Terms of service | Version 2026-10-22
These terms govern use of the HarvestNearU website and mobile application by customers, farmers, and anyone browsing the marketplace. Using the service means accepting them. Please read our fees, produce and food safety, and our responsibility to you with particular care: they allow us to change what we charge, and they limit what we are responsible for.
HarvestNearU is a trading name of FARMTECH LTD, a private company limited by shares registered in Nigeria under RC 9839166, with its registered office at 2 Akindoyin Arile Street, Ife-Central, Osun State, Nigeria. In these terms, we, us, and HarvestNearU mean that company.
We run a marketplace that connects customers with independent farms. We are an intermediary. The contract of sale for produce is between the customer and the supplying farm. HarvestNearU provides the platform, takes payment on the farm's behalf, and supports fulfilment and dispute resolution; it does not grow, harvest, inspect, weigh, grade, store, transport, or own the produce sold through it.
Nothing in these terms makes a farm our employee, agent, partner, or joint venturer, and nothing makes us a party to the sale. Farms trade on their own account, set their own prices, decide what to list, and decide whether and how to fulfil an order. Where we take payment, we do so as the farm's collection agent for that limited purpose, and a customer's obligation to pay the farm is discharged when we receive the money.
You agree to these terms when you create an account, either by ticking the box that says so or by continuing with Google after the notice that says continuing means agreeing.
You must be at least 18 to hold an account and must give accurate details. You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your password private. Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been used without your permission. We may suspend an account where we reasonably believe it is being used unlawfully, fraudulently, or in breach of these terms.
Farms must complete verification before selling or being paid, except as described at the end of this paragraph. It has two parts: we identify the person behind the account, once per person, using a government identity document; and we check the farm as a trading entity. A farm that is registered as a business name, a limited company or a cooperative must give its CAC number and registered name and provide its certificate. A farm that is not registered is cleared on the identity of the farmer who owns it. A payout account must be configured and confirmed against the bank before a farm can be submitted for review, and selling status follows from both parts being approved. The exception is a farm we decide to approve without these checks, as we did for farms we verified before documented checks were introduced. We record why, we may keep such a farm verified, and we may withdraw the exemption at any time and send the farm through the checks.
A farm cannot submit itself for verification, save a payout account, or publish listings until the email address on its account has been confirmed, because receipts, payout notices, and disputes about its money are sent there.
Verification tells us who we are dealing with. It is not an inspection of a farm, its land, its methods, its storage, or its produce, and it is not a warranty by us about any of them. Farms are responsible for the accuracy of their listings, for the quality, safety, weight, and legality of what they sell, for holding any licence, permit, or registration their produce requires, and for fulfilling orders as described.
A farm that delivers does so as an independent operator using its own vehicle. It is responsible for holding a valid licence and any insurance the law or good sense requires, for the safety of the journey, and for anything that happens during it. We do not supply, inspect, insure, schedule, or supervise transport.
Each farm is responsible for its own tax. We do not deduct or account for a farm's income tax, and the statements we provide are a record of what we paid, not tax advice. Where the law requires us to withhold an amount, to report a farm's earnings, or to collect a tax identification number, we will do so and will tell the farm what we have done.
Earnings from fulfilled orders are paid to the farm's verified payout account, subject to the checks described in the product.
This section binds farms only, and a farm agrees to it separately from the rest of these terms.
A paid order has to be accepted by the farm supplying it. An order paid between 7am and 7pm Lagos time must be accepted within three hours. An order paid between 7pm and 7am must be accepted by 10am that morning. The deadline is shown on the order in the workspace and in the notification that announces it, and we remind the farm before it passes.
A farm that cannot supply something must say so before the deadline, item by item, instead of accepting it. Packed produce cannot be withdrawn this way; a problem after packing is settled at handover. If a farm neither accepts nor says what it cannot supply by the deadline, everything it had not started is cancelled and the customer refunded, and the farm's listings are paused until it switches them back on.
When an order or an item is cancelled because the farm could not supply it, or because it did not answer in time, the fee our payment provider kept on the money refunded is charged to the farm, from the first time it happens. It is the fee the provider reports for that payment, shared in proportion to what was cancelled, or its published rate where none was reported. It is recorded on the farm's statement and comes off its next payout. A farm is never charged when the customer, the payment provider, or we caused the cancellation. A farm is not paid for produce it did not supply, so its share of the order falls by the cancelled items.
When a customer reports a problem with produce a farm sent - spoiled, short, wrong, or never arrived - we look at each product reported and decide whose fault it was, and we tell the farm the decision and the reason. If the farm was at fault and we refund the customer, the farm is charged its own share of that refund: what it earned on the refunded produce after our fee, plus the delivery charge for its own leg if that is refunded too. Never the customer's service fee, and never more than the farm earned on it. The charge is recorded on the farm's statement and comes off its next payout, whether or not that order has already been paid out. A farm is not charged where we decide the fault was ours or the customer's, and a decision about one farm's produce never affects another farm on the same order. A farm may dispute a decision through the Help centre.
A farm must also keep its stock confirmed. A confirmation holds for a time set by the produce's category: two days for produce that spoils, and seven days for produce that keeps - grains, tubers, legumes, nuts and seeds, oils and palm produce, honey, crayfish, and seedlings. Confirm all stock in the workspace confirms every live listing on the farm at once; changing a listing's quantity, or accepting an order for it, also confirms it. We remind the farm before a confirmation runs out.
Once a listing's confirmation has run out, customers can still order it, but the order becomes a request: nothing is charged until the farm confirms it. A request must be confirmed, or the items the farm cannot supply declined, within three hours, at any time of day or night - the overnight allowance for paid orders does not apply. If the farm does not answer in time, everything it was asked for is taken off the request, and its listings are paused until it switches them back on. Because nothing was paid, no payment provider fee is charged to the farm for a request. A listing left unconfirmed for twice its window is paused until the farm confirms its stock again, which puts it straight back on sale.
A farm must keep the stock it shows accurate. Listing produce it does not have, or repeatedly failing to accept orders, may lead to its listings being paused or its account suspended.
We charge for operating the marketplace in two places, and both are visible before anyone commits to anything.
Farms pay an administration and processing fee deducted from each sale. The rate depends on how much produce the farm has sold here in the preceding thirty days, so it falls as a farm grows. There is no minimum and no maximum charge: the fee is that rate applied to the produce in the order, and nothing else is taken from it. The rate a farm currently pays, and what the next band needs, are shown in the farmer workspace and on every financial statement.
Customers pay a service fee added to each order. It is a percentage of the order total, produce and any delivery charge together, and the current rate appears in the basket beside the amount it comes to, before payment. It is charged for operating the marketplace and processing the payment, and it is not passed to the farm.
We may review and change either rate, the volume bands, and the way delivery is priced, at any time and at our discretion. We do not give prior notice of a change and are not required to. A change takes effect when it is published in the product. What protects you is not advance warning but timing, and this is a term of the agreement:
Delivery is charged to the customer by distance and paid in full to the farm that drives it. Where several farms supply one order, the delivery charge is divided between them by distance. Delivery is not part of the produce fee and is not counted towards the volume that sets a farm's rate. The distance rate, the minimum charge, and the way distance is measured are set by us and may change on the same basis as our fees.
Prices are set by the farm and shown in naira. A listing is an invitation to buy, not an offer, and a farm may change its price or withdraw a listing at any time without notice. The price that binds is the one shown in your basket when you pay.
Placing an order is an offer to buy; the order is accepted when payment is confirmed and the farm receives it. Stock is checked again at checkout. The farm must then accept the order within a set time. If it cannot supply something, or does not answer in time, that part is cancelled and refunded to your account credit straight away, including its share of the service fee and, where nothing at all is coming from that farm, its delivery charge. You can ask for that refund in your bank instead, for whatever you paid by card or transfer, within 30 days and only while that credit is still unspent.
Farms confirm their stock regularly. Where a farm has not confirmed a listing's stock lately - within two days for produce that spoils, or seven for produce that keeps - your order is sent as a request: the produce is held for you and nothing is charged. The farm has three hours to confirm what it has or decline what it does not. Where an order includes several farms, it waits until every farm has answered. Items a farm cannot supply, or does not confirm in time, are taken off first, along with the delivery charge of any farm sending nothing, and you then have two hours to pay for what remains, or the produce goes back on sale. If no farm confirms anything, the request is closed and nothing is charged. A request becomes an order, on the terms above, when you pay for it.
Where a price, a fee, a delivery charge, or a total is shown in obvious error - a decimal in the wrong place, a figure plainly far below what the produce is worth - we or the farm may decline the order and refund it in full rather than fulfil it, even after payment. We will tell you why.
Payments are processed by Flutterwave; we do not receive or store card numbers. Where a payment is later reversed, recalled, or found to be fraudulent, we may reverse anything done on the strength of it.
Fulfilment options depend on the supplying farm and your location: doorstep delivery priced by distance, free collection from the farm, or delivery arranged directly with the farmer. Travel times, distances, and delivery windows shown in the marketplace are estimates produced by mapping software. They are not guarantees, and we are not liable for a journey that takes longer than estimated. Risk in the produce passes to the customer on delivery or collection.
Each product in an order is tracked separately, because different farms may supply one order. You confirm each product once you have it. A farm may also record that it handed a product over; that does not complete the order by itself. It gives you a window - 24 hours - in which to confirm the handover or tell us something is wrong. If you do neither, the product is treated as received and the order completes, and the farm becomes eligible to be paid for it. We notify you when a farm records a handover and again if a product completes this way.
If you reject a handover you must give a reason. Nothing completes and no payment is released to the farm while your report is open. The farm is told what is wrong and may put it right and say what it did, which reopens your choice with a fresh 24 hours. If you reject a second time, or the farm does not answer within three days, we take the decision ourselves.
What is sold here is raw or minimally processed agricultural produce from independent farms. We do not test, inspect, weigh, grade, certify, or handle it. Treat it as you would produce bought at a market: wash it, prepare it, and cook it properly before eating, and use your own judgement about its condition when it reaches you.
We make no representation about allergens or cross-contamination. Farms grow many crops, and the same hands, containers, vehicles, and storage are used for all of them. A listing cannot tell you what else has touched it. If you have a food allergy or intolerance, or a medical condition affected by what you eat, do not rely on a listing. Ask the farm through order messaging before you buy, and decide for yourself whether to accept the risk.
Descriptions such as organic, pesticide-free, free-range, natural, or grown to any particular standard are the farm's own claims about its own produce. We pass them on; we do not verify them and we do not adopt them.
If you believe produce bought here made you or anyone else unwell, tell us immediately through the Help centre and keep whatever is left of it. We will pass the report to the farm, may suspend the listing or the farm while we look into it, and will report the matter to the relevant authority where the law requires it or the circumstances warrant it.
You can cancel an order yourself only while it is waiting for payment, including while a bank transfer you made is waiting for us to confirm it. We release an order automatically if it is still unpaid after a short grace period. Once payment is complete you can no longer cancel the order yourself: fresh produce is perishable, and the farm starts preparing it. If something goes wrong after that, contact us through the Help centre; anything the farm cannot supply is cancelled and refunded as described above. A problem with a product you have confirmed as received must be reported within six hours of that confirmation. We measure that window and show you what remains of it. You are never prevented from contacting us after it closes; a late report is accepted and recorded as late, and it is the refund decision the window governs rather than your ability to reach us.
Where a refund is approved you may take it as account credit or to your bank. A ₦500 processing charge applies to a bank refund and is deducted from the amount returned. That charge never applies where the refund follows something the farm or we got wrong - produce that did not arrive, arrived spoiled or damaged, or was materially different from the listing; an order we cancelled; or a payment taken in error. In those cases you are refunded in full. The charge applies only where you cancel for your own reasons and choose your bank rather than credit.
Our returns and refunds policy forms part of these terms and explains when an order can be cancelled, when a refund is due, and how to raise a problem. Nothing in these terms, and no time limit in them, removes a right you have under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018 or under any other law that cannot be excluded by agreement. Where a term of this agreement conflicts with such a right, the right applies and the rest of the agreement continues.
Raise a complaint through the Help centre. We aim to acknowledge within one business day. If we cannot resolve it together, you may refer the matter to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
Account credit is a balance we hold against future purchases on this marketplace. It is issued at our discretion, usually as a refund you chose to take that way, and it can be spent on orders here - the produce, the delivery charge, and the service fee - and on nothing else.
Credit is not money, not a deposit, and not a payment instrument. It earns no interest, cannot be exchanged for cash, cannot be transferred to another person or account, and has no value away from this marketplace. It is personal to the account it was issued to and it ends when that account is closed. Credit issued as a goodwill gesture rather than as a refund may be withdrawn if we find the claim behind it was not genuine. Where credit represents money you actually paid us for an order that was never delivered, none of this prevents you asking for that money back instead.
We sometimes run a referral programme. If you invite somebody new to HarvestNearU and they sign up with your code, you may earn account credit when they complete a qualifying order. Credit is earned on a completed order and never on a signup: an invitation that never leads to a purchase earns nothing, and an order that is cancelled or refunded is not a qualifying one. Where the person you invited also receives credit, it arrives when their qualifying order completes, for them to spend on a later order; it is not a discount on that order.
We set the amount and what makes an order qualify, and both are shown in the app before you share a code. We may change either, or end the programme entirely, at any time and without telling you beforehand. The amount that applies is the one in force when the reward is made, not when the invitation was accepted. Credit already paid to you stays yours to spend; we do not take it back because the programme changed or ended.
A code belongs to one account and is personal to it. You may not use your own code, create accounts in order to refer yourself, use another person's identity or payment details, or place orders whose purpose is to earn credit rather than to buy produce. Where we find any of that we may withhold or withdraw the credit, cancel the orders behind it, and suspend the accounts involved. If you close your account your code stops working, and any invitation still waiting on a first order ends with it.
Referral credit is account credit, so everything in Account credit above applies to it: it is not money, it earns no interest, it cannot be exchanged for cash or transferred to anybody else, and it has no value away from this marketplace.
If a customer's payment is reversed after a farm has been paid - a chargeback, a bank recall, a fraudulent card, a payment we were required to return - we may recover the amount from that farm. We may take it from a pending payout, set it off against future earnings, or ask the farm to repay it, and we will tell the farm what happened and why. A farm may dispute a reversal, and we will put its evidence to the payment provider, but the provider's decision is not ours to overturn.
We may also withhold a payout, in whole or in part, while an order has an unresolved report, refund, or complaint, while we are investigating suspected fraud or a breach of these terms, or where the law requires it. We release it as soon as the reason for the hold is gone.
Do not misrepresent produce or identity, list anything you may not lawfully sell, interfere with the service or its security, scrape it, or use it to send unlawful or misleading messages. Ratings and reviews must describe a genuine purchase. Our acceptable use policy forms part of these terms and sets out in full what may be listed, what may not, and how we enforce it.
You keep ownership of the photographs, listing text, reviews, and messages you upload. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, resize, reproduce, and display that material for the purpose of operating, supporting, and promoting the marketplace. For material attached to a completed order or a published review, that licence continues after your account closes, because those records have to stay accurate.
You confirm that what you upload is yours to upload, that you have the consent of anyone identifiable in a photograph, and that it infringes nobody's rights. We may remove material that breaches this, and we will act on a properly made infringement complaint sent to the Help centre.
The platform itself - the software, the name HarvestNearU, the logo, the design, and the content we create - belongs to us. Nothing in these terms gives you a right to use it, except to link to the site as it is.
Parts of the service are automated. Search ranking, delivery quoting, route estimates, fraud checks, payout holds, and the Help centre assistant all run on software rather than on a person reading each case.
The assistant answers from our published guidance. It can be wrong or incomplete. It is not legal, medical, financial, or agronomic advice, it does not commit us to anything, and where its answer conflicts with these terms or with a decision made by our support team, the terms and the decision are what apply. If an automated check affects your account or your money - a suspension, a hold, a declined verification - you may ask for a person to review it from Your rights over your information in your profile, or through the Help centre. We record the request, answer within one month, and tell you the outcome.
We provide the marketplace with reasonable skill and care, but we do not promise that it will always be available, uninterrupted, timely, secure, or free of error, and we do not promise that any particular produce, farm, delivery option, or feature will be available or will stay available. We may change, suspend, or withdraw any part of the service, and we may take it down for maintenance. To the extent the law allows, the service is provided as it is and as it is available, and warranties, conditions, and terms implied by statute or common law are excluded.
We are not liable for the quality, safety, condition, weight, description, or legality of produce sold by a farm, for anything a farm does or fails to do, or for anything that happens during a delivery a farm drives - beyond our role in resolving disputes and processing refunds as described in these terms.
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of goodwill, loss of anticipated savings, loss or corruption of data, or any indirect or consequential loss, however it arises.
To the extent the law allows, our total liability is limited as follows. To a customer, for anything arising from an order, to the amount paid for that order. To a farm, for anything arising in any twelve-month period, to the total fees we charged that farm in the six months before the claim arose. Where neither applies, to ₦100,000.
Any claim under these terms must be brought within twelve months of the date you first knew, or ought reasonably to have known, of the matter giving rise to it.
Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded - including rights a consumer has under the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018.
If a claim, demand, fine, or investigation is brought against us because of produce you sold, a listing or review you published, material you uploaded, a licence or registration you did not hold, a tax you did not account for, something that happened while you were fulfilling an order, or a breach of these terms by you, you will indemnify us: the amount of the claim, what it reasonably costs us to deal with it, and reasonable legal costs.
This works both ways in practice. We will tell you promptly about a claim we intend to pass on to you, we will not settle it without asking you first, and we will let you take over its conduct where you can properly do so.
We are not liable for a failure or delay caused by something outside our reasonable control. That includes power and network failure; the failure or suspension of a payment provider, bank, hosting, mapping, or messaging service we rely on; flood, storm, fire, crop failure, pest or disease outbreak, epidemic; civil unrest, strike, fuel shortage, road closure; and any act or restriction of government or a regulator. Where such an event prevents an order being fulfilled, it is cancelled and refunded.
You may close your account at any time from account deletion. We may suspend or close an account, remove listings, withhold payouts pending review, and refuse future access where we reasonably believe there has been a serious or repeated breach of these terms or the acceptable use policy, where we are required to by law or by a payment provider, or where continuing would expose us, a customer, or a farm to fraud, legal risk, or a risk to safety. We act proportionately and will say why, except where saying so would prejudice an investigation or breach the law.
Closing an account does not cancel an order already in progress, does not remove an obligation either of us already owes, and does not affect the sections of these terms meant to survive it - fees already due, reversals and recovery, our responsibility to you, indemnity, your information, and governing law.
How we handle personal information, the legal bases we rely on, how long we keep it, and the rights you have are set out in our privacy policy, which forms part of these terms.
We give you notice by email to the address on your account, by a message inside the product, or by publishing it on this site. An email is treated as received 24 hours after it is sent unless we are told it did not arrive. Keep your email address current: a notice sent to the address on your account is effective even if you no longer read it.
You give us notice at hello@harvestnearu.com or through the Help centre.
We may change these terms as the service changes, as our pricing changes, or as the law requires. Material changes are notified in the product and the version above is updated; continuing to use the service after that means accepting the new version. We keep a record of which version you accepted and when, so that a question about what you agreed to is answered from that record rather than from whatever the page says today.
The fees section says what it says about notice: a change to a rate does not require advance notice and takes effect when it is published, because the rate that applies to any transaction is the one shown to you before you commit to it.
If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues in force and that part is treated as reduced to what is enforceable. If we do not enforce something straight away, we do not lose the right to enforce it later. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another company, including on a sale or restructuring of the business, and your rights are not reduced by that; you may not transfer yours without our written consent. These terms, together with the acceptable use policy, the returns and refunds policy, and the privacy policy, are the whole agreement between us about the marketplace and replace anything said beforehand - which does not limit liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation. Nobody who is not a party to these terms may enforce them.
These terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of them or their subject matter, are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the courts of Nigeria have exclusive jurisdiction. We ask that you contact us first so we can try to resolve the matter directly.
Write to hello@harvestnearu.com or use the Help centre.
