Vendwa Voice Notes Project — Participant Terms

Effective 7 August 2026 · Version 1.0

The short version

• You record 15 short voice notes on WhatsApp. We pay you GH₵5 for every note we accept, up to GH₵75 for the full set, sent to your MoMo within 48 hours of our check.
• You must be 18 or older and in Ghana.
• This is a one-off paid task, not a job. No employment, no obligation on either side to continue.
• We only pay for notes we can actually use. If a note is rejected we tell you why, and it is not paid.
• You keep ownership of your voice. For the notes we accept and pay for, you give us permission to keep and use them to test and improve speech technology — including using them to train speech models.
• Your recordings are never published and never sold. They are used inside our work only.
• We store your full name, WhatsApp number, MoMo details and recordings on secure servers outside Ghana. A speech-to-text provider (OpenAI, in the USA) transcribes your recordings so we can check them.
• You can ask us to delete a recording at any time until it is locked into our test set. We will message you when that happens, so you always know when the window closes.
• Send STOP to leave at any time. You are still paid for the notes we already accepted.
• Questions, deletion requests, payment problems: support@vendwa.com.

1. Who you are dealing with

The Voice Notes Project is run by BestDid Technology Ltd, a company registered in Ghana (“BestDid”, “we”, “us”). BestDid operates Vendwa, a WhatsApp assistant that helps Ghanaian shops answer customers and take orders. (BestDid also operates a United States affiliate, BestDid Technology LLC; for this project, your agreement is with BestDid Technology Ltd in Ghana.)

When you take part in this project you are dealing with BestDid, not with any shop that uses Vendwa — even if the WhatsApp number you message also serves a shop.

For everything to do with this project, contact us at support@vendwa.com.

2. Who can take part

To take part you must:

• be 18 years of age or older;
• be in Ghana;
• have a Mobile Money account in your own name that we can pay;
• take part once only — one person, one slot, one MoMo account.

The project is open to 15 people at a time. When all 15 slots are taken, the bot will tell you honestly that it is full. A slot opens again if someone leaves, is removed, or goes quiet for 48 hours in the middle of their set.

When you reply AGREE to the bot, you are confirming that you are 18 or older, that you are in Ghana, and that you accept these terms. If we find that someone under 18 has taken part, we will remove them from the project and delete their recordings. We will still pay for any notes already accepted — we do not think a young person should be out of pocket for our failure to ask.

3. What we ask you to do

We send you 15 lines, one at a time, on WhatsApp. For each one you record a voice note saying that line, and send it back.

• 12 lines you record normally.
• 3 lines you record again with deliberate background noise around you — outside, near a fan, a TV or the street. This is on purpose: real customers do not record in studios.
• Speak naturally, the way you really talk. Small slips are fine. Your accent is the point.
• You can pause and continue later. Send VOICE again to pick up where you left off.
• If a note cannot be used, the bot may ask you to record that one line again. A good redo earns its GH₵5 like any other accepted note.

Please only send your own voice, recorded by you, for this project. Do not send a recording you have sent before, a recording of someone else, or audio taken from anywhere else.

4. What we pay, and when

The rate. GH₵5 for every voice note we accept. The full set of 15 accepted notes is GH₵75. That is the maximum any one person can earn from this project.

Partial sets are paid. If you record 9 good notes and stop, you are paid for 9. You do not have to finish to be paid.

What “accepted” means. A note is accepted when: it is a voice note you recorded yourself for this project; we can hear you clearly enough to understand you; and it is recognisably the line we asked for.

We check this in two steps: an automatic speech-to-text check that compares what we hear against the line we sent, and — for anything the automatic check is unsure about — a person listening to it. Natural slips, strong accents, Pidgin, and the background noise on your noisy takes are all fine.

What is not paid: silence, or audio too faint to make out; a completely different line from the one asked for; the same recording sent again for another line, or a recording already submitted by anyone else (our system fingerprints every recording); a recording that is not your own voice.

We tell you why. If a note is rejected or needs a redo, the bot sends you a message with the reason and the score from our automatic check. You are not left guessing.

Payment. We pay by Mobile Money, to the number and registered name you gave the bot, within 48 hours of our check being completed. We pay the full amount due — we make no deductions of any kind. You are responsible for any tax you may owe on what you earn.

If your money does not arrive. Email support@vendwa.com with the WhatsApp number you recorded from. We keep a record of every note, every decision and every payment, so a query like “you did not pay me for line 7” can be answered in one lookup. If we owe you money, we pay it.

We will never ask you for your MoMo PIN, and we will never ask you to send us money. Anyone who does is not us. Do not send anyone a PIN.

5. This is a paid task, not a job

Taking part does not make you an employee, a worker, a partner, an agent or a contractor of BestDid, and it does not create a contract of employment or of service between us.

• There are no fixed hours, no supervision of how you spend your time, and no obligation on you to record anything at all.
• There is no obligation on us to offer you this or any future task.
• Nothing here is exclusive — take part in anything else you like.
• You handle your own taxes on what you earn.
• You are not entitled to leave, notice, severance, pension or any other employment benefit through this project, because this project is not employment.

6. Your recordings — what you keep, and what you give us

You keep ownership of your voice and your recordings. You are not selling them to us. What you give us is permission to use them, on the terms below.

The permission you give us. For each recording that we accept and pay for, you give BestDid a permanent, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to store, copy, transcribe, edit, analyse and use that recording — and to allow our service providers to do the same, on our behalf and under contract with us — for these purposes and no others:

1. Testing how well speech technology understands Ghanaian-accented English and Pidgin, including keeping the recording as part of a fixed test set;
2. Improving that technology — including using the recording and its transcript as training or fine-tuning data for speech models we build, or have built for us, for Vendwa; and
3. Keeping the records that show what we asked for, what we accepted and what we paid you.

“Permanent” means for as long as your rights in the recording last. Under Ghana's Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690), a performer's rights in a recording last for 70 years from the end of the year the recording was made. “Irrevocable” means that once we have paid you for a recording, you cannot withdraw this permission for that recording — which is why deletion is only possible before a recording is locked into the test set (section 7).

What this permission does not allow us to do. We may not:

• publish your recording, post it online, broadcast it, or use it in any advertisement;
• sell it, licence it to another company for their own use, or give it to a data broker;
• use it to identify you, verify your identity, or build a voiceprint of you for security or authentication purposes;
• use your name, image or voice to endorse or promote anything.

Recordings we do not pay for. If a recording is rejected, or you leave before we accept it, we take no permission over it and we delete it within 30 days of the decision.

Your moral rights stay with you. Under Ghana's Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690), a performer's moral rights are separate from economic rights and are not transferred. We do not ask for them and we do not take them. Because we never publish your recordings, no question of public credit arises — but you are not agreeing to be credited, and you are not agreeing not to be.

One thing we are asking you to accept plainly: speech models are improved by learning from recordings. If you are not comfortable with your voice being used that way, please do not take part — and if you have already taken part, email us and we will delete your recordings while we still can.

7. Your information and your privacy

Who is responsible. For this project, BestDid is the data controller under Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843). We decide what is collected and why. Our basis for handling your information is your consent, given when you reply AGREE — and you can withdraw it as described below.

What we hold about you: your full name (matched against the name registered on your MoMo account — this is also how we stop one person taking two slots); your WhatsApp number (how you reach us and how we reach you — it is also your identity in the project); your MoMo number and the name registered on it (to pay you, and to make sure one person does not take two slots); your voice recordings and the text of what our system heard (the work you are paid for); and your progress and our decisions — which lines you sent, what each scored, what we accepted, what we paid and when (so payment is provable and disputes are answerable).

We do not ask for or hold your MoMo PIN, your Ghana Card number, your date of birth, your address, or any bank details.

Where it is kept, and who else sees it.

• Your recordings and records are stored in a secured, access-controlled database hosted by Railway, on cloud servers outside Ghana.
• Each recording is sent to OpenAI, a company in the United States, which converts it to text so we can check it against the line we asked for. OpenAI states that data sent to its API is not used to train or improve its models unless the customer opts in — we have not opted in — and that it keeps a short record for abuse monitoring, up to 30 days.
• Inside BestDid, only authorised administrators can open the project console, listen to a recording, or see your MoMo details.
• Nobody else. Your recordings are not shared with the shops that use Vendwa, are never published, and are never sold.

By replying AGREE you consent to your information being sent outside Ghana for these purposes.

How long we keep things.

• Your recordings: until you ask us to delete them, or until they are locked into our test set — whichever happens first. Once a recording is locked in, we keep it for as long as we keep that test set, which may be indefinitely.
• Why we cannot delete a locked recording: a test set is a fixed measuring stick. If recordings can be taken out of it, a score measured last month and a score measured next month are no longer comparable, and the whole thing stops being useful. This is the one thing we cannot undo for you, so we tell you about it before you start.
• We will message you on WhatsApp when your recordings are locked in, so you always know when the deletion window has closed. You should never find out by being refused.
• Your name, WhatsApp number and MoMo details: kept for 12 months after we pay you, so we can answer any payment question, and then removed from the recordings, which are left under a speaker code instead.
• Being honest about that: a voice recording can still identify a person by how they sound. Removing your name and number reduces the link between you and the recording; it does not erase it. We are not going to call that “anonymous”, because it is not.
• Rejected or unpaid recordings: deleted within 30 days of the decision.
• If you start and never finish, and never ask for deletion: we delete everything we hold about you 6 months after your last message, except for recordings we accepted and paid for, which follow the rules above.

Your rights. Under Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) you can ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and withdraw your consent. Email support@vendwa.com from — or telling us — the WhatsApp number you took part with. We answer within 30 days. Withdrawing consent stops any further use going forward; it does not undo something already done, and it cannot pull a recording back out of a locked test set.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your request, you can complain to Ghana's Data Protection Commission.

8. Leaving the project

Send STOP to the bot at any time. You do not have to explain.

• Leaving does not cost you money: every note we already accepted is still paid.
• Leaving frees your slot for somebody else.
• If you go quiet for 48 hours in the middle of your set and somebody is waiting for a slot, your slot is released and you are marked inactive — we send you a message when that happens. Your recorded notes stay, and stay payable. Send VOICE again and you can pick up where you left off if a slot is free.
• Leaving is not the same as deletion. If you also want your recordings deleted, email support@vendwa.com — and do it before they are locked into the test set (section 7).

9. Fair play, and when we remove someone

The project runs on trust and a small budget. To keep it fair: one person, one slot, one MoMo account; every recording must be your own voice, recorded by you, for this project; and our system fingerprints every recording, so the same audio cannot be counted twice — by you or by anyone else, on any number.

We may remove someone from the project where we reasonably believe these rules have been broken, or where the recordings are not usable. If we remove you: the bot tells you, with the reason; any notes we already accepted are still paid — we do not use removal to avoid paying for work we accepted; and that WhatsApp number cannot rejoin the project.

If you think a removal or a rejection was wrong, email support@vendwa.com and say why. A person will look at it again.

10. Changes, and the end of the project

This is a small, time-limited project with 15 slots. We may change how it works, pause it, or close it at any time. If we do: anything you have already earned is still paid, on the terms above; if we make a material change to these terms, we will post the new version at this address with a new effective date, and message anyone currently taking part; and a change to these terms does not change the permission you have already given over recordings we have already accepted and paid for, and it does not change the promises in section 6 about what we may not do with them.

11. Our responsibility

We will run this project carefully and pay what we owe. Beyond that, please understand:

• WhatsApp, Mobile Money and the internet sometimes fail. We are not responsible for a message or a payment delayed by a network, a service outage, or a wrong number you gave us — though we will always try to sort it out.
• Our automatic check is not perfect, which is why a person reviews anything it is unsure about, and why you can ask us to look again.
• If something goes wrong and we are at fault, the most we will owe you is the money you have earned under this project and not been paid.
• Nothing in these terms takes away any right you have under Ghanaian law that cannot be given away.

12. Law, and how to reach us

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Ghana, and the courts of Ghana have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

If something is wrong, please email us first — most things are fixed in one message.

BestDid Technology Ltd — Vendwa Voice Notes Project
support@vendwa.com

Our main Vendwa policies are at vendwa.com/privacy and vendwa.com/terms. Those cover people who shop with Vendwa. These terms cover this project, and where they differ, these terms apply to this project.