Terms of Service

Helva is a lending platform operated by the Swiss company identified in the imprint (the "operator"; also "Helva's underlying entity"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern registration, identity verification, and use of the Helva platform (the "Platform") up to a loan agreement. How we handle personal data is in the Privacy Policy. The loan agreement and its related documents govern that loan and prevail over these Terms if they conflict.

These Terms are written so you can read them before you create an account. They are not a loan offer, and they are not tax advice.

1. Acceptance

Creating an account requires an unchecked box: you confirm that you have read these Terms and the Privacy Policy and agree to them. We record your account, the version date in the footer, and the time of acceptance.

Reading this page, or browsing the marketing site, does not by itself accept these Terms. You cannot complete signup, or start a new loan request, on a version you have not accepted.

If we publish a new version, you must accept it before you start a new request. A loan agreement already signed stays on its own terms.

These Terms apply whether you use the Platform as a borrower, a lender, or both. We currently onboard natural persons only.

2. Definitions

• "Borrower" — a user who seeks a fiat loan secured by crypto-assets.
• "Lender" — a user who provides fiat for a loan.
• "Collateral" — crypto-assets the Platform supports (currently WETH, wstETH, WBTC, and cbBTC) locked to secure a loan.
• "Vault" — the borrower's own smart-contract vault on Ethereum, via the Anvil protocol, in which collateral is locked.
• "Letter of credit" — the on-chain instrument, issued via the Anvil protocol, that records the loan's collateral, credit-asset, and liquidation parameters.
• "Non-custodial collateral management" — collateral stays in the borrower's vault. We do not take those coins into our possession. We hold the conversion right as the lender's agent. Fiat clearing is a separate function and is not covered by this phrase.
• "Sumsub" — Sum and Substance Ltd (United Kingdom), the identification provider we use.
• "MROS" — the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland.

3. What the Platform does

The Platform arranges fiat loans in CHF and USD, secured by crypto-assets, and settled by IBAN. EUR and GBP are not available.

1. Registration and verification. You complete the checks in section 6. A successful identity check is not acceptance, and it does not unlock a loan.
2. Matching. Borrowers and lenders are matched one to one. There is no pooled book, no partial fill, and no tradable loan instrument.
3. Collateral. The borrower locks collateral in the borrower's own vault. We do not take those coins into our possession.
4. Fiat. Lender funds move to the borrower, and repayments move back, through a client transaction account. Balances there earn no interest, are used only to settle an identified loan payment, and are not deposits taken for our own account. They are not covered by Swiss deposit insurance. The transfer itself is an ordinary Swiss bank payment.
5. On-chain lifecycle. Collateral, the credit-asset, and liquidation parameters are encoded in a letter of credit on the Anvil protocol. The loan agreement, not these Terms, sets the commercial terms of that loan.

On a brokered loan we are the broker and the lender's agent for the conversion right. We may also give the lender a guarantee. That guarantee is limited to a first-loss reserve and the operator's available resources. It is not unlimited, and it is not a bank deposit. Whether the lender on a given loan is a third party or the operator is stated in that loan agreement.

4. Regulatory status

The operator is a Swiss financial intermediary and is subject to the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act. It is a member of a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation. The membership is stated in the imprint.

The operator is not a FINMA-licensed bank, securities firm, fund manager, or insurer. Do not read "member of a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation" as "supervised by FINMA" or "FINMA-regulated".

Loans on the Platform are individually negotiated secured credit. They are not securities and not units in a collective investment scheme.

5. Who may use the Platform

You may register only if all of the following are true:

1. You are at least 18 and have full legal capacity.
2. You are not a US person (US citizen, US resident, US green-card holder, or an entity organised under US law or with its principal place of business in the United States). We do not serve US persons.
3. You are not domiciled, resident, or located in a jurisdiction under a FATF call for action, or in a jurisdiction where using the Platform would be unlawful.
4. You are not on a sanctions, embargo, or restrictive-measures list (United Nations, European Union, Switzerland, OFAC, UK, or an equivalent list).

We screen for sanctions and for politically exposed persons. We do not ask you to fill in a separate politically-exposed-person questionnaire. A screening hit can mean we refuse the relationship, or that a person has to decide before we accept it. We do not accept a relationship automatically because an identity check passed.

We may refuse registration if the required information is missing, if a doubt is not resolved, or if the relationship is prohibited.

6. Identity verification

6.1 What actually happens

Identity verification is required by Swiss anti-money-laundering law. For a natural person it is:

1. Online identification with Sumsub (identity document and liveness). This is not a video interview run by Sumsub.
2. A short declaration and profile in the same Sumsub session: beneficial-owner declaration, occupation, source of funds, and a US-person question. Phone verification by one-time code is in that same session.
3. Video identification with us, after Sumsub has approved the identity check. On that call we confirm name, date of birth, nationality, and actual domicile address.
4. A person then accepts or refuses the relationship. Sumsub approval is not acceptance. Completing the video is not acceptance. No assets are accepted or paid out before that decision.

We do not currently onboard legal entities on the Platform. If we do later, we will identify the entity and its controlling persons first, and we will update these Terms.

6.2 What we collect

What we collect, where it comes from, and why, is in the Privacy Policy.

6.3 Risk

Every relationship is normal risk or increased risk. There is no low-risk category. Increased-risk cases, and any sanctions or politically-exposed-person hit, are decided by a person. They are not accepted by the identity check alone.

7. Data privacy

How we handle personal data is in the Privacy Policy.

8. Reporting

This section is here so that you, or an adviser, can see what we report and what we do not, before a loan agreement is signed. It is not a promise that no authority and no third party will ever receive information about you.

8.1 No automatic reporting of a self-custodied position

We do not automatically report a borrower's self-custodied collateral position, or the existence of the loan, to a tax authority or under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). We do not send ordinary loans to a credit bureau.

Collateral stays in the borrower's vault. We are not the borrower's custodian and we are not the borrower's exchange. That is the reason for the sentence above. It does not mean the loan is invisible: the other party receives the loan documents, the bank sees the fiat payment, and the blockchain is public.

8.2 Loan events are not, by themselves, a report about the borrower

Repayment by collateral, liquidation, or default does not, by itself, cause us to report the borrower to a tax authority.

If collateral is converted, we do that as agent of the lender, not as an exchange service we sell to the borrower. Unused collateral is returned in kind. A conversion can still be a taxable disposal for you, under your own law. We do not advise you on that.

The exceptions are section 8.3 and section 8.4. A loan event is not a suspicion. A suspicion is a separate test, and it is not implied by repayment, liquidation, or default.

Repayment by collateral, when you ask for it, is requested in the application and carried out by us. It is not a button that publishes a report.

8.3 MROS

If we have a reasonable suspicion of money laundering, terrorist financing, or a related predicate offence, Swiss law requires a report to MROS. Every Swiss financial intermediary has this duty. It cannot be waived in a contract.

If a report is filed, Swiss law forbids us from telling you, or anyone else, that it was filed. An asset freeze may also apply. The trigger is suspicion of crime, not a normal loan event.

8.4 Lawful requests

We answer lawful requests from Swiss prosecution and supervisory authorities, including a foreign request that reaches us through an official channel. We do not volunteer personal data to an authority where the law does not require it.

8.5 CARF

Switzerland has put the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework into its automatic-exchange legislation. Those rules do not apply in 2026. The earliest application year is 2027, and only for partner states that are approved.

Our current analysis is:

• conversions we carry out for a lender may fall inside that reporting; and
• a borrower's collateral position, and a borrower loan event, do not, because the collateral is in the borrower's vault and a conversion we carry out is for the lender, not an exchange service for the borrower.

That analysis is not a final opinion of Swiss tax counsel. We will change this section if the rules, official guidance, or the analysis change. Do not treat this section as a permanent "we never report" promise. CRS today is not CARF tomorrow.

8.6 Short answers

9. Collateral and the vault

9.1 Where the coins are

Collateral is locked in your vault on Ethereum. We do not take those coins into our possession. We hold the conversion right as the lender's agent. That is non-custodial collateral management. It is not a statement that we have no role in the loan, and it is not a statement that the fiat leg is non-custodial.

9.2 Anvil

Letters of credit, locking, redemption, conversion, cancellation, and liquidation run on the Anvil protocol's contracts on Ethereum. We do not control Anvil, its governance, or its parameters.

• Anvil's contracts have been audited by OpenZeppelin and Trail of Bits. An audit is not a guarantee that a bug or a governance change cannot affect a live letter of credit. We do not claim that Helva itself has been audited.
• Some Anvil parameters, including the price oracle, can be changed by Anvil governance and can affect an open letter of credit.
• A letter of credit has a hard expiry. After expiry, redemption and conversion may no longer be possible, and the letter of credit may be cancelled, which returns collateral to the borrower. You are responsible for the timeline in your loan agreement.
• If the collateral value falls through the liquidation threshold, the position can be liquidated and collateral converted on-chain. We act as the lender's agent for that conversion right. We may not be able to stop a liquidation once the threshold is crossed.

9.3 The chain is public

Your wallet address, the collateral, and loan-related transactions on Ethereum are visible to anyone who reads the chain. We cannot erase that. A blockchain-analytics firm, a tax authority, or anyone else can look at it without asking us. "No direct on-chain link" is not a phrase we use for the Ethereum vault. Do not assume the position is hidden.

9.4 Keys

You must keep control of the wallet that owns the vault. If you lose the keys, we cannot recover them or reverse a chain transaction.

10. Settlement and the loan agreement

Match terms (amount, currency, duration, interest, collateral, loan-to-value) are shown on the Platform and fixed in the loan agreement. Fiat settlement is by Swiss IBAN, through the client transaction account described in section 3.

These Terms do not set the price, the rate, the liquidation level, or the default terms of any loan.

11. Fees

The brokerage fee is taken from the lender's repayment, not as an origination fee charged to the borrower. The rate for a loan is shown on the Platform and in the loan agreement. These Terms do not state a number.

12. Risks

1. Collateral prices move. If value falls through the liquidation threshold, some or all of the collateral can be lost.
2. Liquidation follows the protocol threshold. We may not be able to delay it.
3. Anvil, Ethereum, and the related contracts can fail or be changed. An audit does not remove that risk.
4. The guarantee in section 3 is limited. It does not absorb unlimited market losses.
5. Money in the client transaction account is not a bank deposit and is not covered by Swiss deposit insurance.
6. You may have liability beyond the collateral. That is in the loan agreement, not in this page.
7. A conversion, a return of collateral, or another loan event may be taxable where you live. That is your obligation. We do not advise on it.
8. Swiss and foreign rules on crypto-assets and credit can change. The service can change or stop.

13. Your obligations

You agree to:

1. Give accurate information and correct it if it changes.
2. Keep control of the wallet used for the vault.
3. Not use the Platform for crime, including money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion, or sanctions evasion.
4. Not try to bypass identification, monitoring, or a risk decision.
5. Not use the Platform if you are a US person or otherwise prohibited under section 5.
6. Meet the tax and other legal duties that apply to you.
7. Not misuse the Platform, including by trying to break into it or take data you are not entitled to.

14. Liability

To the extent Swiss law allows:

1. For ordinary negligence, liability is limited to direct damage and capped at the fee we received on the loan in question.
2. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, a fall in collateral value, or a failure of Anvil or Ethereum.
3. We are not liable for a failure of a bank, Anvil, the Ethereum network, an oracle, or a third-party analytics firm.
4. None of this limits liability for gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or a duty that Swiss law does not allow us to limit, including duties under the Anti-Money Laundering Act.

15. Suspension and closure

We may suspend or close access if you breach these Terms, if you are a prohibited person, if we have a reasonable suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing, or if the law or our self-regulatory organisation requires it. If a report to MROS has been filed, we may be forbidden from telling you that.

Closing the account does not end a loan agreement that is still in force. The AML file is still kept for ten years.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms. If the change is material, we will tell registered users by email or in the application at least 30 days before it applies, and we will ask you to accept the new version before you start a new request. A material change to the Privacy Policy is notified in the same way. Continuing to look at the site is not acceptance. A signed loan agreement is not amended by a change to this page.

17. Law and courts

Swiss law governs these Terms, without its conflict-of-law rules. The courts of Zurich, Switzerland have exclusive jurisdiction, except where a mandatory consumer rule gives you another court.

18. Contact

Questions, complaints, and data-protection requests: contact@helva.finance. Data-protection rights are in the Privacy Policy.

The operator's name, seat, register details, and telephone number are in the imprint. They are not repeated here.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner on a data-protection complaint.

Version 2026-09-22.