Last updated: August 9, 2026
ChitSeal is operated by Vanillapha Inc., a corporation incorporated in Ontario, Canada. Registered office: 952 Guildwood Blvd, London, Ontario N6H 4G3, Canada. Email: contact@vanillapha.com.
Chit records loan agreements between people: both parties sign electronically, and the record is sealed with a cryptographic hash and trusted timestamp. E-signatures made through Chit are intended to be legally binding under the electronic-commerce legislation of the province that governs the agreement (Ontario's Electronic Commerce Act, 2000 and its equivalents), which is what governs signatures on private contracts in Canada. For users in the United States, electronic signatures and records made through Chit are intended to be valid and enforceable under the federal ESIGN Act and state adoptions of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA). For users in England and Wales, an electronic signature is recognised at common law and by the Electronic Communications Act 2000 s.7, as the Law Commission confirmed in its 2019 report on the electronic execution of documents. For users in Taiwan, signatures made through Chit are intended to be effective under 電子簽章法 (the Electronic Signatures Act). In every market, the other party — and a guarantor, where there is one — must give express agreement to sign electronically before their signature can be placed, and that agreement is recorded with it. The person who records the loan signs in the app from their own verified account, and that seat carries no separate consent entry.
Chit is not a lender, money-services business, escrow, or collection agency. Money never moves through Chit. A sealed agreement creates an enforceable record — it cannot force anyone to pay.
Not a negotiable instrument. A ChitSeal record is a personal promise to the named lender. It is not a negotiable instrument, is not payable to order or to bearer, and may not be negotiated or transferred. That is deliberate: negotiable instruments are carved out of the very statutes that make electronic signatures effective (ESIGN §7003(a)(3) excludes UCC Article 3; Ontario's Electronic Commerce Act, 2000 s.31(1)5 excludes negotiable instruments from the Act entirely), and every agreement we draft carries an express non-negotiability legend permitted by UCC §3-104(d).
Provinces are not interchangeable. Electronic-transactions law differs by province, and we model those differences rather than paper over them. Alberta excludes guarantees from its Electronic Transactions Act (s.7(1)(f), read with the Guarantees Acknowledgment Act), so ChitSeal refuses to create an e-signed guarantee for an Alberta agreement — record the loan without a guarantor, or have the guarantee signed on paper. Quebec is not currently offered at all: its rules on what counts as a signature (CCQ art. 2827) and on the language of contracts need their own review, which we would rather do properly than approximate.
You must have reached the age of majority where you live and be legally able to enter a contract. In the provinces we offer, that age is 18 in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan, and 19 in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia. It is 18 in England and Wales, 18 in Taiwan (民法 §12, as amended with effect from 1 January 2023), and 18 in most of the United States — 19 in Alabama and Nebraska, 21 in Mississippi.
This is not a formality, and it cuts both ways. A contract made by a minor is generally voidable at the minor's option — so a sealed record naming an underage borrower may be unenforceable against them no matter how carefully it was signed, which is the one outcome this product exists to prevent. Do not create an agreement naming a counterparty you know or suspect to be under the age of majority. If you learn afterwards that a party was underage, treat the record as evidence of what was agreed, not as a debt you can rely on collecting.
Don't use Chit for unlawful loans, harassment, or agreements you know to be false. We may suspend accounts that do.
Interest caps are enforced, not merely mentioned. ChitSeal refuses to create an agreement whose all-in annualised rate reaches 35% — the Canadian criminal rate — or a lower ceiling where we have encoded one (currently Canada, Taiwan, and New York, California, Texas, Florida and Illinois). Most US states cap interest well below 35% and we do not enforce those caps for you. Where your jurisdiction has a lower limit we tell you what it is, but the block is ours, not legal advice, and clearing it is not a finding that your rate is lawful. "All-in" means everything the borrower pays over what was actually advanced — stated interest, fees, late charges, and any "just pay me back a bit extra". That is the law's own test, not ours: Criminal Code s.347(2) counts "all charges and expenses, whether in the form of a fee, fine, penalty, commission or other similar charge" (Garland v Consumers' Gas), and Taiwan's 民法 §206 treats disguised charges the same way. Short terms are where this bites hardest — lending $1,000 and asking for $1,100 back in a month is a criminal rate in Canada, however friendly the wording.
Chit Pro is an auto-renewing subscription, offered monthly and yearly. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically at the same price for the same period unless you turn off auto-renew at least 24 hours before the current period ends, and your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours before the period ends. The current price and period are shown on the purchase screen before you buy, in your local currency.
Manage or cancel at any time in Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions on your device; the app links you straight there. Cancelling stops the next renewal — it does not end the period you have already paid for, and you keep Pro until that period ends. Deleting your ChitSeal account does not cancel the subscription, because Apple bills it, not us: cancel it in Settings as well.
Evidence-pack and notice purchases are one-time, consumed on use, and are not subscriptions. Apple processes every payment and every refund, so a refund is requested from Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com — we have no ability to charge your card or to reverse a charge. Unused portions of a free trial, if one is offered, are forfeited when you buy a subscription. None of this limits any right you have under consumer protection law, including the Ontario Consumer Protection Act, 2002: if you are entitled to a remedy from us, tell us at the address below and we will honour it, whatever Apple decides.
We build this carefully and we test it, and it can still be wrong. What we promise is what the software does: it records what you both entered, seals it, and lets you and anyone else re-check that seal independently. We do not promise an outcome. We are not a lawyer, we are not your lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice. Whether a court accepts a record, and what weight it gives it, is always the court's decision.
Where the law allows a limit, our total liability to you for any claim connected with ChitSeal is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before the claim, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss — including a debt you were unable to recover.
Two things that limit is deliberately subject to, because a term purporting to exclude them would simply be void and would put the rest of this section at risk with it. First, nothing here excludes or limits liability for fraud, for fraudulent misrepresentation, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. Second, nothing here excludes, modifies or waives any right, remedy or warranty that consumer protection law gives you and does not permit to be waived — in Ontario, s.7(1) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2002 makes any such waiver void, and we would rather say so than rely on a clause that does not work.
ChitSeal (“Chit”) is a product of Vanillapha Inc., an Ontario corporation. Contact: contact@vanillapha.com — registered office: 952 Guildwood Blvd, London, Ontario N6H 4G3, Canada