Legal
Third-Party Services
Interim launch version 2026-10-21.1. Effective date: October 21, 2026. This page explains which companies Much Obliged relies on, what each controls, and what Much Obliged does not control.
| Provider | What it does for Much Obliged | What Much Obliged controls | What the provider controls | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Processes every payment made through Much Obliged; onboards and verifies Creators' Connected Accounts; pays Creators out; hosts Checkout, the billing portal and Connect onboarding; sends receipts and billing emails; handles disputes and refunds; files creators' tax forms where Stripe is required to | Creating checkouts, subscriptions and portal sessions on the relevant account; reading their status; a $0 application fee | Approval and verification of accounts; payout timing and schedules; fees and fee changes; dispute procedures and outcomes; receipt content; whether a Connected Account can operate; Stripe's own privacy policy and terms, which Creators accept directly | In use |
| Supabase | Database, authentication (sign-in, email confirmation, password reset) and file storage (for example photos and Creative Work images) | What is stored, table-level access rules, backups configuration | Availability, backups and log retention on the chosen plan, the region | In use |
| Vercel | Hosts the website and application | Deployments, environment configuration | Availability, request logs (short retention), the network edge | In use |
| Discord | Lets a Creator connect a server and role, and lets a Member connect their Discord account; the Much Obliged bot adds members and manages one role | Which role is granted and when, based on paid time; health checks | Whether the bot and role work in the server; Discord availability; Discord's Developer Policy, monetization rules and user terms; a Member's Discord account | In use |
| Resend | Delivers sign-up confirmation and password-reset emails as the SMTP transport for authentication, and, where application email is switched on, the copy of an Offers or Creative Work inquiry that Much Obliged sends the Creator it was sent to | Templates; which messages are sent | Delivery | In use. Much Obliged sends no marketing email through it. |
| GitHub Actions | Runs a read-only reconciliation job against Stripe, the database and Discord with restricted credentials | What the job reads and reports | Scheduling and availability | In use |
| X and Google (YouTube) | Let a Creator who brought a page over from elsewhere confirm it is theirs by signing in; and, for Google, let a Creator connect their YouTube channel to their account | What is read: the account's identifier and username, nothing else; the access token is used once, revoked and never stored | Their own sign-in, terms and privacy policies | Used when a Creator chooses the optional source-verification flow, where configured |
| YouTube (Google) and Vimeo | On a Creator's Card page, a link to one video shows its public picture, which our servers look up through the provider's public oEmbed address and serve from our own address; pressing Play loads the provider's player in the visitor's browser. A page brought over that showed a YouTube channel's latest video shows that video's picture the same way; our servers find the video from YouTube's public channel page and feed, and the picture opens it on YouTube | What is looked up and when; the picture is served by Much Obliged; the player loads only on Play, from YouTube's privacy-enhanced address or with Vimeo's do-not-track setting | Their player, their terms and privacy policies | Used on Card pages with video links |
| Brave Search | A web search our staff may run to find public creator pages to invite | The search terms | Their search service | Used by staff for manually initiated public-web research about prospective Creators, where configured |
Discord membership access, specifically
- Much Obliged manages one role in a Creator's server. It adds the role when a Member's paid time is verified and removes it when paid time ends. It never removes a Member from the server.
- Much Obliged requests only the permissions it needs (create invite, manage roles), no administrator permission, and no access to messages.
- Much Obliged stores the Creator's Discord user ID, server ID and name, role ID and name, and each Member's Discord user ID and username. It never stores Discord access tokens.
- If Discord is unavailable or the server is misconfigured (bot removed, role deleted or moved above the bot, permissions changed), Much Obliged records the problem, keeps retrying, and shows the Member and the Creator what is wrong. Payment records are never changed by a Discord failure, and a Discord failure never refunds anyone.
- Discord's rules about paid features in apps are Discord's; Much Obliged sells nothing through Discord and charges Creators no Discord-specific fee.
What Much Obliged does not do through any provider
Much Obliged does not hold or move money through any provider other than Stripe's direct charge to the Creator's own account; does not process, hold or check cash or other payments a Seller records as received outside Much Obliged; does not purchase postage, print labels or verify tracking or delivery with any carrier; does not verify Creators' identities itself (Stripe does); does not send marketing email; and does not guarantee any provider's availability.