Terms of Use

These Terms of Use govern your use of the internet-based application www.thanku.social („ThankU“) provided to you by thxto gUG (haftungsbeschränkt), a non-profit company under German law, with its business seat in Berlin, Germany („us“, „we“, our“). By using ThankU, you accept these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.

1. What is ThankU?

ThankU allows you to easily say thank you to another person by sending a virtual ThankU. You can add a personal message and a monetary contribution for a good cause to the ThankU. The ThankU will inform the other person about the good cause you supported.

For a detailed service description please visit How it works.

2. How to send a ThankU

(a) After clicking on the „Send a ThankU” button, enter the recipient’s name and your ThankU message. Then, pick a good cause, the amount you want to support the good cause with, and enter your email address. If you want more details about the good cause you picked, please click the “i” button.

(b) Please note that you can send the ThankU to the recipient after finalizing the payment checkout; we will then provide you with a dedicated ThankU link you can share with the recipient. Note: the ThankU link can be opened by all persons to whom you give access to the ThankU link. In addition, the email address you have provided to us will be transmitted when you open the link. Therefore, please share the ThankU link only with people who are really allowed to see your ThankU.

(c) After clicking “Check out now”, you will be redirected to our payment provider. Please enter your payment details and click “Donate”. By clicking “Donate”, a legally binding donation agreement is concluded.

(d) We ask for your understanding that we have to deduct reasonable internal costs from your donation (personnel, tech etc.). We publicly disclose these deductions in the transparency reports on a monthly basis. We try to keep the deductions as low as possible to maximize the impact of your donation. For more details please check https://www.thanku.social/en/transparency-reports

(e) Once the payment is confirmed by our payment provider, you will get to the final ThankU screen (“Thanks for contributing”), confirming your donation. There you can find a dedicated ThankU link, which you can share with the recipient of the ThankU.

3. How to get a donation receipt („Zuwendungsbestätigung“)

(a) For donations up to and including 300 EUR, please use as a simplified donation receipt the payment receipt that our payment service provider (currently: Stripe) sends you by email, together with your credit card statement and our Confirmation of Donations.

(b) For donations above 300 EUR, you can obtain a donation receipt for your donation in accordance with the following provisions.

(i) German tax law requires that we collect personal information from you (especially name and address) in order to issue your donation receipt. You guarantee that all information you give us is correct. All data will be collected and processed in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

(ii) After paying your donation, please click on the checkbox next to "I need a donation receipt" on the last page "Thanks for contributing" to request a donation receipt. You will then receive an email with information on how to proceed ("Donation Receipt Infomail"). In the Donation Receipt Infomail you will find a link to an input form via which you can easily send us the information.

(iii) We will only issue a donation receipt if we have received the information required to issue the donation receipt. If you do not provide us with all the necessary information by February 1st of the calendar year following your donation, we are not obliged to issue a donation receipt. Donation receipts will only be sent in digital format (e.g. as a PDF) by email to the email address you have provided to us.

(iv) If you have made several donations from the same email address during the calendar year, it is sufficient to request the donation receipt only once. You will then receive a collective receipt for all donations.

(v) As a rule, we will send donation receipts by the end of February of the calendar year following the donation. There is no entitlement to an interim donation receipt.

(c) As we are a non-profit organization under German law, we can only issue donation receipts under German law. We do not guarantee that the donation receipts will be honored by the tax authorities.

4. ThankU wallet

(a) You can collect ThankUs that you have sent and received on your personal ThankU wallet. The ThankU wallet is not mandatory in order to use ThankU.

(b) The ThankU wallet will publicly show the number of ThankUs you sent and received, the supported good causes and the impact.

(c) Your ThankU wallet is publicly accessible via your ThankU wallet address. We invite all users to share their ThankU wallet with others, add the ThankU wallet link to your email signature etc.

(d) To set up a ThankU wallet, proceed as follows: click on "Your ThankU wallet" to see a preview, then click on "Create ThankU wallet”, and enter your email address, name and ThankU wallet name.

(e) After clicking “Create ThankU wallet”, we will send you an email to the email address you gave us. Please click the “Confirm ThankU wallet” button in this email. Now your ThankU wallet is ready to go!

(f) When signing up for a ThankU wallet, you must not fill in information, words or terms, that is/are

  • incorrect or misleading;
  • infringing any applicable laws (including the laws for the protection of minors, copyrights- and trademarks);
  • infringing third party rights (e.g. brand names etc.)
  • racist, insulting or contrary to decency;
  • pornographic;
  • harassing others.

(g) We reserve the right to remove, block and delete your ThankU wallet at any time if we believe that you do not comply with these Terms of Use, in particular with the provisions set forth under Section 4.

5. Costs

Your use of the ThankU platform is free of charge. You may incur connection costs depending on the particular internet service, cell phone contract or any other contracts you have concluded with third parties in order to access ThankU.

6. Availability

We do not guarantee or warrant that ThankU is free of errors or that access to it will be continuous or uninterrupted. Furthermore, we reserve the right to discontinue ThankU at any time without giving reasons or to extend or restrict the scope of services.

7. Limitation of Liability

(a) We are liable for intent and gross negligence. Furthermore, we shall be liable for the negligent breach of obligations whose fulfilment is essential for the proper execution of the contract, whose breach endangers the achievement of the purpose of the contract and on whose compliance you, as the contractual partner, could regularly rely. In the latter case, however, we shall only be liable for foreseeable damage typical for the contract. We shall not be liable for the slightly negligent breach of duties other than those mentioned in the preceding sentences.

(b) The above exclusions of liability do not apply in the event of injury to life, body or health. Liability under the Product Liability Act remains unaffected.

8. Changes / Amendments

We reserve the right to change and/or amend the Terms of Use. If you have a ThankU wallet, or there is any other ongoing contractual relationship between us, we will notify you about upcoming changes/amendments. If you do not object to the changes/amendments within 2 weeks by email (support@thanku.social), the changes/amendments will become binding for you. Should you object to the changes/amendments, the old version of the Terms of Use shall remain binding; in this case we reserve the right to terminate the user agreement with you by observing a notice period of 2 weeks.

9. Severability, Applicable Law, Place of Jurisdiction

If a provision of the present Agreement should be or become invalid, this shall not affect the validity of the remaining provisions. In this case, the invalid provision shall be replaced by one that comes as close as possible to the commercial intent behind the old provision. The Parties shall be obligated to cooperate in arriving at a corresponding clarification of the text of the Agreement. The same shall apply to any potential omissions in the Agreement.

The present Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, to the exclusion of the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

The place of jurisdiction for any disputes arising between the Parties in connection with this Agreement shall be Berlin, Germany.


Last amended: 30 October 2021
© thxto gUG (haftungsbeschränkt), a non profit company under German law