Watch Webinar

Review Clover's app approval process through this live webinar. Here’s what you will learn in the webinar:

• Why do apps built on the Clover platform need approval?
• What is the app approval process?
• Critical components of the app approval process
• Your app is approved. Now what?

You can view or download the webinar slides here.

You can submit your app for approval from your approved developer accounts. You can track your app through the approval process from the Developer Dashboard. You can submit and publish an app for approval or delete the app using the overflow menu for each app card.

Create and manage your apps

Use the Developer Dashboard to create and manage apps and work through the app approval process with Clover. Track the progress of your app through the approval lifecycle in various statuses.

Clover reviews your app in these categories:

• Functional Review - Clover installs your app and reviews it for functional operability.
• Legal & Privacy - Clover reviews if the app meets its terms of service and privacy policy.
• Market Listing - Clover reviews your app's icon.

On the Developer Dashboard home, click Create App, select the country your app will be available in, and click Create. You can create any of these types of apps - Android, web, or semi-integrated.

You must select a subscription country because Clover must know the subscription country where your app is available for processing payments.

Submit an app for approval

All apps submitted to the Clover App Market are reviewed to ensure they perform as expected, are free of critical bugs, and add value for busy merchants.

To submit your app for approval, complete the following steps:

1. Log in to your production Clover developer account.
2. On the Dashboard home, click Submit App from the overflow menu of your app card. Confirm your submission by clicking Submit. If you miss required information, the Submission Checklist guides you through this process.

Submission checklist

The Submission Checklist guides you through a list of tasks that must be completed before you can submit your app for approval.

1. On the Submission Checklist modal, click on an incomplete task. Depending on the task, you are redirected to the App Settings, Market Listing, or App Releases page.
2. After you complete the selected task, click Dashboard from the top of the side-nav. You are redirected to the Dashboard home.
3. Click Submit App from the overflow menu on the app card. If you have entered all the required app settings and market listing information, you can confirm your app submission.

If there are incomplete tasks to be completed on the Submission Checklist, go to step 1. As you complete a task on this list, the task is marked as complete.

You can also access the checklist tasks from the App Settings and Market Listing pages on the side-nav.

Approval process

After you submit your app, the approval status of your app is Under Review. The Dashboard provides you with an interface to communicate with Clover's App Market team to collaboratively work through the approval process for your app.

Functional review

The team reviews the functional video and description you provide. You must upload a video and ensure that you provide a detailed functional description explaining the workflow of your app to enable quick review and approval of your app.

The video should help our team visualize your app's functional flow and how it benefits the merchant. Providing a helpful video is key to a smoother app approval process with Clover's App Market team. Here's an example video you can use as reference to create your video.

You can update the following information in this state:

• Video and description
• Permissions
• APK details
• REST Configurations
• Webhooks

We review your app by following the functional review playbook.

Legal documentation

Approving your legal documentation involves Clover understanding the merchant data permissions that your app requests.

To be approved, all apps must have supporting legal documentation, which includes terms of service (TOS) and privacy policy. This requirement applies to public apps as well as integrated apps that are not published on the Clover App Market.

These documents define the relationship between you, the developer, and the Clover merchants using your application. Clover must verify that merchants' interests are protected when they use an application.

A TOS document is also called an end-user license agreement (EULA). Although a TOS is technically distinct from a EULA, Clover uses these terms interchangeably as the two types of agreements are functionally the same from our perspective. The privacy policy explains what data, if any, your app collects and how the app uses the data.

If your application already has a TOS or privacy policy, it can be used as long as it does not conflict with Clover's own terms or privacy policy.

As a starting point, please review our guidelines for terms of service and privacy policy. You can use our guidelines and build your legal documentation based on our TOS template and privacy policy template.

Your app's TOS is reviewed to ensure there are no conflicts with Clover's terms or the services provided to merchants using the Clover platform.

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WARNING

Ensure that your TOS and privacy policy are NOT a generic version. Generic versions of such legal disclaimers commonly state that an app is for personal use on a single device or contain billing-related language that does not apply to Clover.

Market listing

The icon submitted with your app also requires approval. The icon must be easily identifiable (to be distinguishable from other apps) and relevant to your app’s core function. Please make sure that you have the rights required to use your chosen app icon.

After the app is reviewed by the team, they may request you to make certain changes. They will provide you specific feedback that you will have to implement for each category listed. The approval status change to Changes Required until you fix the changes and respond to the Clover team.

If the team is satisfied with your updates then they will approve your app and the status changes to Approved.

Approval status

While working through the approval of your app, you will see these statuses:

• Draft - A new app you created
• Pending - After you submit the app for review. You can view the date at which your app is submitted for review.
• Approved - Your app was approved based on Clover's terms of service and privacy policy. When your submitted app is approved. A new Publish to App Market option appears on the app card.
• Rejected - Your app was rejected based on Clover's terms of service and privacy policy.
• Published - After you click Publish to App Market for your approved app, your app is published on the Clover App Market.
  • Withdrawn: While in the Pending state, you can choose to withdraw your app submission by clicking Withdraw App Submission from the overflow menu of the app card.
  • Denied: For apps that are not approved for publishing. You will receive detailed information from the App Market team about why your app is not approved before the app state is set to Denied.

App rejection reasons

If the Clover team finds that your app violates Clover's policies, they will notify you. At this stage, you can make changes to comply with Clover's policies.

If Clover's team is satisfied with your changes and justification, they may still approve your app. Otherwise, they will reject your app.

Here are the reasons Clover rejects your app. The app:

• Violates the Developer Agreement or App Market Policies. For example, apps that:
  • Offer services that are not in compliance with regional laws and regulations.
  • Commit financial fraud, cyber fraud.
  • Allow money transmission to be handled by the developer at any time during a customer-merchant transaction (including the use of a payment API such as Stripe or Braintree).
  • Deal in drugs, gambling, or adult products.
  • Infringe on copyrights or impersonate a Clover's or another developer's app.
  • Provide a credit card surcharging function.
• Fails functional testing multiple times and is deemed fundamentally inoperable. For example, your app:
  • Has significant exceptions or crashes frequently.
  • Doesn't behave as marketed.

Additionally, if we have not received a response from you after several attempts, we will reject the app.

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NOTE

About loyalty and gift card programs
In a loyalty or gift card program, money never leaves the merchant account. If a customer buys a gift card from the merchant, it must be paid for using the Clover merchant's account. Loyalty programs never exchange points for cash.