Understand the app approval process
The Clover team must approve all apps before you can publish them to the Clover App Market. The app approval process ensures that the apps perform as expected and add value for merchants. You can submit your app for approval from your approved developer account and then track your app through the approval process from the Developer Dashboard.
Watch video: Clover app approval process
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In this video, learn:
View or download: Clover app approval overview slides |
Understand the app approval process
After you submit your app, the approval status of your app is Under Review. The Developer Dashboard is your interface to communicate with Clover team and collaboratively work through the approval process for your app.
Clover app approval process
For more information, read the Clover platform blog: Clover App Market: How to Ensure Your App is Approved.
1. Functional review
The team reviews the functional video and description you provide. You must upload a video that provides a detailed functional description explaining the workflow of your app to enable quick review and approval of your app. The video should help the Clover App Market team visualize your app's functional flow and how it benefits the merchant.
See the example video as a reference to create a video for your app submission.
Clover uses the functional review playbook to review the following information:
- Video and description
- App permissions
- APK details
- REST configurations
- Webhooks
2. Legal documentation review
Clover starts your legal documentation review by understanding the merchant data permissions that your app requests. Legal documents define the relationship between you, as the developer, and the Clover merchants using your app. Clover must verify that merchants' interests are protected when using an app from the Clover App Market.
Legal documentation
Legal documentation is required for all public apps as well as integrated apps that are not published on the Clover App Market. If your app already has a privacy policy or terms of service (TOS), you can use it as long as it does not conflict with Clover terms or privacy policy.
To be approved, all apps must have supporting legal documentation, which includes:
| Legal documentation | Description |
|---|---|
| Privacy policy | The privacy policy explains what data, if any, your app collects and how the app uses the data. |
| Terms of service (TOS) | A TOS document is also called an end-user license agreement (EULA). Although a TOS is technically distinct from an EULA, Clover uses these terms interchangeably, as the two are functionally the same from our perspective. Clover reviews the TOS for your app to make sure there are no conflicts with the Clover terms or the services provided to merchants using the Clover platform. |
References and templates
- Review the Clover App Terms Guidelines for terms of service and privacy policy.
- Use our guidelines to build your legal documentation based on our TOS template and privacy policy template.
- Review the:
WARNING
Make sure that your privacy policy and TOS 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 contains billing-related language that does not apply to Clover.
3. Market listing review
The app icon that you submit also requires approval. The icon must be easily identifiable to distinguish it from other apps and relevant to the core function of your app. Make sure that you have the appropriate rights and permissions required to use your chosen app icon. See Set Clover App Market listing.
Check the app approval status
While Clover works through the process to approve your app, you can track the status on the Developer Dashboard using the app card.
| App approval status | Description |
|---|---|
| Draft | Displays when you create a new app. |
| Pending | Displays after you submit your app for review. You can also view the date on which you submitted the app for review. |
| Under review | Displays when your submitted app is under review with Clover App Market team. |
| Withdrawn | Displays in the app approval Pending state when you withdraw your app submission. You can click Withdraw App Submission on the app card for your app in the Developer Dashboard. |
| Changes Required | Displays after the Clover team reviews your app and requests changes. The team provides specific feedback for you to implement for each category listed. The approval status remains as Changes Required until you fix the changes and respond to the Clover team. |
| Approved | Displays when your app was approved based on the Clover privacy policy and terms of service. Publish to App Market displays on the app card for your app in the Developer Dashboard. |
| Published | Displays after you click Publish to App Market for your approved app. Your app is published on the Clover App Market. |
| Rejected | Displays when your app is rejected based on noncompliance with the Clover terms of service and privacy policy. |
| Denied | Displays for apps that are not approved for publishing. You receive detailed information from the Clover App Market team about why your app is not approved before the app state is set to Denied. |
Check reasons for app rejection
It is important to understand the reasons for app rejections and comply with the Clover App Market requirements for app approval. For more information, read our blog: Clover App Market: How to Ensure Your App is Approved.
Some of the reasons your app may be rejected include:
1. Functionality of the app
During the functional review:
- Your app fails functional testing multiple times and is deemed fundamentally inoperable; for example, the app crashes frequently, has significant exceptions, or behaves unexpectedly or differently from how you market it.
- Your app's functional video does not show the full functionality of your working app integration. The Clover team needs the functional video and complete information on how your integration functions and helps merchants and customers.
- Your app's basic configuration does not indicate the purpose of the app, does not use Clover APIs correctly, and lacks justification for the required permissions.
2. Legal and privacy information
Your app does not comply with the Clover privacy policy and terms of service (TOS) or violates the Developer Agreement or the App Market Policies.
3. Market listing information
Your app's market listing information is incomplete, or there are issues, such as with the app icon.
4. Other compliance requirements from Clover
Your app does not comply with Clover requirements and:
- Offers integration with another payment processor. Clover only allows applications to handle and process transactions through the Clover network.
- Offers services that are not in compliance with regional laws and regulations.
- Commits financial fraud and cyber fraud.
- Allows money transmission to be handled by the developer at any time during a customer-merchant transaction
- Deals with drugs, gambling, or adult products.
- Infringes on copyrights or impersonate a Clover or another developer's app.
- Provides a credit card surcharging function.
5. Responses to Clover team notifications
The Clover team sends you a notification with the reasons for rejecting your app.
- If you do not respond to the notification even after several attempts by the Clover team, your app is rejected.
- If you respond to the notifications and make changes to your app and the Clover team is satisfied with the changes and justification, they may approve your app. Otherwise, your app is rejected.
Keep in touch
- For merchant-facing changes, see Clover Help.
- For questions and feedback, send an email to the Clover Developer Relations (DevRel) team.
- To join our developer communications mailing list, enter your email address on the Sign up for Developer Announcements page. Developer communications subscribers receive email announcements about new features and updates for the device, ROM, SDK, API, or Developer Dashboard. Messages sent in the Developer Communications emails are added to our announcements page. If you miss an email, check our Announcements.
Updated 4 months ago