Terms of Service

You must:

• Be at least 18 years old (or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, if higher).
• Have the legal capacity to enter into a binding agreement.
• Not be prohibited from using the Service under the laws of your country of residence.
• Not be a registered sex offender or currently subject to a court order that would make romantic or sexual contact with another adult unlawful.
• Have been admitted to Velvet Ties through our application process or an invitation from an existing member.

Velvet Ties reserves the right to refuse service or suspend accounts at our sole discretion, including when our vetting team determines an application does not fit the community.

You are responsible for everything that happens on your account. You agree to:

• Provide accurate, current, and complete information.
• Keep your login credentials confidential.
• Notify us immediately at support@velvetties.com if you suspect unauthorized access.
• Use only your own identity and photos. You may not create an account on behalf of anyone else.

You may have only one active account. Velvet Ties may, at its discretion, merge or close duplicate accounts.

Velvet Ties is a paid service. Subscription price, billing cycle, and refund terms are disclosed inside the app before you confirm your subscription and are incorporated into these Terms by reference.

• Payment processor. Payments and saved cards are processed by our PCI-compliant payment processor, Square. Your card details are handled by Square under their own terms and stored only as a secure token; Velvet Ties never stores your full card number.
• Saving a card when you apply. When you apply, you may choose to securely save a payment card on file. Saving a card at the time you apply does not charge you. Your saved card is charged only if your application is approved (typically within 30 days of applying). If you are not approved, you are never charged and the card authorization is released. You may cancel at any time before approval at no charge.
• Auto-renewal. Subscriptions auto-renew at the end of each billing cycle unless you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your account settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• Refunds. Subscription fees are generally non-refundable, except where required by law. We may issue a discretionary refund for a first-time billing error if you contact us within 14 days of the charge.
• Price changes. If we change subscription prices, the new price applies to your next billing cycle after we've given you at least 30 days' notice.

The Lifetime Founding Membership is a one-time purchase of $1,000 (USD), limited to 100 members. It is separate from the recurring subscription described in Section 3 and does not auto-renew.

• What it grants. Regular (Basic) membership for as long as Velvet Ties operates the Service, at no further membership charge. This includes access to the in-app matchmaker in both matching modes, admission to buy into local member events, your member profile, and member Discover.
• What it does not include. Premium-tier offerings—including profile audits and curated group travel—are a separate paid tier and are not included. Tickets to events, trips, and other individually-priced experiences are charged separately, on the same terms as for every other member.
• Non-refundable. The Lifetime Founding Membership fee is non-refundable in full, including if you stop using the Service, if your account is closed for a breach of these Terms, or if the Service is discontinued. This is the case except where a refund is required by law. Please treat this purchase as final before you buy.
• Non-transferable. The membership is personal to you. It cannot be sold, gifted, assigned, or transferred to another person, and it does not survive the closure of your account.
• What “lifetime” means. It means the lifetime of the Service, not a guarantee that the Service will operate for any particular period. We are not promising Velvet Ties will exist forever, and no pro-rata refund is owed if it ceases operating.
• Features may change. The specific features inside the Regular tier will change over time as we build — we may add, alter, or retire individual features without prior notice. What does not change is the entitlement itself: you hold Regular-tier membership at no further membership charge. If we ever restructure our tiers, we will place you on whichever tier is the closest successor to Regular, still at no further membership charge.
• Conduct still applies. A Lifetime Founding Membership does not exempt you from Sections 5 and 6. We may suspend or close the account of any member, lifetime included, for conduct violations, and no refund is owed if we do.

Questions before you buy: dg@velvetties.com.

Velvet Ties is a curated matchmaking service. Our human matchmakers review profiles and surface introductions they think are worth considering. The matchmaking algorithm produces decision support for the matchmaker, not a guaranteed prediction of relationship outcome. We do not guarantee any specific number of matches, a match within a specific timeframe, that any match will lead to a relationship, or that another member will respond to a match introduction.

Velvet Ties is nota swipe-based app. You will not see an infinite feed of potential matches. This is a deliberate design choice: we prioritize quality curation over volume. If this is not what you're looking for, the Service may not be right for you.

Velvet Ties is built on respect. You agree not to:

• Harass, threaten, dox, stalk, impersonate, defame, or otherwise harm another member.
• Send unsolicited sexual content (photos, videos, graphic messages) to any member who has not explicitly consented to receive it in that conversation.
• Share another member's private information (real name, location, photos, sexual or kink preferences) outside the Service without their permission.
• Solicit money, gifts, or business from other members. Velvet Ties is not a fundraising, sugar-dating, sex-work advertisement, or marketing platform.
• Use the Service to arrange any illegal activity, or any activity that endangers a minor.
• Ghost your matches at scale, or otherwise game the matching engine by accepting introductions you have no intention of pursuing.
• Take screenshots of another member's sensitive information (kink preferences, STI status) and share them outside the match.
• Use automated tools (scrapers, bots, headless browsers) to access or interact with the Service.

Violations can result in a warning, a temporary suspension, permanent removal from Velvet Ties, forfeiture of remaining subscription fees, and—in cases involving threats or safety concerns—referral to law enforcement.

Velvet Ties welcomes members of all sexualities, genders, and relationship structures, including kink-friendly and non-monogamous members. Our commitment to this community comes with a firm expectation around consent:

• Consent is specific, informed, and revocable. A match accepting your introduction is not consent to any specific activity. Consent must be asked for and given for each interaction, online and in person.
• Kink preferences are not an invitation. A member sharing their kink preferences with you after a mutual match is telling you who they are, not asking you to act on it. Discuss boundaries and safe words before any in-person play.
• Meet in public first. For your safety, meet new matches in a public place for the first time.
• SOS and safety check-ins.Velvet Ties includes a safety check-in feature that can notify your emergency contact if you don't confirm you're safe by a scheduled time. We strongly encourage you to use it on first meetings.
• Report concerns. If you feel unsafe, cannot reach a match, or experience any conduct that violates these Terms, report it in the app or email safety@velvetties.com. For imminent danger, always call local emergency services first.

Velvet Ties is a platform. We do not supervise in-person meetings, and we are not responsible for the conduct of members offline. Use good judgment.

You retain ownership of the photos, text, and other content you upload to Velvet Ties (“Your Content”).

You grant Velvet Ties a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for formatting and display), display, and analyze Your Content to derive structured trait inferences used by our matchmakers and our matching engine (see Section 7a below for the inferred-information license), solely for the purpose of operating and improving the Service. This license ends when you delete Your Content or your account, except where we are legally required to retain a copy (e.g. an unresolved abuse report).

You represent that Your Content is yours to share, does not infringe any third party's rights, and does not violate these Terms. Velvet Ties may remove Your Content at any time without notice if it violates these Terms, is reported by a member, or is flagged during our human review and identity-verification process (which uses AWS Rekognition to confirm your verification selfie matches your profile photos).

You authorize Velvet Ties to generate structured trait inferences (“Inferred Information”) from Your Content, including documents you choose to upload through the optional clone-persona feature described in Section 13 of our Privacy Policy. Inferred Information includes communication style, attachment patterns, conflict style, values alignment, and similar matchmaker-relevant signals.

Velvet Ties uses Inferred Information solely to (i) inform the human matchmaker who reviews your profile, (ii) score candidate introductions for that matchmaker’s review, and (iii) deliver back to you a user-visible summary of the traits the system has inferred from your uploads. We do not share Inferred Information with other members or with any party outside the subprocessors named in our Privacy Policy. We do not use Inferred Information, Your Content, or uploaded documents to train generalized AI or ML models.

Sensitive-category inferences (sexuality, intimacy philosophy, mental-health-adjacent attachment labels) are generated only after you explicitly opt in via the special-category toggle described in our Privacy Policy. You may withdraw any consent at any time and we will purge the corresponding inferences from active scoring and rerun your trait scoring from remaining sources. Pseudonymized provenance records may be retained per Privacy Policy §13 so we can answer regulator audits about how a score was produced; nothing user-identifiable remains in those records.

Inferred Information is decision support for our human matchmaker, not a guarantee or prediction of relationship outcome.

This Section is not yet in effect. It takes effect no earlier than August 5, 2026, and only after we have notified members as Section 15 requires. Until then it does not apply to any Event. The rest of these Terms remain in force as of June 29, 2026.

Velvet Ties hosts in-person events, dinners, parties, retreats, and other gatherings, including events hosted or co-hosted under the “Dani” brand or by Daniella Guips personally (each, an “Event”). Events are photographed, filmed, and recorded.

By registering for, entering, or attending an Event, you agree to this Section 7b—whether or not you hold a Velvet Ties account, and whether you attend as a member, an applicant, a guest of an attendee, a partner, a vendor, or a plus-one. If you do not agree, do not enter the Event.

You grant Velvet Ties a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable right and license to photograph, film, and record you at the Event, and to use, reproduce, edit, adapt, publish, distribute, publicly display, and publicly perform your name, image, likeness, photograph, voice, video, statements, and appearance (collectively, “Event Media”) in any and all media now known or later developed. This includes Instagram and other social platforms, the Velvet Ties app and website, marketing, advertising, promotional and editorial materials, press, newsletters, pitch and investor materials, and in-app or on-site displays.

This license is granted in perpetuity and does not end when you leave the Event, delete Your Content, cancel your subscription, or delete your account, and it survives termination of these Terms under Section 8. It applies to Event Media captured by Velvet Ties, by anyone acting on its behalf (including hired photographers and videographers), and to Event Media you or another attendee shares with Velvet Ties.

You acknowledge that you will receive no compensation for Event Media, and you waive any right to inspect or approve any Event Media, any finished use, or any accompanying copy before it is published. To the fullest extent permitted by law, you release and hold harmless Velvet Ties, its personnel, its hosts (including Daniella Guips), and its licensees from any claim arising out of the use of Event Media, including claims for invasion of privacy, violation of a right of publicity, defamation, false light, or misappropriation of likeness.

Two limits we hold ourselves to, which are commitments by us and not conditions on the license above: we will not use Event Media in a way that states or implies you personally endorse a third-party product or service without asking you first, and we will not sell Event Media to an unaffiliated third party as stock imagery. You may ask us to stop using a specific piece of Event Media going forward by writing to dg@velvetties.com. We will consider every such request in good faith and will honor it where reasonably practicable. As a discretionary courtesy this is not a promise—but where applicable law gives you a right we cannot ask you to waive, the paragraph below governs instead and we stop further use. Either way we cannot recall Event Media already published, distributed, printed, or reshared by others.

If you do not want to appear in Event Media, tell the host or the photographer at the Event and we will make reasonable efforts to keep you out of shot. Because Events are live and candid, we cannot guarantee it—the reliable way to avoid appearing in Event Media is not to attend.

Where the law gives you a right we cannot ask you to waive, that right wins over this Section. If you are in the UK, EU, or another jurisdiction where our use of Event Media rests on your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time under (for example) UK/EU GDPR Article 7(3) by writing to dg@velvetties.com. We will stop further use of your Event Media going forward, and we will honor the deletion, restriction, and objection rights described in our Privacy Policy to the extent they apply to you. Withdrawal is not retroactive: it does not make unlawful any use we already made while the consent stood, and it cannot recall Event Media already published, printed, or reshared by other people. Nothing in this Section limits a non-waivable statutory right.

Events are 18+. If you bring a guest, you are responsible for telling them this Section applies to them before they enter.

You may delete your account at any time from in-app settings.

Velvet Ties may suspend or terminate your account, with or without notice, if we believe you have violated these Terms or created a risk for other members, if we are required to do so by law, or if we decide to discontinue the Service.

On termination, your access to the Service ends immediately. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including intellectual property, the Event Media license in Section 7b, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and dispute resolution) will survive.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available.” To the maximum extent permitted by law, Velvet Ties disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that any defects will be corrected, or that any content is accurate or reliable. We do not warrant that any specific member is who they claim to be; our vetting and moderation are meant to raise the bar, not to provide absolute certainty.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Velvet Ties, its directors, employees, and service providers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, data, goodwill, or anything else, arising out of or in connection with the Service.

General cap. Except as set out in the next paragraph, our total liability to you for any claim arising out of these Terms or the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the subscription fees you paid Velvet Ties in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars ($100).

Carve-out for data-misuse claims. The general cap does not apply to claims arising from (i) a data breach affecting your personal information, (ii) misuse of Inferred Information generated under Section 7a, or (iii) gross negligence or willful misconduct. For those claims, Velvet Ties’ liability is capped at the greater of (a) five thousand U.S. dollars ($5,000) per claimant, (b) your actual documented damages, or (c) any higher amount required by applicable statute, including without limitation California Civil Code §1798.150 (CCPA statutory damages of $100–$750 per consumer per incident), Washington My Health My Data Act, Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act, and any analogous state-statutory minimums. We do not contract around statutory privacy minimums.

Class-action carve-out for data-misuse claims. The arbitration and class-action waiver in Section 12 does not apply to claims falling within the data-misuse carve-out above. You may bring those claims individually or as part of a class. Other claims remain subject to Section 12.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or limitation of liability; in those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

Your indemnity.You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Velvet Ties from any claims, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising from (a) your use of the Service, (b) Your Content, (c) your violation of these Terms, or (d) your violation of any rights of another member or third party.

Our indemnity.Velvet Ties agrees to indemnify and hold you harmless from any third-party claim that the Service itself, as provided by Velvet Ties, infringes a third party’s intellectual-property rights or that our processing of Your Content materially violated applicable privacy law in a way Velvet Ties caused (and not caused by your own representations or actions). This mutual indemnity does not extend to claims falling under the general cap in Section 10.

Informal resolution first. If you have a dispute with Velvet Ties, please contact us at legal@velvetties.com and give us 30 days to resolve it informally before starting a formal proceeding.

Arbitration.Except where prohibited by law, any dispute that cannot be resolved informally will be resolved by binding individual arbitration—not in court. You and Velvet Ties both waive the right to a jury trial and to participate in a class action. You may opt out of this arbitration clause by emailing legal@velvetties.com within 30 days of first accepting these Terms.

Exceptions. Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property rights.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest will remain in effect.

• Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any in-app disclosures incorporated by reference, are the entire agreement between you and Velvet Ties and supersede all prior agreements on their subject.
• Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions stay in full effect.
• No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our written consent. We may assign these Terms to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure. We are not liable for any delay or failure to perform caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including acts of God, network or power outages, or third-party service failures.

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date and, for material changes, notify you in-app or by email before the change takes effect. Your continued use of the Service after that date means you accept the updated Terms.

Questions about these Terms or the Service: support@velvetties.com. Legal notices: legal@velvetties.com.