Terms of service

1. Who we are

Matu is operated by an individual trader established in Estonia, European Union (the "Provider", "we", or "us"). For these Terms, the Provider is the trader and you are the consumer.

You can reach us at joesalulabs@gmail.com.

2. Accepting these terms

By creating a Matu account, opening the Matu app, or subscribing, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. These two documents together form the contract between you and the Provider. If you do not agree, please do not use Matu.

Age. You must be at least 13 years old to use Matu (the age of digital consent in Estonia under the GDPR). In some EU member states the age is higher; if you are below the age of digital consent in your country, please use Matu only with the involvement and permission of a parent or guardian. Matu is not designed for children under 13.

3. What Matu is

Matu is a Christian devotional Android app. It includes:

• A prayer lock that interrupts the apps you choose with a short prayer prompt before you can use them.
• A Bible reader with multiple translations, highlights, and a personal journal.
• A daily verse chosen for your stated struggles and goals.
• An AI companion ("Matu") for prayer, conversation, and Scripture-grounded encouragement.
• Optional notifications — a gentle follow-up on something you mentioned, or a quiet nudge if you haven't opened the app in a while. Two kinds, no streaks, no morning verse spam. Turn them off in Profile → Notifications anytime.

How much of the above you actually get depends on which tier you're on — see Section 4.

Matu is provided "as is", as an evolving product. Features can be added, changed, or removed over time; we will give you reasonable notice for material changes that affect a feature you actively rely on.

4. Subscription, trial, and price

Matu has three tiers, and you decide which one to be on at the end of onboarding.

Free

If you tap "Continue without trial", you stay on Matu for free. You get the Bible reader, your journal, your profile, the in-app settings, and a one-time conversation with the Matu companion so the choice between free and paid is a real one, not a hypothetical. The prayer lock, the daily verse, ongoing chat, and notifications are reserved for the paid product. We don't auto-bill anyone on free; you stay on free until you choose to upgrade.

7-day free trial

If you tap "Start free trial", Google Play opens to confirm the trial against a payment method on your Google account (this is what Google requires; we don't see or receive any card details). You get full access for 7 days: prayer lock, full Matu companion with memory, the daily verse, notifications — everything. Cancel any time before day 7 from Google Play → Subscriptions → Matu, and you will not be charged. If you don't cancel, your chosen plan begins automatically on day 8.

Paid subscription

After the trial — or at any time from the free tier — Matu is €9 per month or €65 per year (about €5.42 per month, roughly 40% off the monthly price). Both prices include VAT at the rate applicable in your billing country at the time of purchase, and the up-to-date price is always shown in the app and on the Google Play listing immediately before purchase.

Auto-renewal. The subscription renews automatically each billing period at the then-current price until you cancel. Monthly subscriptions renew each month; yearly subscriptions renew each year. Google Play charges your selected payment method at the start of each renewal period.

Switching plans. You can switch between monthly and yearly anytime from Google Play → Subscriptions → Matu → Change plan. Google handles any pro-rata adjustment.

Price changes. If we change the price, Google Play will notify you before the new amount is charged, and you can cancel before the next renewal to avoid being billed the new price.

Going back to free. Cancelling a paid subscription does not delete your account or your data. Your access continues through the period you've already paid for, and after that you fall back to the free tier above (Bible, journal, profile remain available; lock and ongoing chat are paywalled again).

5. Payment

All payments are processed by Google Play Billing. Google is the merchant of record for the subscription transaction; their Google Play Terms of Service and refund policy apply to the payment itself.

We never receive your card details. We receive only the fact of your subscription status (active, trial, cancelled, expired) from Google via our subscription provider RevenueCat.

6. Right of withdrawal & how to cancel

Your 14-day right of withdrawal

Under EU Directive 2011/83/EU (Consumer Rights Directive), you have a right to withdraw from a paid subscription within 14 days of the day it was concluded, without giving any reason and without bearing any cost beyond the service you've already used.

Express request & waiver for digital services

Matu is a digital service whose performance begins immediately upon subscribing. By starting your paid subscription, you expressly request that we begin performance during the 14-day withdrawal period, and you acknowledge that you will lose your right of withdrawal once the service has been fully provided (Article 16(o) of the Consumer Rights Directive).

In practice this means: while you are still in your free trial, withdrawal is moot — nothing has been charged. Once a paid period starts, the standard withdrawal right is replaced by the cancellation method below, and refunds (if any) are handled by Google Play under its policy.

How to cancel at any time

You can cancel your Matu subscription at any time, with or without a reason. Because billing is handled by Google Play, cancellation also happens there:

1. Open the Google Play Store app on your phone.
2. Tap your profile picture → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions.
3. Tap Matu → Cancel subscription.

Your access continues until the end of the period you have already paid for; you will not be charged again. Google's refund policy governs any refund of an in-progress period. If you also want to delete your account and all data we hold for you, open Matu → Profile → Delete account.

7. Acceptable use

Use Matu in good faith. You agree not to:

• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or otherwise try to extract the source code or models powering Matu, except where this is expressly permitted by mandatory law.
• Attempt to bypass, jailbreak, or override Matu's safety mechanisms — including the crisis classifier and the persona guardrails of the AI companion.
• Use Matu to harass, defraud, or harm any other person, or to generate content that is unlawful, defamatory, hateful, or sexually explicit.
• Resell, lease, share, or commercially redistribute access to your Matu account or subscription. Your account is for your personal use.
• Probe, scan, or load-test the Matu service, or knowingly submit content (including AI prompts) intended to disrupt, degrade, or extract data from it.
• Use Matu in violation of applicable law, including export and sanctions law.

8. The Matu companion: what it is and isn't

The Matu AI companion is a Christian conversational guide powered by large language models from Anthropic and OpenAI. It is designed to listen, respond, and ground its replies in Scripture.

It is not infallible. Like any large language model, Matu can produce inaccurate, incomplete, or contextually wrong responses, including incorrect Bible references. Verify anything important against a trusted source.

It is not pastoral, medical, legal, or financial advice. Matu is a personal companion for prayer and encouragement — not a substitute for a pastor, counsellor, doctor, lawyer, or emergency service. Do not rely on Matu for decisions in those domains.

Crisis content. If you indicate self-harm, suicidal ideation, abuse, or another acute crisis, Matu will interrupt the normal conversation and surface emergency resources. This is a safety feature; please use it as a starting point and reach out to a trusted person or a national helpline.

Inputs you provide. You are responsible for the messages you send to Matu. Do not enter information about third parties without their consent (real names, contact details, sensitive personal information about others).

Third-party processors. Your messages are sent over HTTPS to Anthropic and OpenAI for processing under contracts that prohibit them from training their models on your messages. See our Privacy Policy section 4 for the full mechanics.

9. Intellectual property & your licence

Matu, including its name, logo, written content, prayer library, daily-verse outputs, design system, source code, and all other materials we provide, is owned by the Provider or its licensors and is protected by copyright and other intellectual-property law.

We grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to install and use Matu on a device you own or control, for your own personal, non-commercial purposes, for as long as you comply with these Terms. No other rights are granted; in particular, you may not copy, modify, publicly display, or redistribute any part of Matu beyond what is permitted by mandatory law.

Notes you write, highlights you make, and messages you send belong to you. You grant the Provider a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, transmit, and process this content strictly to operate Matu for you, in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Bible text in the app is provided through the helloao Free Use Bible API and remains subject to its respective public-domain or permissive licences.

10. Suspension and termination

You can leave at any time. Cancel your subscription via Google Play (Section 6) and, if you also wish to remove your data, delete your account in Profile → Delete account. Account deletion cascades through every record we hold for you.

We may suspend or close your account if (a) you materially breach these Terms or our acceptable-use rules, (b) we are required to by law, or (c) your continued use poses a real risk of harm to you, to other users, or to the service. Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will give you prior notice and a chance to fix the problem.

Termination does not affect rights and obligations that have already accrued — for example, fees for periods you have already used. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (intellectual property, liability, governing law) will survive.

11. Warranty and liability

Statutory conformity (Digital Content Directive EU 2019/770). We supply Matu with the conformity required by EU law: the service should match its description, be fit for the purposes for which a service of this type is normally used, and possess the qualities a consumer can reasonably expect. If Matu does not, you are entitled to the remedies provided by the Estonian Law of Obligations Act and EU consumer-protection rules — typically having the lack of conformity remedied or, if that is not possible or proportionate, a price reduction or contract termination.

Liability. We provide Matu with professional care and aim to keep it safe, secure, and free of defects. To the extent permitted by applicable consumer-protection law:

• We are liable for damage caused by our intentional misconduct or gross negligence, and for foreseeable damage caused by our breach of these Terms.
• We are not liable for damage that was not reasonably foreseeable at the time the contract was concluded, for damage you could have avoided by reasonable care, or for damage caused by events outside our reasonable control.
• Nothing in these Terms limits our liability for death, personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud, or any other liability that cannot be excluded under applicable mandatory law.

Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected.

12. Privacy

Our handling of your personal data is described in detail in our Privacy Policy, which is part of these Terms. Please read it before agreeing.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms as Matu evolves — for example, to reflect new features, new processors, or new legal requirements. The current version always lives at getmatu.app/terms.

14. Governing law, disputes, and contact

Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of Estonia, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. As an EU consumer, you keep every right that mandatory consumer-protection law in your country of residence gives you, regardless of these Terms.

Forum. Disputes may be brought before the competent courts of Tallinn, Estonia. As an EU consumer, you may also bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence, and we may bring proceedings against you only in the courts of your country of residence.

EU online dispute resolution. The European Commission provides an online dispute-resolution platform for consumers, available at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr. We are not currently committed to using it; you can also contact the Estonian Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA) for help.

Severability. If a court finds any part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest will remain in effect and the unenforceable part will be reduced to what is enforceable as closely to the original as possible.

Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms. We may transfer ours to a successor in connection with a reorganisation, sale, or similar transaction, provided the successor assumes our obligations and your rights under these Terms are not materially diminished.

Google Play. These Terms are between you and the Provider only; Google is not a party. Your use of Matu through the Google Play Store is also subject to the Google Play Terms of Service. As required by Google, you acknowledge that Google is a third-party beneficiary of these Terms with respect to your installation and use of Matu.

Contact.

joesalulabs@gmail.com
Estonia, European Union