Terms of Service

Effective 2026-06-03 · Version 2.0 · revised 2026-06-03 — monthly subscription clause removed; cost-recovery rewritten per the alameleen alaiha directive

1. Who we are

qardon.org is a technology platform owned and operated by Fotoh, Inc., a for-profit company incorporated in the United States. qardon.org is the waqf registrar: it records who has committed money as a goodly loan to Allah, and it operates the systems that move that money according to your instructions. qardon.org is not a separate nonprofit, not a 501(c)(3), and not seeking to be. The principal you commit is never owned by Fotoh, Inc. or by qardon.org.

2. What qardon.org does

• Opens a waqf account in your name at your own bank, and a waqf investment account in your name at a partner halal brokerage.
• Records your commitments and balances in our registry.
• Initiates movements between your accounts and to or from other members' accounts, only as authorized by the agreement you sign with us (the Waqf Lender Agreement).
• Reviews applications from members who request a goodly loan, using a multi-specialist review panel.
• Reports to you on the use and movement of your committed waqf.

3. What qardon.org does not do

• We do not accept gifts to ourselves. We do not solicit charity. The money you commit is a goodly loan to Allah, not transferred to qardon.org. We issue no tax documents and promise no deductibility.
• We do not hold your money. Your waqf bank account is at your own bank, in your own name. Your waqf investment account is at a partner brokerage, in your own name.
• We are not a bank. We are not a credit union. We are not a money transmitter.
• We are not a registered investment adviser. We do not give you personal investment advice.
• We do not guarantee returns. Your invested waqf is subject to ordinary market risk.
• We do not provide calamity insurance. The Recovery Fund is calamity aid funded by investment yield on the waqf pool; payouts depend on fund availability. The Recovery Fund is not an insurance product.
• We do not provide tax, legal, or financial planning advice. Consult your own professional.

3a. How qardon.org pays for itself (alameleen alaiha)

You will not be billed for membership. There is no monthly fee. Members pay nothing to lend Allah a goodly loan through this platform.

The platform's actual operating costs — what it costs us to run the systems, comply with regulations, and serve members responsibly — are recovered from the yield that committed waqf produces in its investing stream. Not from the principal. Not from members directly. From the yield, before the surplus flows to the Recovery Fund.

This is the classical Islamic principle of alameleen alaiha (والعاملين عليها — "those employed to administer it"), set out in the Quran in Surah At-Tawbah 9:60 for the administration of community funds. Classical scholars extended the same principle, under the term ujrat al-nazir (the wage of the administrator), to the administration of awqaf. The underlying truth is the same: the person who does the work of administering a community fund may be paid for that work from the proceeds of the fund, openly and proportionately, without any of it touching the committed principal.

The order is fixed:

1. Yield is generated in the investing stream of committed waqf.
2. Actual operating costs are deducted (we publish these costs monthly so any member can audit them).
3. The surplus — what remains after costs — flows to the Recovery Fund for community calamity aid.

We do not set a fixed percentage. We deduct only what the platform actually costs to run. If costs are low, more flows to Recovery. If costs are higher, less flows to Recovery. The published numbers each month show exactly what happened. This is cost recovery, not profit-taking on the yield.

The point of structuring it this way is independence. qardon.org sustains itself from the work of the waqf it administers. It does not depend on outside sponsors for survival. If other parts of the Fotoh ecosystem change, qardon.org continues — because the lending itself funds the administration.

4. The act you authorize

When you join qardon.org, you sign one comprehensive agreement called the Waqf Lender Agreement. By that agreement, you lend Allah a goodly loan (a qard) in the one form the platform recognizes: a permanent waqf. You authorize qardon.org to act as the operator of that goodly loan — moving funds, placing trades, and recording the registry — without ever taking ownership of your committed principal.

Your access to your own money. You may add to your waqf bank account at any time. The account is yours, held in your own name, and you keep full access to it at all times: you may retrieve your funds whenever you choose. The permanence of a waqf is a covenant between you and Allah. It is not a restriction we place on your account, and qardon.org applies no withdrawal block, no penalty, no waiting period and no exit friction of any kind.

What happens if you ask to retrieve committed waqf. We will first offer you what the community exists to provide — a goodly loan, or a Recovery claim — in case the need that prompted the request can be met without undoing your covenant. If you still wish to proceed, we will state once, plainly and without repetition, what proceeding means: this is money you covenanted to Allah; retrieving it ends that covenant, and it closes your qardon.org account and ends the platform's service to you. If you then confirm, your funds are released to you promptly and in full. No person at qardon.org may refuse, delay, reduce or condition that release. The consequence of retrieval is the end of the covenant and of your membership — never a hold on your money.

5. The money flow

The waqf money never enters any account owned by qardon.org or Fotoh, Inc. The flow is:

• Deposit: you transfer money from your normal bank account into your waqf bank account at the same bank. qardon.org's system observes the deposit through the bank-linking service and updates your registry balance.
• Lending: when a member is approved for a goodly loan, qardon.org's system sends an instruction to your bank to move some of your idle waqf cash to the approved member's account. The transfer is bank-to-bank.
• Repayment: when the approved member repays an installment, the money comes back into your waqf bank account, bank-to-bank, and the registry updates.
• Investing: when your idle waqf cash exceeds a threshold, qardon.org's system places trades in your waqf investment account at the partner brokerage according to the halal investment model. The trades are executed by the brokerage under the trading authorization you granted at sign-up.

At every step the assets are in your name. qardon.org never takes custody.

6. The investment account (optional)

Opening a waqf investment account at a partner halal brokerage is optional. If you opt in:

• You open the account in your own name. You sign the partner brokerage's investment contract directly. That contract — between you and the brokerage — governs your investment relationship.
• The partner brokerage's Sharia review board governs which assets are halal-eligible in the investment universe. qardon.org does not maintain a constituted Sharia board of its own.
• qardon.org sends trading instructions to the brokerage on your behalf. We follow one consistent model portfolio across all member accounts, scaled to each member's balance, rebalanced as the model directs.
• All assets remain in your account, in your name. qardon.org cannot withdraw assets except as system-initiated rebalancing back to your waqf bank account.
• You may opt out of bot-managed investing at any time. If you opt out, you self-direct your waqf investment account at the brokerage. The brokerage's own terms then govern your account fully.

7. How qardon.org is funded

qardon.org is a technology platform within Fotoh, Inc. It must sustain itself to keep running. The funding model is structured to honor a single rule: the goodly loan is lent to Allah whole, and the principal is never touched. Members are not billed for membership, and borrowers are not billed for their loans. The platform funds itself as follows, each source transparent.

• No borrower fee of any kind. An approved borrower pays nothing to qardon.org for his loan — no validation fee, no credit-check fee, no origination fee, no per-loan commission. He receives the full amount and repays the principal, and nothing else.
• Cash-purchase discount spread (marketplace). When qardon.org pays cash for an asset on the qardon.com marketplace to fulfill a member purchase, the dealer's pre-committed cash discount is the spread. That spread is recorded as a contribution to the Recovery Fund, not as profit to qardon.org or Fotoh, Inc. Members pay the same listed price they would have paid otherwise; the dealer gives a cash discount, and that discount becomes community calamity aid.
• Operating-cost recovery from investment yield (alameleen alaiha). Described in §3a above. The actual cost of operating the platform is recovered from the yield produced by the investing stream of committed waqf, before surplus flows to the Recovery Fund. Not a fixed percentage. Only what the platform actually costs to run. Published monthly so any member can audit the numbers.

None of these funding sources touches your committed principal. Your principal stays in your name, in your waqf bank account, until the rules of your commitment say otherwise.

The funding rates above are not a ceiling-and-target arrangement. There is no fixed percentage. Real operating costs are deducted from yield, and the surplus flows to Recovery. We exist to serve the mission; the funding model exists to let us keep serving.

8. What you can do

• Add to your waqf any time.
• Set purpose restrictions on a given contribution (for example, restricted to medical-need members, or restricted to a specific country, within the rules the platform supports).
• Opt in or out of bot-managed investing.
• Stop adding to your waqf at any time. Your committed waqf remains under the rules it was committed under.

9. What you cannot do

• Direct committed waqf to a person outside the recipient classes the platform recognizes. (Retrieving your own funds is not in this list: see §4. Your access to your account is never restricted by us.)
• See the identities of individual people who receive your waqf as a goodly loan. Borrower privacy is absolute. You see category totals and impact summaries; you do not see names, faces, or per-loan identifying detail. (This protects borrower dignity, which is the heart of how the platform is built.)
• Demand a specific investment outcome. Markets do what markets do; we manage to the model but do not promise returns.
• Demand a specific Recovery Fund payout. Payouts depend on fund availability and the review panel's findings.

10. The review panel — how we decide

Every goodly-loan application, every Recovery Fund claim, every dispute is reviewed by a panel of six specialist agents — Medical, Financial, Legal, Fiqh, Fraud, and Documentation. An aggregator reconciles the six findings into a final decision, with the reasoning shown to you. If the panel cannot resolve a case, the case escalates to a senior specialist and then, if needed, to a priority-review queue with a stated timeline. Throughout, the decision is auditable: you see which specialists reviewed your case, what each found, and why the final call was made.

11. Disclaimers

• The platform is provided "as is." We make no warranties beyond what the law requires.
• Investment returns are not guaranteed. The capital in your waqf investment account is at market risk.
• Recovery Fund payouts are not guaranteed. They depend on fund availability and panel review.
• We do not guarantee approval of any goodly-loan application.
• We do not provide deposit insurance. We are not a bank.
• We do not provide tax, legal, investment, or financial planning advice.

12. Limits on liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the aggregate liability of qardon.org and Fotoh, Inc. arising out of or related to your use of the platform is limited to the fees you have paid us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages. Your committed waqf principal is not subject to any setoff or seizure by us or any related party; it remains your property, in your name, at your own bank, throughout.

13. Honest disclosure when you ask

Every support agent on this platform is an automated specialist trained on our documented rules. If you ask directly whether you are talking to a human, the agent will answer truthfully and tell you so. If you would prefer a human-priority review at any point, your case can be escalated to a priority-review queue with a stated timeline.

14. Privacy

How we collect, use, and protect your data is described in the Privacy Policy. By using the platform, you agree to the Privacy Policy.

15. Acceptable use

You agree not to: provide false information in any application or claim; attempt to use the platform for money laundering, fraud, or other illegal purposes; circumvent verification or fraud-detection systems; or harass any qardon.org operator, reviewer, or contractor. We may suspend or close an account that breaches this section, while preserving the rules of any waqf already committed under those rules.

16. Termination

You may stop adding to your waqf at any time. Closing your qardon.org account does not, by itself, move your money: committed waqf continues under the covenant you made, in your own account, unless you ask for it back. If you do ask for it back, §4 governs — the funds are released to you promptly and in full, and the account closure of §4 follows. You may at any time revoke the bot-managed investing authorization for future activity; the brokerage account remains in your name and you self-direct from that point. You may close the brokerage account through the brokerage's own process; the cash returns to your waqf bank account, which is yours.

17. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States.

18. Dispute resolution

You and qardon.org agree to resolve disputes by binding individual arbitration administered by a recognized arbitration body in the state of governing law. This is cheaper than court litigation, faster, and does not involve a jury. Each side bears its own attorney's fees. You waive participation in any class action or representative proceeding against qardon.org or Fotoh, Inc. Either side may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property. Either side may bring an individual small-claims action in lieu of arbitration where small-claims jurisdiction is available.

19. Changes

We may update these Terms. We will give you thirty days' notice by email and by banner in your member dashboard before any material change takes effect. Continued use after the effective date is your acceptance of the changed Terms. If you do not accept the change, you may stop using the platform; committed waqf continues under its commitment rules.

20. Contact

legal@qardon.org