PlayNow terms of service

Last updated: 12 August 2026

v1.1 — prepared without external counsel; review recommended

Who we are

PlayNow is run by PlayNow Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17390200. Our registered office is 1B Monson Road, London NW10 5UR. You can reach us at hello@playnowclub.co.uk. Our website is playnowclub.co.uk.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office; our registration reference will be added here once issued.

How this document works

These terms are in three parts:

• Part A applies to everyone who uses PlayNow — clubs, club staff and parents.
• Part B applies to clubs (and the people who run them).
• Part C applies to parents and guardians.

If you are a club, Parts A and B apply to you. If you are a parent, Parts A and C apply to you. If anything in Part B or C conflicts with Part A, the more specific part wins for that audience.

One thing to understand before anything else: PlayNow is software that helps a club and a parent deal with each other. When a parent registers a child and pays for membership, kit or fees, that is a contract between the parent and the club, not with us. PlayNow is not a party to that contract, does not provide sporting services, and does not decide who a club accepts as a member.

Part A — for everyone

1. What PlayNow is

PlayNow is an online service for grassroots children's sports clubs. Through it:

• a parent can register a child with a club using a join code the club provides;
• the club reviews and approves registrations;
• the parent can pay the club for membership, kit and fees;
• club staff can submit timesheets, and club admins can approve them;
• clubs can keep records of amounts due to staff and volunteers.

We provide the software. The club provides the sport.

2. Your account

To use PlayNow you need an account. You agree to:

• give accurate information when you sign up and keep it up to date;
• keep your password to yourself and not share your account with anyone else;
• tell us promptly at hello@playnowclub.co.uk if you think someone else has used your account.

You must be at least 18 to hold a PlayNow account. Children do not hold accounts — a parent or guardian manages a child's registration.

3. Two-step sign-in is mandatory

Every PlayNow account — parent, staff or club admin — must use two-step sign-in. When you sign in, we email a one-time code to your account's email address, and you can optionally add an authenticator app as a stronger second step. You cannot switch two-step sign-in off. We do this because the service holds information about children, and a password alone is not enough protection for that.

Because the emailed code goes to your account's email address, keeping that mailbox secure matters. If you lose access to your second step, your club admin (for staff) or we (for anyone) can reset it after checking who you are.

4. Acceptable use

You must not:

• use PlayNow for anything unlawful, or in a way that harms a child or puts a child at risk;
• access information you have no legitimate reason to see — in particular, a child's medical details may only be viewed for genuine club purposes, and every such view is recorded;
• try to get around security measures, probe or overload the service, or access another person's account or another club's data;
• enter information you know to be false — including, for clubs, false attestations about DBS checks, staff payments or engagement types;
• copy, resell or reverse-engineer the service (section 5 sets this out in full);
• use the service to send spam or unwanted messages.

5. Who owns what

We own PlayNow. The software, the way it looks, the words on our website, our documentation, and the PlayNow name and logo belong to PlayNow Ltd, or to the people who licensed them to us. Using the service does not move any of that to you, and nothing in these terms is a sale of it.

You get a licence to use it. For as long as your account is open and (for clubs) the subscription is paid, we give you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use PlayNow for what it is for: running your club, or managing your own child's registration. That licence is personal to you, cannot be sub-licensed, and ends when your account does.

What you put in stays yours. Your club's records, the content you enter, and your own account details are not ours and we make no claim on them. You give us only the permission the service needs to function: to store, host, back up, display and transmit that content so it works for you and for the people you share your club with, and to do the things set out in our privacy policy and, for clubs, Schedule 1 of the Club Partner Agreement. We do not use your content for anything else. We do not sell it, we do not advertise against it, and we do not use it to train anything.

What you must not do with the service. Please do not copy, adapt, republish or resell any part of it; do not reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble it, except to the limited extent the law expressly allows and does not let us prevent; do not scrape, crawl or bulk-extract data from it by automated means; do not put it inside another product or hold it out as your own; and do not remove or obscure any notice of ownership. If you want to do something the software does not allow, ask us before building a way around it.

Trade marks. "PlayNow", our logo and playnowclub.co.uk are our marks. You are welcome to say your club uses PlayNow — we would like you to — but please do not use our name or logo in a way that suggests we run or endorse your club, or as part of your own product, business or domain name, without asking us first.

Feedback. If you send us an idea for improving PlayNow, we may use it freely and without owing you anything for it. We will not publish your feedback with your name attached without asking you.

If you think something on PlayNow infringes your rights. Tell us at hello@playnowclub.co.uk and include: what the material is and where on PlayNow you saw it; what right you hold and why you believe it is being infringed; how we can contact you; and a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised. We will look into it promptly, take down or disable access to the material where that is the right answer, and tell whoever put it there so they can respond. If they show us it was theirs to publish, we will restore it and tell you why. This is our own process rather than a statutory one, and it does not stop either of you going to court.

6. Availability

We work hard to keep PlayNow available and will use reasonable endeavours to do so, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free service and we give no uptime guarantee. We may occasionally take the service down for maintenance; where we can, we will do this at quiet times and give notice of anything significant.

If the service is unavailable, nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, including the right to services performed with reasonable care and skill.

7. Suspension

We may suspend or restrict an account or a club if we reasonably believe:

• these terms have been seriously broken;
• there is a risk to a child, to other users, or to the security of the service;
• we are required to by law or by a regulator.

Where it is reasonable and safe to do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to put things right. Suspension of a club for non-payment works differently and more gently — see Part B, section 7: a club that owes us money goes read-only; it is never cut off from its own records.

8. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time — for example when we add features or the law changes. If a change is significant, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email or through the service before it takes effect. If you do not agree with a change, you can stop using the service and (for clubs) cancel your subscription before the change takes effect. Continuing to use PlayNow after the notice period means the new terms apply.

9. Our liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under the law of England and Wales.

Subject to that, and to the extent the law allows:

• our total liability to a club arising out of or in connection with the service in any 12-month period is limited to the fees that club paid to PlayNow in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim;
• we are not liable for losses caused by things outside our reasonable control, or for business losses such as lost profits where the service is used in the course of a business.

If you are a consumer, we are responsible for foreseeable loss or damage caused by our failure to provide the service with reasonable care and skill, or by our breach of these terms. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable when you started using the service, and nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights.

We are not responsible for the sporting services a club provides, for a club's decisions about membership or refunds, for how a club runs its safeguarding, or for credit decisions made by Klarna. Those are the responsibility of the club or of Klarna, as the case may be.

10. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer living elsewhere in the UK, you may also rely on the consumer protections of the part of the UK where you live and bring proceedings there.

Part B — for clubs

The full terms for clubs are in the Club Partner Agreement, which your club enters into with us: the Club Partner Agreement (including Schedule 1) prevails over these Terms of Service to the extent of any conflict.

1. Your subscription

Clubs use PlayNow under a monthly subscription. The tiers and current prices are set out on our pricing page at playnowclub.co.uk/pricing. We bill your club monthly by Bacs Direct Debit. We may change subscription prices with at least 30 days' notice; if you do not accept a price change you may cancel before it takes effect.

2. Our commission

When a parent pays your club through PlayNow, we take a commission as a flat percentage of the payment, at the rate for your tier as shown on the pricing page. The commission is collected automatically at settlement as a Stripe application fee — it is deducted before the money reaches your club's balance, so there is nothing extra for you to pay or process.

3. How the money works — your club is the merchant

Payments from parents are processed through your club's own Stripe account, which is created for your club when you join PlayNow. This matters, so in plain terms:

• The parent's money goes to your club, not to us. It never passes through PlayNow's own accounts.
• Your club is the merchant of record. The payment is between the parent and your club.
• Your club carries chargeback and refund liability, and Stripe charges your club its processing fees. Your Stripe statement will show Stripe's processing fee and our commission as separate deductions.
• Refunds of club fees are your club's decision, made under your club's own refund policy, which you should publish to your members. Nothing in your policy can take away a parent's statutory rights, their card chargeback rights, or the Direct Debit Guarantee.

Negative balances. Because of how Stripe Connect works, if your club's Stripe account goes negative — for example, a dispute or refund lands after the money has been paid out — and your account cannot cover it, Stripe may recover the shortfall from PlayNow. If that happens, your club must repay us that amount in full, within 30 days of our written request. Keeping enough in your club's account to cover foreseeable refunds and disputes is your responsibility.

4. Klarna at your checkout

Klarna is offered as a payment option at every PlayNow checkout, and this is not something a club can switch off — giving families the option to spread a cost is part of what PlayNow is. Klarna is the lender: it sets its own terms, runs its own eligibility checks, and alone decides whether to offer a plan to any particular family. PlayNow does not provide, arrange or advise on credit and takes no commission from Klarna.

5. Your responsibilities

Member data. Your club is responsible for the accuracy of the member records it holds in PlayNow, and for only collecting what it genuinely needs. You must keep your members' details up to date and correct errors promptly when a parent points them out.

Safeguarding. Safeguarding is your club's responsibility, under your national governing body's rules and the law. PlayNow supports your record-keeping but does not run your safeguarding. In particular, for DBS checks: we keep a diary, nothing more. Your club tells us the level and date of a check and who at your club attested to it; we record that and can remind you of a renewal date. Any renewal date shown is derived from the check date your club entered, applying your governing body's renewal policy — it is not a fact about the certificate, which has no expiry. We never see, run or verify checks, and we never store certificate numbers or results. Recording a check in PlayNow is your club's attestation that it is true.

Staff and volunteers. PlayNow keeps pay records — it is not payroll and moves no money. We record amounts due, let an authorised club admin view staff bank details (every viewing is logged), export a bank payment file for your club to use with its own bank, and record your club's attestation that payment was made. Your club is the employer or engager: whether someone is employed, self-employed or a volunteer is your club's attestation, and your club is responsible for tax, National Insurance, minimum wage and employment law. For volunteers, PlayNow records expenses, and your club is responsible for ensuring volunteer payments genuinely are expenses.

Your team's accounts. You are responsible for who you give staff access to, for removing access when someone leaves, and for using the audited reveal features (medical details, bank details) only for genuine club purposes.

6. Data protection — who is responsible for what

This split is deliberate and both sides should understand it:

• Your club is the controller of the member records collected through PlayNow — children's details, medical information, emergency contacts. You decide what to collect and why; PlayNow processes those records on your documented instructions as your processor. The data processing terms that govern this are set out in Schedule 1 of the Club Partner Agreement.
• PlayNow is the controller of account data — parents', staff members' and club admins' own accounts, sign-in and security logs — and of our own billing records.

When a parent asks your club to correct or erase their child's data, that request is yours to answer as controller; the tools in PlayNow (correction, and erasure by anonymisation) are how you carry it out.

7. If your club does not pay us

If your subscription payment fails, we will tell your treasurer, and Stripe will retry the collection on its own schedule. If the club's account remains unpaid, we may place the club in a read-only state. Read-only means:

• club admins cannot make changes — but every record remains visible: members, money, timesheets, and safeguarding-relevant information including medical details;
• parents can still register and pay — we do not punish families for a club's unpaid invoice, and those payments still reach your club;
• coaches can still log hours and read what they need to.

We never delete a club's data over a billing dispute, never block safeguarding reads, and never withhold money that parents have paid to your club — that is your members' money and it has already reached you. Account security functions (password, two-step sign-in, resets) always keep working. Read-only is lifted when the account is settled.

8. Leaving PlayNow

You may cancel your subscription at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. On leaving, you can export your club's records. We retain what the law requires us to retain (see the retention periods in our privacy policy) and anonymise the rest in line with that policy.

Part C — for parents and guardians

1. How registration works

Your club gives you a join code. You use it to create an account, register your child, and provide the details the club asks for — typically your child's name and date of birth, any medical conditions the club should know about, and emergency contacts. The club, not PlayNow, decides whether to approve the registration. Until the club approves, your child is not registered.

You must have parental responsibility for any child you register, and the information you give must be accurate. Please keep it up to date — especially medical details and emergency contacts, because coaches rely on them.

2. Who you are paying

When you pay for membership, kit or fees, you are paying the club, not PlayNow. The payment is processed through the club's own payment account, the club is the merchant, and the club's own refund policy applies to club fees. Your statutory rights — including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, your card chargeback rights, and the Direct Debit Guarantee — are not affected by the club's policy or by these terms. If you have a problem with something you paid the club for, raise it with the club first; if you think something has gone wrong with the payment system itself, contact us.

3. Klarna

At checkout you may see the option to pay through Klarna. If you choose it, Klarna is the lender: your agreement is with Klarna, on Klarna's terms, and Klarna alone decides whether to offer you a plan based on its own checks. PlayNow does not provide, arrange or advise on credit, and receives no commission from Klarna. Borrowing has consequences — make sure a plan is affordable before you take one.

4. Direct Debit

If your club offers subscriptions by Direct Debit, you can choose the day of the month (1st to 28th) on which we ask your bank for the payment. Because Bacs takes a few working days, the money leaves your account after the day we ask — the chosen day is when the request goes in, not when the money moves. Your Direct Debit payments are protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee: if an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund from your bank or building society. Nothing in these terms limits that guarantee.

5. Your child's information

Your club is responsible for the member records it collects about your child (PlayNow processes them on the club's behalf); PlayNow is responsible for your own account data. In practice, this is what you can do:

• Correct. You can update your child's details, medical information and emergency contacts at any time, and you should when they change.
• Request erasure. You can ask for your child's identifiable records to be erased. Because some financial records must legally be kept and reference the registration, erasure works by anonymisation: everything identifying your child and family is removed, so that no one can reasonably be identified from what remains. Once done, this cannot be undone.
• Access. You can ask for a copy of the information held about you and your child.

Full details, including how long different records are kept, are in our privacy policy at playnowclub.co.uk/privacy. Access to your child's medical details within the club is limited and every viewing is logged — that log is available to your club.

6. Closing your account

You can stop using PlayNow at any time. If your child leaves a club, the club marks the registration as ended; identifiable child records are kept for 24 months after a registration ends and then anonymised, and financial records are kept for 6 years as the law requires. You can request erasure by anonymisation sooner, as described above.

Questions

If anything in these terms is unclear, ask us: hello@playnowclub.co.uk. We wrote this document to be read, and if a section is confusing we would like to fix it.

PlayNow Ltd, company number 17390200, registered in England and Wales. Registered office: 1B Monson Road, London NW10 5UR.