Refund Policy

When you give on Menda you are making a voluntary gift towards a specific hospital bill that the hospital treating that patient has already confirmed. You are not buying anything and you receive nothing in return.

Because of that, donations are not returned because you changed your mind. The money is committed to a real bill from the moment it is given.

Menda does not wait for a campaign to reach 100% before paying. Once a campaign has raised 40% of the verified bill, the hospital can be paid what has been raised so far. A hospital waiting on a bill that is most of the way covered is a hospital that could have started treatment already.

Before any payment leaves, a member of Menda staff authorises it and confirms the receiving account. The patient sees each step as it happens.

Whatever the campaign raised is still sent to the hospital and credited against that patient’s account there. Nothing is held back and nothing is returned to donors because a target was missed.

The remainder of the bill stays what it always was: an amount the patient owes the hospital, to be settled with the hospital directly. Menda is not part of that arrangement and does not lend, guarantee or collect it.

There is no amount too small to put against someone’s bill. A campaign that raised a fraction of its target still sends that fraction.

Donors are never charged a fee. Menda takes 3% of what a campaign raised, once, at the point the money is sent to the hospital.

A campaign that never pays out is never charged anything. There is no fee while a campaign is raising, no fee if it is cancelled and the money returned, and no fee on a campaign that raised nothing.

Once a payout has been made, the fee on it is not refundable. It is charged for work already done: verifying the bill with the hospital, running the campaign, and moving the money.

The fee comes out of what is raised rather than being added to a donation, and a campaign's target is set above the hospital bill so that the fee does not come out of the treatment. A campaign that reaches its target pays the hospital the bill in full. On a ₦500,000 bill the target is ₦515,464 and the hospital is paid ₦500,000.

A campaign that reaches only part of its target is charged 3% of what it raised and nothing more, and the rest of the bill remains between the patient and the hospital, as with any other shortfall above.

Donations do not always arrive the moment they are made. A bank transfer can settle an hour later, two people can give the last of a bill at the same time, and a hospital can close a campaign while someone is on the payment screen. So money sometimes arrives for a campaign that no longer needs it.

When that happens, your donation goes to another verified patient at the same hospital, the one who has been waiting longest. Never a different hospital: you chose that institution and that part of your choice is kept. We tell you which patient received it.

If that hospital has no other campaign running at the time, your donation is held for it and goes to the next patient there whose bill a hospital verifies. It is not absorbed into a total, and it is not returned.

This is the same principle as a campaign that falls short. Money given on Menda reaches a patient. That is the promise, and it is why there is no circumstance in which giving here becomes giving nowhere.

These are not refunds of a gift. They are corrections, for the small number of cases where money should never have been taken or should never have been released.

• A payment was taken twice, or taken and never credited to a campaign. Tell us and we will trace it and return it.
• A campaign is found not to be genuine before the hospital has been paid. We do not release the money, and we return it to the people who gave it.
• A hospital withdraws its verification before payment, and no valid bill remains.

In each case the refund goes back to the account the payment came from, through Flutterwave. How long that takes is up to your bank, usually a few working days.

When the money has reached the hospital and been credited to the patient, the payment is complete and Menda cannot reverse it. From that point it is the same as if the patient had paid the bill themselves, and anything further is between the patient and the hospital.

If a campaign is later found to have been fraudulent, Menda will pursue recovery of the money and may take legal action and report the matter to the authorities. A hospital’s verification is what makes a campaign real, so a hospital that verifies a bill that was not genuine is answerable for it.

Use Report a problem in the Menda app, or email us. Tell us when you gave, how much, and what you paid with, and we will find it.

Every report is read by a person at Menda. We look into it and write back with what we decided, and you can see your reports and our replies in the app at any time. We aim to answer within five working days.

Email: getmenda@gmail.com

We may update this policy. Material changes will be announced on this page and the “last updated” date will change. The policy that applies to a donation is the one in force when it was made.

Menda Health Technologies, Lagos, Nigeria.
Email: getmenda@gmail.com