Terms of Use

1. About PayProof AU

PayProof AU exists to help Australian small businesses, contractors, suppliers, and service providers understand payment risk before they accept work.

The service helps users check business identity signals, search ABN-linked or name-linked payment reports, and submit evidence about unpaid, part-paid, or late-paid invoices.

The pilot operator is Ben Halligan. Contact ben.b.halligan@gmail.com for legal, privacy, takedown, correction, or moderation requests.

PayProof AU is not a law firm, court, debt collector, credit reporting body, financial adviser, insolvency practitioner, or government agency.

2. Pilot status

The service is currently operating as a controlled public pilot. Features, review processes, pricing, and publication rules may change as the service develops.

During the pilot, PayProof AU may keep reports private while testing verification, right of reply, correction, and takedown workflows.

Public-facing profiles should start with business and ABN-level facts where possible. Person names, job-contact names, director names, and officeholder details should be used only where they are relevant, evidence-backed, and necessary to identify who the reporter dealt with. Private contact details must not be displayed publicly.

3. Who may use the service

• You must be at least 18 years old.
• You must use the service for business-related payment-risk checks or evidence submission.
• You must not use the service to harass, threaten, discriminate against, shame, or personally target anyone.
• You must not use PayProof AU for consumer credit, employment, tenancy, insurance, lending, or other regulated eligibility decisions.

4. Your evidence and statements

• Only submit information you believe is true, accurate, current, and supported by documents or records.
• Only upload material you have the right to provide, such as invoices, quotes, contracts, delivery records, reminders, payment receipts, bank transaction evidence, and correspondence.
• Remove or redact unnecessary personal information before upload, including tax file numbers, full bank details, card numbers, private home addresses, identity documents, passwords, and unrelated third-party details.
• If you name a person, only use the name to identify the job contact or responsible business context. Do not include private phone numbers, private emails, home addresses, bank details, identity documents, photos of faces, or unrelated personal details in public-facing wording.
• Do not submit rumours, assumptions, revenge posts, threats, insults, slurs, protected-attribute comments, or claims that someone committed fraud or a crime unless supported by an official public source and reviewed by PayProof AU.

5. Moderation and publication

PayProof AU may review, reject, edit, summarise, hold, label, de-identify, or remove submitted material. Public summaries are intended to describe evidence-backed payment status and timing, not personal character.

Human review is required before a new report is verified or made public. Automated tools may assist with sorting, formatting, duplicate detection, and risk flags, but they do not replace human publication decisions.

A report may be kept private, marked as under review, labelled disputed, corrected, or removed if evidence is incomplete, the wrong entity appears to be named, the matter is genuinely unclear, or publication would create legal, privacy, safety, or fairness risk.

Grey-area cases should not be verified or publicly presented as non-payment. If quality of work, scope, defects, set-off, counterclaims, identity, or payment timing are genuinely unclear, the report should remain private, disputed, or rejected until the facts are clear.

Businesses and affected people may be offered a right of reply before a report is verified or made public. PayProof AU may publish or display a moderated response beside a report where appropriate.

6. Public records and identity checks

Public records, ASIC information, court listings, judgments, insolvency notices, and similar sources may be linked or summarised as context only.

A public listing, court filing, or registry entry does not by itself prove non-payment, wrongdoing, dishonesty, insolvency, or liability.

7. Fees

If paid features, subscriptions, report reviews, or investigation services are introduced, prices and inclusions will be shown before purchase.

PayProof AU may refuse paid work where the matter is unsuitable, unsafe, abusive, unsupported, legally sensitive, or outside the service scope.

8. No legal advice or guaranteed outcome

Information on PayProof AU is general business-risk information only. It is not legal advice and should not replace advice from a qualified lawyer or accountant.

PayProof AU does not guarantee that a report is complete, that a business will pay, that a dispute will be resolved, or that a user will avoid loss.

9. Misuse

PayProof AU may block access, reject submissions, remove content, preserve records, or cooperate with lawful requests if the service is used for abuse, false reporting, privacy breaches, legal threats, spam, scraping, security attacks, or other misuse.

10. Changes

These terms may be updated as the pilot develops. Continued use after an update means you accept the updated terms from the date shown above.