The terms for using CivicRewards

These terms are a legal agreement between you and Signal Desk (Pty) Ltd, trading as Vessel Technologies ("CivicRewards", "we", "us", "our"), governing your use of civicrewards.co.za and its related resident reporting and councillor dashboard tools. By accessing or using the site, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the site. See also our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle personal information and forms part of these terms.

CivicRewards is a platform that lets residents report municipal service delivery problems (such as water, electricity, roads, and refuse issues) to their ward councillor and the relevant municipal department, and lets verified ward councillors view and manage those reports for their own ward. The site also describes a broader vision, including civic points, local merchant redemption, and future planned features. Section 6 and 7 explain exactly what is live today, and what is roadmap only.

You must be 18 or older to create an account or submit a report. The resident reporting tool currently supports Ward 115 (Fourways, Witkoppen, Douglasdale, and surrounding areas) only. Other wards may be listed as "coming soon" but are not yet connected to a real municipal reporting pipeline.

When you submit a report, you confirm that the information you provide (your name, address, suburb, and description of the problem) is accurate to the best of your knowledge, and you consent to it being shared with your ward councillor and the relevant municipal department, as described in our Privacy Policy. Submitting a report requires ticking a consent checkbox before the form can be sent.

We do not invent or guarantee municipal reference numbers. If a report doesn't have one yet, that's normal, most first-time reports don't. We also don't grade the severity or urgency of your report, or promise a specific resolution time, because we don't control municipal departments' own response times.

Emergency situations (for example, immediate danger to life or property) should be reported directly to emergency services or your municipality's emergency line, not through this form.

Councillor dashboard accounts are approval-gated. Creating an account does not grant access, we manually verify that you are a real, serving ward councillor for the ward you claim before approving your account. You're responsible for keeping your login details confidential, and for all activity under your account. We may suspend or remove an account we reasonably believe was created fraudulently, or is being misused.

Civic points, as described on this site, are non-financial loyalty units. They are not money, a deposit, a security, or a financial instrument of any kind, unless and until a specific, separately disclosed redemption product says otherwise. We can change, pause, or discontinue the points program, local merchant offers, or any specials at any time, and we don't guarantee any particular point value, redemption option, or that a redemption partner will remain available.

Some pages on this site describe potential future offerings, including tokenised utility bonds, sovereign bonds, and fractional municipal bonds (for example, "Jozibonds"), and ways civic points might one day convert into these or similar instruments. These are roadmap concepts, not products currently available for purchase, investment, or redemption.

Any such product, if and when it launches, will only be delivered:

• through a licensed, regulated third-party partner, since CivicRewards itself is not a licensed financial services provider, credit provider, or deposit-taking institution, and is not a lender;
• subject to all applicable regulatory approval, which may include approval from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, the National Credit Regulator, and/or the South African Reserve Bank, depending on how the final product is structured; and
• under its own separate terms and disclosures, published at the time that specific product actually goes live.

Nothing on civicrewards.co.za today is an offer, solicitation, or invitation to invest in, purchase, or subscribe for any financial instrument or bond.

Where you make a payment on the site, it's processed by Paystack (Pty) Ltd, a licensed South African payment service provider, under Paystack's own terms of service. We are not a party to the payment processing itself, and don't store your full card details.

Nothing on civicrewards.co.za constitutes financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Descriptions of potential future bond or investment-linked products are illustrative of our product direction only, and shouldn't be relied on for any financial decision. Please get independent advice before making any financial decision.

You agree not to:

• submit false, fraudulent, or misleading reports;
• impersonate a ward councillor, municipal official, or anyone else;
• attempt to access another resident's or councillor's account or data, or bypass the platform's access controls;
• use the site to send unsolicited messages, or for any unlawful purpose under South African law.

The CivicRewards name, logo, site design, and content are owned by Signal Desk (Pty) Ltd t/a Vessel Technologies, or used under licence. You may not copy, reproduce, or use our branding or content without our prior written permission, other than to the extent needed to use the site normally.

CivicRewards is provided "as is". We don't guarantee that any report you submit will be resolved, resolved within any particular time, or actioned at all by the relevant municipal department, since final action is outside our control. We don't guarantee the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at all times.

To the maximum extent permitted by South African law, Signal Desk (Pty) Ltd t/a Vessel Technologies will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from your use of CivicRewards, including loss arising from a municipal department's action or inaction, a third-party partner's conduct (including Paystack or any local merchant), or reliance on roadmap features described on the site that are not yet live. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We may suspend or terminate your access to CivicRewards if you breach these terms, or if we reasonably believe your account poses a security or integrity risk to the platform. You may stop using the site, or ask us to delete your account, at any time.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Any dispute will be subject to the jurisdiction of the South African courts, Gauteng Division, Johannesburg.

We may update these terms as CivicRewards evolves. If we make a material change, we'll update the "last updated" date at the top of this page. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.

Signal Desk (Pty) Ltd t/a Vessel Technologies
Email: Hello@signaldesk.co.za
Phone: +27 10 142 5338
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa