1. Scope

These terms apply to studios and practitioners ("businesses") taking bookings through Arctic Studios, alongside the general Terms & Conditions. Subscription plans (Solo, Pro, Ultimate) are billed separately from the booking fees below.

2. Arctic Transactional Fee

For every booking paid through Arctic Studios, an Arctic Transactional Fee is deducted from the customer payment before settlement. The customer is never charged extra.

The fee is a percentage of the treatment price plus 30p, set by your partner level: Entry 3.76%, Silver 3.58%, Gold 3.24%, Black 3.12%, Founders Circle 3.12%, Sapphire Elite 3.00%, Rose Gold 2.90%. The New-client Acquisition Fee is 20% at Entry and Silver, and 15% from Gold upwards, including Founders Circle. Subscription plans are unchanged by partner level. Fees are VAT inclusive and include card processing.

Your partner level, fee rate and fixed fee are locked onto each payment when it is made. A later change of level does not change payments already taken.

3. New-client Acquisition Fee

Where a customer books with your business for the first time after finding you through Arctic Studios, a New-client Acquisition Fee applies: 20% at Entry and Silver, and 15% from Gold upwards, including Founders Circle. It is all-in and charged instead of the Arctic Transactional Fee, never in addition to it, and is charged to the business only.

The fee is taken from each payment the customer makes (deposit, balance or full payment). If the customer cancels, the fee on those payments is reduced to the Arctic Transactional Fee and the difference is returned to you, and the acquisition fee may then apply to the next booking between that customer and your business. It is kept on a no-show.

The New-client Acquisition Fee is never charged to, or deducted from a refund to, the customer.

4. Cancellations and settlement

Customer cancellations follow the Cancellation Policy. Charges are measured against the full treatment price: none before 00:00 UK time 7 days before the appointment, 50% from then until 48 hours before, 75% from 24 to 48 hours, 100% within 24 hours or for a no-show. The business keeps the money retained under the policy; unpaid balances are not chased.

The Arctic Transactional Fee taken from each payment is retained by Arctic Studios on a customer cancellation and is deducted from the customer refund first. Where the refund is already zero, the fee comes from the amount the business keeps.

If the business cancels, at any time, the customer is refunded everything they paid and the Arctic fees already taken (Transactional or New-client Acquisition) remain charged to the business and are deducted from its balance or payouts.

A no-show may only be recorded from 10 minutes after the appointment start. Bookings with no outcome recorded are marked completed at the end of the appointment day. Treatments over £100 booked more than 7 days ahead may be paid with a 50% deposit and a 50% balance.

5. Payouts and your balance

Arctic Studios does not hold your money. Customer payments are processed by our regulated payment provider and paid out to your bank account. Payments become payable 3 business days after they clear, and a payout sent on a weekend or bank holiday arrives the next business day. This can mean you are paid before the appointment takes place.

You choose how often you are paid: daily (a payout every business day), weekly or monthly. Daily does not mean same day. Payments become available 3 business days after the customer pays, so a daily payout carries the payments that became available that day and reaches your bank on the next business day. Your first payout after your first customer payment takes about 7 days, after which your chosen schedule applies.

You can also take an instant payout of any available amount at any time, 24 hours a day, including weekends and bank holidays. Instant payouts do not need our approval and are processed straight away. They carry a 2% fee, which is deducted from your balance, and are subject to the payment provider’s limits: currently £0.40 minimum, £9,999 maximum per payout and 10 instant payouts per day. Funds normally arrive within 1 hour, though your bank can take longer. Instant payouts are unavailable while your balance is negative.

If a customer is refunded after you have been paid out, the refunded amount is deducted from your Arctic balance. Arctic Studios keeps the fee it has already taken, so only the money that was paid to you is deducted. If your balance is not enough, it becomes negative.

A negative balance is recovered automatically from your next earnings. If it is still negative on the 1st of the following month, the card on file is charged to bring it back to zero. If it cannot be charged, the balance is marked overdue after 14 days, and after 30 days new online bookings for your studio are paused until the balance is settled. Existing bookings are not affected, and bookings resume automatically once your balance is back to zero or above.

Chargebacks and disputes are handled case by case and may be deducted from your balance where the business is responsible.

6. Client photographs, portfolios and consent

If you publish a photograph or video of a client anywhere on Arctic Studios, including your storefront, your Aura portfolio, a case study or the social feed, you must have that client’s explicit, informed and freely given consent to publish it on Arctic Studios specifically. Consent to be photographed is not consent to publish.

Before and after images, and images showing skin, hair or body condition, can reveal information about a person’s health. That is special category data under UK GDPR, and you need the client’s explicit consent before publishing it. You are the controller of images you upload; Arctic Studios processes them on your behalf so they can be displayed.

For a client under 18, you also need consent from someone with parental responsibility, and you must not publish an image of a child where doing so would identify them alongside a treatment.

When you publish a project or case study you confirm you hold the consent described above. We record that confirmation and the date you gave it. We do not hold the consent itself, so keep your own record, in writing where you can: if a client or a regulator asks, you will need to produce it.

A client may withdraw consent at any time, and you must remove the image promptly when they do. You can delete a project or any image from your portfolio yourself at any time.

Deleting an image removes it from your portfolio. Please do not rely on hiding a project as a way of protecting a client’s privacy: remove the image instead.

We may remove any image reported to us as published without consent while we look into it, and repeated breaches may lead to suspension. Publishing a client’s image without consent is your responsibility, not ours.

7. Changes

We will give reasonable notice before changing fees. Changes never apply to bookings already made. Questions: hello@arcticstudios.uk.