Legal
Terms of Use
These terms govern use of Cognidel across therapy, learning, resources, marketplace, therapist onboarding, support, payments, and platform operations.
Effective June 26, 2026
Platform status and no direct clinical service by Cognidel
- Cognidel is a technology platform that enables discovery, booking, communication, learning, resource access, and operational coordination between users and independent therapists.
- Cognidel itself does not provide therapy, medical advice, psychiatric treatment, diagnosis, prescription services, or direct clinical care.
- Any therapeutic or clinical service available through the platform is delivered solely by the independent therapist or care professional involved in that service.
- No statement, badge, ranking, availability display, or verification status on Cognidel should be interpreted as Cognidel personally practising medicine, counselling, psychology, or another regulated profession.
Acceptance, updates, and scope
- These Terms of Use govern access to Cognidel and all related products, including therapy discovery, booking, session rooms, learning, courses, certificates, resources, marketplace items, donations, support, therapist onboarding, and payment services.
- By creating an account, browsing protected areas, submitting information, making a payment, joining a room, uploading content, or using Cognidel in any other way, you agree to these terms and any policies linked from them.
- Cognidel may update these terms to reflect product changes, legal requirements, fraud controls, safety standards, or operational needs. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised terms.
Eligibility, age, and authority
- You may use Cognidel only if you are legally capable of entering a binding agreement and are permitted to use the service under the laws that apply to you.
- Unless a lawful parent, guardian, or dependent-care path is expressly allowed by Cognidel and the relevant therapist, Cognidel is intended for adults aged 18 and above.
- If you create an account or provide consent on behalf of another person, including a child, dependent, client, patient, employer, family member, or organisation, you represent that you have valid legal authority to do so.
- Cognidel may require additional age, identity, parent, guardian, or authority checks before allowing access to therapy, payments, records, or multi-party participation.
- If Cognidel later determines that lawful authority, valid consent, or age-related eligibility was missing, Cognidel may suspend the affected service path, reverse platform access, preserve records, and decline liability for services that should not have proceeded on false authority.
Account integrity and security
- You must provide accurate, current, and complete information and must not impersonate another person or create an account using false, borrowed, or misleading credentials.
- You are responsible for your login credentials, devices, sessions, connected payment activity, and all actions taken through your account unless caused solely by Cognidel.
- Cognidel may require re-authentication, identity review, step-up verification, or temporary access restrictions where security, fraud, payment, moderation, or safety concerns arise.
Platform role and clinical boundary
- Cognidel is a digital platform and operational environment. It does not promise a medical cure, therapeutic outcome, diagnosis, emergency rescue, or guaranteed suitability of any therapist, service, or resource for a specific person or situation.
- Cognidel is not a hospital, clinic, ambulance service, crisis hotline, or direct healthcare provider.
- Therapists using Cognidel remain independently responsible for licensure, lawful scope of practice, competence, documentation, informed consent, safeguarding, mandatory reporting, and professional conduct.
- Nothing on Cognidel replaces emergency care, ambulance response, crisis intervention, legal advice, tax advice, or independent professional supervision where those are required.
Verification status and no warranty of therapist suitability
- Any therapist verification, approval, or visibility status on Cognidel reflects a good-faith platform review of submitted and reasonably available information at the time of review.
- Verification is not a guarantee of future competence, lawful conduct, ethical behaviour, availability, or fitness for a particular client, condition, or outcome.
- Users remain responsible for exercising independent judgement and, where appropriate, independently confirming a therapist credentials with the relevant licensing or registration authority.
Emergency and high-risk situations
- Cognidel is not an emergency service and must not be relied on where there is immediate danger, suicidal crisis, violence, child protection urgency, psychosis, medical emergency, or other acute risk requiring local emergency intervention.
- Users are responsible for seeking local emergency, crisis, or law-enforcement assistance first where urgent harm may occur.
- Cognidel may restrict access, terminate sessions, preserve records, alert relevant participants, or cooperate with lawful authorities where necessary to address an urgent safety threat.
Bookings, requests, sessions, and multi-party therapy
- Session bookings, therapist approval requests, room access, participant limits, and scheduling status are controlled by the booking record shown inside Cognidel.
- For couples, family, and group formats, the payer of record, participant list, permissions, room access, and notice settings must match the platform booking record. No user may secretly add, substitute, monitor, or expose another participant.
- Any recording, transcription, screenshotting, or redistribution of session content is prohibited unless every required participant has given lawful informed consent and the action is permitted by platform rules and applicable law.
- Where a minor or dependent is involved, the adult arranging the session warrants that they have lawful authority to involve that person and to provide or coordinate any consent required by applicable law.
Payments, chargebacks, and financial controls
- Payments, donations, product purchases, course unlocks, certificates, wallet activity, therapist earnings, and withdrawals must pass through authorised Cognidel checkout and reconciliation controls.
- A payment is not final merely because a third-party checkout page reports success. Cognidel may wait for settlement, reconciliation, anti-fraud review, webhook confirmation, reversal checks, or manual review before changing service state.
- Chargebacks, reversals, fraud claims, disputed authorisations, suspicious patterns, or mismatched payer information may result in access suspension, service reversal, payout holds, debt recovery, or account termination.
Refunds, cancellations, and credits
- Refund, credit, reschedule, and cancellation outcomes depend on the actual booking trail, payment state, attendance evidence, service type, applicable therapy policy, and any required administrative review.
- Cognidel may deny, delay, or partially reduce a refund where there is late cancellation, no-show, repeated abuse, fraud concern, policy breach, content access already granted, certificate already issued, or lawfully non-refundable digital delivery.
- Where the law gives you a mandatory refund or cancellation right, Cognidel will not exclude that right.
Content, intellectual property, and user submissions
- Cognidel and its branding, interface, service flows, text, graphics, templates, software, and original platform materials remain protected by intellectual-property and related laws.
- You retain rights in content you lawfully upload, but you grant Cognidel a non-exclusive licence to host, process, store, display, moderate, secure, back up, and use that content as reasonably necessary to operate, enforce, improve, and defend the service.
- You must not upload unlawful, infringing, abusive, deceptive, malicious, exploitative, sexually abusive, defamatory, or privacy-violating material, or any content that you do not have the right to submit.
Acceptable use and prohibited conduct
- You must not use Cognidel for fraud, stalking, harassment, hate, sexual exploitation, child abuse material, unlawful health claims, scams, malware, data scraping, credential attacks, account takeover, or attempts to bypass safety, moderation, or payment controls.
- You must not use the platform to build shadow patient lists, route clients into hidden off-platform arrangements, create undisclosed referral kickbacks, publish fake reviews, submit falsified certificates, or send false verification material.
- Cognidel may use technical, behavioural, payment, and moderation signals to detect and stop prohibited conduct.
Third-party services and external dependencies
- Cognidel relies on external infrastructure, payment providers, hosting, email delivery, communications tooling, and identity services. Those providers may have their own terms, privacy notices, availability patterns, and regional processing rules.
- Cognidel is not responsible for downtime, interruption, rejection, fraud screening, or policy decisions made solely by a third-party provider, although Cognidel may assist with reasonable investigation and remediation within its control.
- Links to external sites, emergency resources, registers, or regulators are provided for convenience and do not mean Cognidel controls or endorses every aspect of those external services.
- Where a third-party processor or provider rejects, delays, reverses, blocks, or geographically limits a transaction, communication, authentication event, or hosting request, Cognidel may withhold service release until a reliable replacement or correction exists.
Sanctions, unlawful jurisdictions, and restricted use
- You must not use Cognidel in violation of export controls, sanctions laws, anti-money-laundering laws, anti-bribery laws, or any prohibition that makes the service unlawful for you, your organisation, or the intended participant.
- Cognidel may block, limit, or terminate access where country risk, sanctions risk, payment risk, regulator risk, or lawful-operability risk makes continued service commercially or legally unsafe.
- Cognidel is not required to continue operating in a country, profession, or service area simply because a user wishes to access it.
Suspension, removal, and investigations
- Cognidel may suspend accounts, hide profiles, lock records, remove content, freeze payouts, reverse entitlements, block bookings, or terminate access where safety, legal, verification, moderation, or payment concerns justify intervention.
- Therapists may be temporarily removed from therapy functions without deleting the entire account while investigations or compliance reviews are active.
- Cognidel may preserve and review logs, messages, payment traces, access history, metadata, uploaded documents, and room activity where reasonably necessary for fraud review, safety review, dispute handling, or legal compliance.
Disclaimers, limits of liability, and indemnity
- To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cognidel provides the service on an as-is and as-available basis and disclaims implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, continuous availability, or guaranteed therapeutic suitability.
- To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cognidel will not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive loss, including lost profits, lost data, lost opportunity, emotional distress, reputational harm, or third-party claims arising from your use of the platform.
- To the fullest extent permitted by law, Cognidel aggregate liability for claims arising out of or relating to the service will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid to Cognidel in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim or USD 100, except where a higher amount is required by non-excludable law.
- You agree to indemnify and hold Cognidel, its operators, and its service partners harmless from claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses arising out of your unlawful conduct, breach of these terms, misuse of another person data, infringement, chargeback abuse, or misuse of therapy services.
Governing law, disputes, and international use
- These terms are governed by the laws of Kenya, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except to the extent mandatory law in your country of residence applies and cannot lawfully be excluded.
- Before filing a formal claim, you agree to try to resolve the dispute with Cognidel through written notice and a reasonable good-faith discussion period.
- Unless mandatory law requires otherwise, disputes that cannot be resolved informally will be submitted to the courts of competent jurisdiction in Nairobi, Kenya, and you consent to that forum. Cognidel may also seek injunctive or protective relief wherever necessary to protect users, data, payments, or intellectual property.
- Cognidel may refuse or limit services in any country, territory, or regulatory environment where legal, operational, sanctions, payment, verification, or safety conditions are not acceptable.
- To the fullest extent permitted by law, claims must be brought on an individual basis and not as part of a representative, coordinated, or class-style claim unless mandatory law prohibits that restriction.
Contact and legal notices
- General support, complaints, legal notices, data requests, and escalation notices may be sent through Cognidel support channels, including the contact methods published on the platform.
- If any provision of these terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in force to the fullest extent permitted by law.
- Sections relating to payments, records, disputes, intellectual property, indemnity, liability, privacy, platform status, and enforcement survive suspension or termination.