Messages your customer writes to the shop (a request to cancel, a disagreement with a claim) and their confirmations (an extension, photos seen) are kept too. Photos are kept for 180 days after the deposit is settled and any claim closed, then deleted once you've been emailed the evidence pack that contains them.
Categories of data subjects. Your customers who have a deposit through Holdback.
We process this data only on your documented instructions (these terms and your use of the app), and our staff who can access it are bound by confidentiality. We keep it secure as described in the privacy policy.

Sub-processors. You authorise the following. This is the schedule of every sub-processor: what each does, the data it holds, and where:

Sub-processor	What it does	What it holds	Where
Shopify	The platform Holdback runs in; source of order and customer data; processes every payment	Your store's orders, customers and payments, under your own agreement with Shopify	Shopify's infrastructure
Railway	Hosts the Holdback application	All data Holdback processes, in memory while it runs, and 7 days of server logs (shop and internal IDs, no customer names or emails)	EU West (Amsterdam)
Neon	Hosts Holdback's database	All data Holdback stores (the types in clause 4), plus Neon's own restore history	AWS London (eu-west-2)
Resend	Sends Holdback's emails	Customer name and email, and each email's subject and content (amounts, reasons, order numbers, photos attached to a claim)	Ireland (eu-west-1)
Cloudflare (R2)	Stores Holdback's nightly off-site backup	An encrypted copy of the whole database, kept 30 days. Encrypted before it leaves Holdback with a key only Holdback holds, so Cloudflare can't read it	European Union (R2 EU jurisdiction)

We'll give 30 days' notice before adding or replacing one, and you may object by uninstalling Holdback. Each sub-processor is bound by data protection terms at least as protective as this section, and we remain responsible for their performance.

International transfers. Every sub-processor above processes Holdback's data inside the UK or the EU: Railway in Amsterdam, Neon in London, Resend in Ireland, Cloudflare's R2 in the EU. Resend and Cloudflare are incorporated in the United States, so where a transfer to either does occur it is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or an equivalent safeguard.
Assistance. We'll help you meet requests from your customers (access, deletion, and the rest) and your own obligations on security, breach notification and impact assessments, taking into account the nature of the processing and the information available to us.
Breach notification. We notify you without undue delay of a personal data breach affecting your customers' data, with what we know at the time and how we're responding.
Deletion. When you uninstall, we delete your data after 48 hours, as the privacy policy describes and as Shopify requires, unless the law requires us to keep it. Before then we email you all of your deposit evidence as one PDF. Keep it for at least 6 months: a customer can dispute a card payment up to 120 days after it, and after the 48 hours we have nothing left to answer it with. Settled deposit rows are deleted outright; a deposit still open at that point is anonymised rather than deleted, since it may still need releasing. One exception, stated so it isn't a surprise: if a partner referred your store, their commission records for it are kept — those are that partner's financial records, and they hold your store's domain and the amounts, never any customer's data.
Audits. We'll make information available to show compliance with this section, and allow audits on reasonable notice, at most once a year.

8. Support

Email support@holdback.co.uk. We aim to reply within one working day (UK). There's no guaranteed response or resolution time.

9. Intellectual property

We own Holdback and everything in it. While you're installed on any plan, including Free, you may use Holdback for your store. You own your store's data, and your customers' data belongs to you and them. You give us the permissions needed to process it to provide Holdback. If you send us feedback we may use it freely.

10. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't lawfully be limited.
We aren't liable for: charges you choose to make or not make; charges that fail or are disputed; losses from deposits not settled before the checkout date; loss of profit, revenue, goodwill or data; or indirect or consequential loss.
Otherwise, our total liability to you in any 12 months is limited to the app fees you paid us in those 12 months.
Indemnity. You'll indemnify us against claims by your customers, and fines or penalties from Shopify, a card scheme or a regulator, that arise from your hire terms, your charges and claims, your reasons, or your breach of these terms or of consumer law, including our reasonable costs of dealing with them. We'll tell you promptly about any such claim, let you handle it where you ask to, and not settle it without your agreement (which you won't unreasonably withhold).
The limit in clause 3 doesn't apply to your indemnity in clause 4, or to what you owe us in app fees.

11. Ending the agreement

You can stop at any time by uninstalling Holdback. Open deposits when you uninstall stay on your Shopify orders. You can no longer settle them through Holdback, so release or settle them first.
We may end these terms with 30 days' notice, or immediately if you seriously breach them. We'll give you the chance to settle open deposits unless the law or a serious breach prevents it.
Sections 4, 5, 7, 9, 10 and 12 survive the end of the agreement.

12. General

We may update these terms. For material changes we'll give at least 30 days' notice in the app or by email. Continuing to use Holdback after that means you accept them.
If part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest still applies. Not enforcing a right isn't waiving it.
You may not transfer this agreement without our consent. We may transfer it to a successor running Holdback.
No one else has rights under these terms (Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999).
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Contact

Holdback is a product of Aprilfourteen Ltd, 2 The Willows, Buntingford, England, SG9 9EN. Email: support@holdback.co.uk.