Terms of Use

BuyMeSutta gives creators a page at buymesutta.com/@name where supporters can send them a small amount of money as thanks. It is a tipping page. The word “sutta” is used as the unit of thanks and as the name of the service; it is a figure of speech, and it describes no product that we or anyone else supplies through this site.

We are not a bank, a wallet or a payment service provider, and we are not licensed by Nepal Rastra Bank. Money never passes through us. On the free plan, a supporter scans the creator’s QR code and pays in their own app. With Checkout (Beta), the supporter pays on eSewa and the money goes straight into the creator’s eSewa merchant account. Your payment provider’s terms apply to those payments, as well as ours.

We don’t sell, deliver, advertise or promote tobacco, and nothing on the site is an offer to supply it. No cigarette, and no tobacco product of any kind, is ever sent, handed over or arranged through BuyMeSutta. “Suttas” are units of thanks with a price, nothing more: a supporter sends money, and that is the end of it. At no point does any tobacco product form part of what is offered, promised or delivered.

No real cigarette brands. Nepal bans tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship: the Tobacco Products (Control and Regulatory) Act, 2068 (2011) covers the internet, and the 2014 Directive made under it reaches the showing of tobacco logos, trademarks and brand names, whether or not anyone was paid for it. “Sutta” is street slang for a cigarette and belongs to nobody; a brand name belongs to a tobacco company. So the sutta name on your menu, and your page name, have to be made up. We refuse the real ones when you type them, and we rename or remove them if they get through. Don’t try to route around that check.

Smoking kills. Tobacco use causes cancer, heart and lung disease, and it kills a large share of the people who keep it up. Nothing here is an encouragement to smoke, and nobody should read a joke about suttas as one. If you want to stop, talk to a doctor.

• You must be at least 18. By creating a page, or by paying through one, you confirm that you are. Nepal forbids selling tobacco to anyone under 18 and forbids advertising aimed at them; we won’t knowingly keep an account for a minor, and we’ll remove one we learn about.
• You need a Google account. You are responsible for keeping it secure, and for what happens on your page.
• One person, one page. Don’t create pages for other people without their permission, or pretend to be someone you aren’t.

What you receive can be income. Nepal’s Income Tax Act, 2058 (2002) taxes income from a business or profession, and its definition of “windfall gain” includes gifts and tips. Whether the money you receive is taxable, and how, depends on who you are and why people pay you. Deciding that, registering for a PAN, declaring the income and paying any tax is your responsibility. We don’t withhold tax, issue invoices or VAT bills, or report on your behalf.

A personal QR code is not a business account. Most QR codes that eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay and banks give to individuals are tied to a personal wallet or savings account. They are meant for payments between people. Don’t use your page, or your personal QR, as the main way you get paid for goods or services, or as the till for a business. If people pay you for work, products or access, that is business income: register the business (and for VAT once you pass the threshold), and take payments into a business or merchant account. Under Nepal’s QR guidelines, merchant QR codes are issued to registered businesses.

Why it matters. Using personal accounts for business payments is one of the most common patterns behind tax evasion in Nepal. Nepal Rastra Bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit found that 37% of the suspicious transaction reports it received from January 2020 to December 2022 were about exactly this. Banks and wallets are asked to watch personal accounts for business-like activity: many small payments, large totals, or turnover that doesn’t match what was declared. Suspicious cases are passed to the Inland Revenue Department and the Department of Revenue Investigation, and tax evasion is a predicate offence under the Asset (Money) Laundering Prevention Act, 2064 (2008). The consequences can include frozen accounts, back taxes with penalties, and prosecution.

Limits apply. Nepal Rastra Bank and your provider cap how much a personal wallet or account can receive per day and per month. We don’t track or enforce those limits: if a payment is refused or your account is restricted, that is between you and your provider.

BuyMeSutta is meant for what the name says: small, occasional thanks from people who like what you do. None of this section is tax or legal advice. If you’re unsure, ask a tax adviser or your local Inland Revenue Office.

• Your QR and payment details must be yours. Only upload a QR code, phone number or eSewa merchant key for an account you own and control.
• “I’ve paid” is not proof. On the free plan nobody checks a payment: a supporter tapping “I’ve paid” only means they say they did. Check your own wallet before you press “Got it”.
• Checkout keys. If you add eSewa merchant keys, you confirm you’re allowed to use them. We store the secret encrypted and use it only to send your supporters to eSewa and to confirm their payments.
• Your content. You own what you put on your page (name, bio, photo, replies). You give us permission to store and show it so the page works, including on badges and link previews. You are responsible for it being lawful and accurate.
• Supporters’ notes. Supporter names and messages appear on your page. You can hide or delete them, and you should remove anything unlawful or abusive.

• A payment is a voluntary gift to the creator. You aren’t buying anything, and the creator owes you nothing in return.
• Check the creator’s name and the amount before you pay. We can’t reverse, refund or recover a payment, because it never reaches us. Ask the creator, or your payment provider.
• Your name and message (both optional) are shown publicly on the creator’s page, unless the creator hides them.

Don’t use BuyMeSutta to:

• sell goods or services, take orders, or run a shop;
• collect money for a charity, cause or emergency appeal, or for someone else;
• sell, advertise, promote or arrange tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling or anything else that is regulated or illegal;
• put a real cigarette or tobacco brand name, logo or packaging anywhere on your page, in your sutta name, page name, photo, bio or replies, or act as if a sutta buys an actual cigarette;
• take money for supplying tobacco to anyone, or for anything a supporter receives in return;
• avoid tax, launder money, or split payments to stay under reporting limits or provider caps;
• impersonate a person or brand, mislead supporters about who they are paying, or use someone else’s QR code;
• post content that is unlawful, hateful, sexual, harassing, or that infringes someone’s rights;
• interfere with the site, scrape it, or get around its security.

We can hide or remove a page, a supporter note or an account at any time, with or without notice, if we think it breaks these terms or the law, or puts people at risk. Where the law requires, we will cooperate with Nepal Rastra Bank, the Inland Revenue Department, the police or a court. You can stop using the site whenever you like, and ask us to delete your account (see the Privacy Policy).

Tell us and we’ll act. Pages are made by their creators, and supporter notes are written by supporters: that is their content, not ours, and we don’t check it before it appears. If something on the site is unlawful, such as a cigarette brand, an impersonation or someone else’s QR code, report it with the button on the page or write to hello@buymesutta.com. We look at every report and take down what has to come down. That is the arrangement the Electronic Transactions Act, 2063 (2008) expects of a service that carries other people’s content: we are not liable for it merely for hosting it, and once we know about something unlawful we deal with it.

BuyMeSutta is provided as it is, and Checkout is in beta. We try to keep it working, but we don’t promise it will always be available, free of errors, or right for your purpose. We aren’t responsible for payment providers, for payments that fail or go astray, for what creators or supporters say or do, or for tax, penalties or restrictions that come from how you use your accounts.

As far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, data or goodwill.

Limit on what we can owe you. Our total liability to you, for everything connected with the site taken together, is limited to whichever is the greater of: the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or NPR 5,000. A plan we gave you at no charge is not a fee you paid, whatever it would have cost to buy, so for an account that has never paid us anything the limit is NPR 5,000.

Time limit. Any claim connected with the site has to be brought within one year of the day you first knew, or could reasonably have known, about the thing you are complaining of, so far as the law allows us to set that period.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit. That includes liability for fraud, for wilful misconduct, and for death or personal injury caused by our negligence. If a court decides any part of this section cannot be enforced, the rest of it still applies.

Pro is not on sale. The pricing page shows what Pro is expected to cost. That is information about a plan we intend to offer, not an offer to sell it, and it does not bind either of us. Today no part of BuyMeSutta can be bought: no card, wallet or account details are collected from you, and nothing is charged.

When it does go on sale. Before we charge anyone, the price, the billing period, how to cancel, and what happens to refunds will be shown at the point of purchase and agreed by you there. Those terms will form part of this agreement. Prices shown before then may change.

Free Pro for early accounts is a gift. Some of the first accounts on the site are given Pro at no charge. You pay nothing for it, you give us nothing in return, and you are not buying a service: it is a gift we choose to make. Because nothing is paid, there is nothing to refund, nothing to charge back, and no fee that could lift the limit in Section 8. Nothing renews, and nothing is owed by either of us.

It carries no promises and no minimum period. We may change what Pro includes, pause it, or withdraw it from your account at any time, for any reason or none, with or without notice, and without owing you anything for it. Pro rests on Checkout and on eSewa, both in beta and one of them outside our control: it may be unavailable, lose features, or stop working, and we don’t promise it will ever be available at all. If we withdraw it, the account returns to the free page and your page keeps working.

Where we mention a year. We intend the gift to run for about a year from the day Pro becomes available, and we would like it to. That is what we plan, not a term you can hold us to, and not a period we guarantee. The offer is not reserved, not transferable and not worth money, it can be changed or closed for accounts not yet created, and it does not survive a page being taken down under Section 7.

Nothing else forms part of it. On the subject of Pro and the free grant, these terms are the whole of what we have agreed. Anything else you may have read or been told, on the pricing card, the sign-up page, a post, an email or a message from us, is not a promise, and you agree that you are not relying on any of it. Where it differs from this section, this section is what applies.

The waitlist. Leaving your email tells us you want to hear when Pro goes on sale. It buys nothing, holds nothing and commits you to nothing. We use the address for that message and nothing else, and you can ask us to remove it at any time.

We may update these terms. When we do, we’ll change the date at the top, and for significant changes we’ll let creators know by email or in the dashboard. If you keep using the site after that, the new terms apply.

Your page is yours. If someone brings a claim against us, or a regulator fines us, because of what you put on your page, how you took money through it, tax you didn’t pay, a brand you used that wasn’t yours, or anything else you did here, you agree to cover what it costs us: the claim itself, the fine, and what we spend defending it. We’ll tell you if it happens, and we won’t settle in your name without asking you first.

This is the ordinary bargain for a service of this kind: we provide the page, and responsibility for what you do with it stays with you.

These terms are governed by the laws of Nepal, and disputes go to the courts of Kathmandu. Questions, reports or legal notices: hello@buymesutta.com.