Terms of service

PrepBanz is provided by Softbanz Technology Solutions LLC, a company registered in the United States ("PrepBanz", "we", "us").

These terms apply whenever you use PrepBanz: our website at prepbanz.com and the PrepBanz app, on the web or on a phone. By creating an account or using PrepBanz, you agree to them.

Our Refund and cancellation policy is part of these terms. Our Privacy policy explains how we handle personal information.

If you have a question about these terms, write to hello@prepbanz.com.

PrepBanz is software that independent tutors use to run their own classes: live lessons, work, results, and communication with their students and parents.

PrepBanz isn't a tutoring marketplace. We don't find students for tutors, and we don't find, match, recommend or employ tutors. We don't choose which students a tutor teaches, and we don't collect tuition.

Tutors are independent. They aren't our employees, agents or contractors. Each tutor is responsible for their own teaching, the content of their courses, the tuition they charge, and their own legal and tax obligations.

PrepBanz has three kinds of account: tutor, student and parent. Each one sees and does different things.

Tutors create courses and invite students with an invite link or a class code. Students join their tutor's courses. A parent account is linked to a student when the student adds their parent's or guardian's contact details.

Give accurate details when you sign up, and keep them up to date.

Keeping your account secure. Keep your password and sign-in codes to yourself. You're responsible for what happens in your account, unless it happens because of a failure on our side. If you think someone else has used your account, tell us straight away at hello@prepbanz.com.

An account is for one person. Don't share it, and don't create an account for someone else without their permission. A parent may help their child set up a student account.

Tutors must be adults who are legally able to enter into contracts where they live.

Students join PrepBanz when their tutor invites them. A student under 18 must add a parent's or guardian's email address or phone number to their account.

The parent or guardian of a student under 18 is responsible for the student's use of PrepBanz and, where the law allows, agrees to these terms on the student's behalf. Where the law requires a parent's or guardian's consent before a child uses PrepBanz, we ask for it first.

A parent can see only their own linked children, through their own parent account.

Tuition is the fee a tutor charges for their teaching. It's agreed between the tutor and the family and paid directly to the tutor, outside PrepBanz.

PrepBanz doesn't collect tuition, isn't a party to the tuition arrangement and takes no share of it. Questions about tuition, missed lessons or the quality of teaching are between the family and the tutor.

Tutors keep all the tuition they collect.

Families pay PrepBanz a monthly platform fee for each course a student takes. It's separate from tuition.

Free trial. Each student's first course starts with a 15-day free trial. You don't need a card to start it, and we'll remind you before it ends. It's one trial per student, so courses added later don't get another. To carry on after the trial, add a card: you pay for the rest of that month, then the monthly price from the 1st. If you don't, the course is locked when the trial ends, and it opens again once you've added a card and paid.

Billing on the 1st. Every course renews on the 1st of each month. Join partway through a month and you pay only for the days left. Trial days are never charged.

Adding a course. A course added partway through a month is charged at the student's new price straight away, for its remaining days. Courses already paid for that month keep their price, with no refund or credit. From the next 1st, all the student's active courses are charged at the new price.

Courses that haven't started. If a student joins a course that hasn't begun yet, nothing is charged until it does.

Paying. Platform fees are charged in US dollars, by card, through our payment provider. PrepBanz covers the card processing fees, so there's no surcharge. If your card is in another currency, your bank converts the amount, and any charges your bank makes for that are between you and your bank.

Cancelling. You can cancel a course at any time. Cancelling stops the next renewal, and the course stays open until the end of the period you've paid for.

Failed payments. If a payment fails, you have three days to complete it before access to that course pauses. Once the outstanding amount is paid, the course opens again.

Refunds. Unused days aren't refunded automatically, but your legal rights always apply. Our Refund and cancellation policy explains when a refund may apply, and clause 13.6 explains when we refund if we close a tutor's account.

Price changes. We may change platform fees. If we do, we'll email you at least 15 days before the new price takes effect. A new price applies only from a future 1st, so it never changes the price of a month that has already started. If you don't want to continue at the new price, you can cancel before it applies.

PrepBanz is free for tutors. There's no subscription, no setup fee and no share of your tuition, and PrepBanz charges no fee on withdrawals.

Your students' information. You'll see information about the students in your courses and their linked parents. Use it only to teach those students and run your courses, and don't share it with anyone who doesn't need it.

AI allowance. Tutors get an included AI usage allowance. Its size is linked to the platform fees paid for your courses, and it renews each month. Allowance you don't use doesn't carry over to the next month. We set how the allowance is worked out and may change it.

AI credits. If you use up your allowance, you can buy optional AI credit top-ups by card. Top-up credits last until the end of the billing month you buy them in, and any you haven't used by then don't carry over. We'll show you when they expire before you buy. Credits are for use on PrepBanz only. They have no cash value, and they can't be exchanged for money or transferred to someone else.

Refunds and changes to credits. AI credit top-ups aren't normally refundable, unless the law gives you a right to a refund. We may change how credits work in future. If we do, we'll tell you in advance, and any change will follow the law that applies.

When credits run out. If you have no allowance or credits left, only the AI features that use credits pause. Your courses, live classes, students and every other teaching tool keep working.

Banning a student from a course. You can ban a student from one of your courses, and unban them later. While a student is banned, they can't use that course and it doesn't renew for them. Banning a student doesn't normally lead to a refund of the platform fee already paid for that month, unless the law requires one. Our Refund and cancellation policy explains this.

Tutors earn US$5 for each paid course enrolment, for every full month a family pays for it. One student in one course is one enrolment.

A course paid for part of a month earns by the days paid, so half a month earns US$2.50. Free trial days aren't paid, so they don't earn.

An earning is recorded when the family's payment succeeds. It can be withdrawn 15 days after that payment.

You can withdraw whenever you have at least US$10 available. There's no fixed payout schedule: you choose when to withdraw.

Payouts are made to your bank account through our payment provider, where it supports payouts in your country. Before your first withdrawal, you'll need to complete the provider's identity checks.

PrepBanz doesn't charge withdrawal fees. Payment provider and transfer charges may apply. They're paid by you and come out of the amount you receive.

If a family's payment is refunded, reversed or disputed with their bank (a chargeback), the earning linked to it may be reversed. If that earning has already been withdrawn, we may take the same amount from your future earnings, as far as the law allows.

We may hold or adjust an earning if we reasonably believe it came from a mistake, fraud or a breach of these terms. We'll tell you why.

Earnings aren't wages. You're responsible for any tax on them where you live.

Tutors must teach and communicate with students in a way that suits their age.

Safeguarding. PrepBanz doesn't carry out background checks on tutors, and having a PrepBanz account doesn't mean a tutor has been checked or approved by us. Each tutor is responsible for meeting the child-safety, safeguarding, licensing and background-check requirements that apply where they teach. This doesn't reduce any responsibilities the law places on PrepBanz itself.

What we may do. We may look into reports, including by reviewing the messages, files or activity involved, and we may remove content or suspend or close accounts, as clause 13 explains. Where the law requires it, or someone may be at risk, we may share information with the relevant authorities.

Tutors own the courses, lessons, questions and materials they create or upload. Students own the work they submit.

You give PrepBanz permission to store, copy, process and display your content only as needed to run PrepBanz for you and the people you share it with, including through our service providers and when you use AI features. This permission ends when your content is deleted, except where the law requires us to keep it. Deleted content may stay in backups for a limited time before it's overwritten.

Only upload content you have the right to share.

PrepBanz itself, including its software, design and brand, belongs to us or to the people we license it from. You may not copy or use it except as these terms allow.

Services from other companies. Live classes run inside PrepBanz through an integrated video service provided by another company. Card payments and tutor payouts are handled by our payment provider. When you use these parts of PrepBanz, the provider's own terms may also apply. Our Privacy policy describes the service providers we use.

Your own meeting link. A tutor can use their own meeting link from another video service, such as their own Zoom or Google Meet account, instead of the live class built into PrepBanz, or as a back-up if it's unavailable. The tutor sets up and manages that meeting, including who can join and its safety settings. These services are run by other companies under their own terms and privacy policies. We don't control them, how reliable they are or what features they offer. These terms still apply to how tutors treat the students they teach through PrepBanz.

Lecture recordings. Tutors can record their live lectures with PrepBanz's recording feature, including their own camera where it's available. A recording is attached to its lecture. Once the tutor publishes it, the students in that course can watch it throughout the course's semester, depending on the course's settings, for as long as the recording is kept. Recordings are kept for up to 12 months and then scheduled for deletion, as our Privacy policy explains.

Recording responsibilities. Tutors are responsible for telling their class before they record, for having any permissions the law requires, especially for children, and for having the right to share each recording.

Exam monitoring. Tutors can turn on monitoring for an exam, as our Privacy policy explains. A tutor who uses it must use the information it collects only to run that exam fairly.

PrepBanz includes AI features, such as question drafts for tutors, help with checking answers and suggesting marks and feedback, and hints and learning help for students.

To provide them, the content a feature needs, such as a question or a student's answer, is sent to an AI service provider to be processed. When AI helps check answers, we send the question and the student's answer, without the student's or tutor's name or other details the check doesn't need.

PrepBanz doesn't use tutors' or students' personal information to train AI models.

AI can be wrong. Treat what it produces as a suggestion, not as fact.

Tutors are responsible for the questions they use and the marks they release. AI never releases results; the tutor does. Hints can reach students without the tutor checking them first, and they're never a mark.

Only put personal information into AI features when the task needs it.

You can ask us to close your account at any time by writing to hello@prepbanz.com from the email address on your account. There isn't a way to close your account yourself in the app at the moment. Parents can also ask for a linked child's information to be deleted from the privacy settings in the app.

Cancelling a course stops its next renewal. Our Refund and cancellation policy explains what happens to the current paid period.

We don't close a tutor's account without good reason.

We may remove content that breaks these terms. We may suspend or close an account if someone breaks these terms seriously or repeatedly, commits fraud, puts others at risk, especially children, or if the law requires it. Where it's safe and lawful, we'll tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

If a tutor's account closes, their students lose access to that tutor's courses, and the platform fees for those courses stop renewing.

Refunds if we close a tutor's account. If we close a tutor's account because of serious misconduct, or because something prevents the tutor from providing the courses families have paid for, we'll refund the affected families' platform fees for the unused part of the current paid period. This covers PrepBanz platform fees only. We don't collect tuition, so any tuition refund is between the family and the tutor.

What happens to your information when an account closes is explained in our Privacy policy.

We work to keep PrepBanz available and working well, but we can't promise it will always be available or free of errors.

We may need to pause parts of PrepBanz for maintenance, and we may change or improve features over time. If the live class built into PrepBanz is unavailable, tutors can use their own meeting link instead (clause 11.2).

If we remove something important that you pay for, we'll tell you in advance.

Nothing in these terms affects your legal rights as a consumer. Nothing limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit.

Families. Where the law allows, our total responsibility to you is limited to the platform fees paid for the student's courses in the 12 months before the claim.

Tutors. Where the law allows, our total responsibility to you is limited to the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, such as for AI credits. This limit doesn't reduce any earnings we owe you under clause 8.

Claims caused by a tutor. If someone makes a claim against PrepBanz because content a tutor uploaded was unlawful, because the tutor infringed someone else's rights, or because the tutor misused PrepBanz, the tutor agrees to cover the reasonable losses and costs we incur from that claim, as far as the law allows. This doesn't apply to the extent the claim was caused by our own negligence, our breach of these terms or our misconduct. We'll tell the tutor promptly about any such claim.

We may update these terms as PrepBanz changes. The date at the top shows when they were last updated.

If we make an important change, we'll email registered users before it takes effect, with a short summary of what's changed and a link to the new terms. Where the law requires it, we'll ask you to accept the new terms.

If you keep using PrepBanz after a change takes effect, the new terms apply. If you don't agree, you can stop using PrepBanz and cancel before the change takes effect.

Changes to platform fees follow clause 6.11.

If something goes wrong, please contact us first at hello@prepbanz.com so we can try to put it right.

If you're a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer and privacy laws where you live, and you can bring a claim in your local courts.