Licensing and Product Disclosure
Version 1.0, effective 12 October 2026
Who provides Arubis and under what regulatory status, what Arubis is and is not, how it works on its own without any Olympus bank account, and how it can be paired with Olympus Banking and Merchant Services if you choose.
1. Why we make this disclosure
Arubis is provided by a company that also offers banking and payment services. That is useful, because it lets a business's bank account and its books work together. It also creates a risk of confusion: a customer could reasonably wonder whether signing up for Arubis opens a bank account, whether money is held in Arubis, whether Arubis is regulated as a bank, or whether its advice carries the authority of a regulated adviser.
This disclosure answers those questions plainly before you rely on Arubis. You are asked to acknowledge it when you first use Arubis, and it forms part of your agreement with Olympus Pay Proprietary Limited ("Olympus Pay", "we"), alongside the Terms of Service and our other policies. If anything in it is unclear, please ask us at support@olympuspay.co before you proceed.
2. Who provides Arubis
Arubis is provided by Olympus Pay Proprietary Limited, a private company incorporated in the Republic of Botswana. Olympus Pay is the contracting party for every Arubis subscription, the data controller for the personal data of Arubis users, and the data processor for the personal data in customers' books, as described in the Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Addendum.
Olympus Pay also provides, separately, Olympus Banking (business accounts, cards and payments) and Olympus Merchant Services (card acceptance, payment links and settlement), and the Olympus Invoicing features within them. Each of those services has its own terms, its own application and approval process, and its own regulatory requirements.
3. Olympus Pay’s licensing and regulatory status
Olympus Pay is an admitted member of the Bank of Botswana Regulatory Sandbox. The Sandbox allows a firm to provide innovative financial services to real customers under the supervision of the Bank of Botswana, within conditions the Bank sets, including limits on the value of transactions and balances and on the number of customers, while the firm demonstrates that its services are safe and that it can meet the requirements of full authorisation.
This status has consequences that customers of Olympus Banking and Olympus Merchant Services should understand:
- Olympus Pay is not a licensed commercial bank under the Banking Act, and Sandbox admission is not a banking licence;
- services provided within the Sandbox are subject to transaction and balance limits, which are disclosed in the terms of those services;
- balances held with Olympus Pay are not covered by a deposit insurance scheme;
- access to Olympus Banking is offered by invitation, and is opened gradually in line with the conditions of the Sandbox, which is why there is a waiting list;
- the Bank of Botswana may vary the conditions of the Sandbox, and Olympus Pay must comply with any such variation.
Olympus Pay is also subject, as a business, to the Financial Intelligence Act, 2022, the Data Protection Act, 2024, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2014, the Cybercrime and Computer Related Crimes Act, 2018 and the Consumer Protection Act, 2018 where it applies, among other laws. Any change in our regulatory status that affects customers will be disclosed on this page and notified to affected customers.
4. What Arubis is
Arubis is accounting and financial management software, provided online. It lets a business record its transactions, issue invoices and quotes, manage bills and expenses, import and reconcile bank statements, prepare value added tax returns, produce financial statements and management reports, and use its assistant, Athena, to answer questions and do routine bookkeeping.
Arubis is a software service. Providing it is not, in itself, a regulated financial activity, and the Sandbox conditions that apply to Olympus Banking do not apply to Arubis. Arubis is offered to any eligible business, whether or not it has, or wants, an Olympus Bank account.
5. What Arubis is not
So that there is no misunderstanding, Arubis is not:
- a bank account, a payment account, an e-money account or a store of value: Arubis never holds your money, and the balances it shows are figures in your books, calculated from the transactions recorded in them;
- a payment service: Arubis does not move money. It can prepare a payment run or a payment file, and it can record that a payment has been made, but any payment is made by your bank, or by Olympus Banking under its own terms and its own authorisation steps, never by Arubis on its own;
- an accounting, auditing or tax practice: Olympus Pay is not registered with the Botswana Institute of Chartered Accountants as a firm of accountants, is not a registered tax agent, and does not provide accounting, audit, tax or legal advice through Arubis;
- a substitute for an audit or review: where the law requires your financial statements to be audited or reviewed, that work must be done by a suitably registered professional;
- a credit provider: Arubis does not lend money or extend credit.
Guidance in Arubis, such as which reporting framework you may be eligible to use, when VAT registration becomes compulsory, what a tax invoice must contain, or how long you have to claim input tax, is general information configured in good faith to reflect Botswana law. It is not advice about your particular circumstances.
6. Using Arubis on its own
Arubis works fully without any Olympus bank or merchant account. You can sign up, keep your books, issue invoices and quotes, record bills and receipts, run reports and file VAT returns using Arubis alone.
Without an Olympus account, your bank transactions come into Arubis by statement upload. Every bank in Botswana can provide statements in a form Arubis can read, such as spreadsheet, comma separated or OFX files, and Arubis learns how to read each bank's format. Once imported, statement lines are reconciled, matched and categorised in the same way as lines from any other source.
Creating an Arubis account does not open, and does not mean you have, an Olympus Bank or Merchant Services account. Those are separate services with their own eligibility checks, identity verification and terms, and Olympus Banking is currently available by invitation only. You can join the waiting list from the Banking tab in Arubis, which records your interest but does not open an account or commit you to anything.
The reverse is different. If you already use Olympus Banking or Merchant Services, you can sign in to Arubis with the same Olympus identity, without registering again, because the identity is shared across Olympus services. Signing in does not link your bank account to your books; linking is a separate, deliberate step described below.
7. Pairing Arubis with Olympus services
If you hold an Olympus Bank or Merchant Services account, you can choose to pair it with your books in Arubis. Pairing is optional, can be done at any time, and can be undone.
When you pair an Olympus Bank account:
- its transactions flow into the Arubis bank feed automatically as they complete, with their Olympus references, so that most payments match themselves to invoices and bills;
- balances and transaction details are shared one way, from Olympus Banking into your books;
- Arubis does not gain the ability to move money, change payees, issue cards or alter the account; those actions remain in Olympus Banking, behind its own authorisation and security checks;
- only the account holder, or an administrator of their banking team, can pair the account, and an account can be paired with only one set of books at a time.
When you pair Olympus Merchant Services or Olympus Invoicing:
- invoices you issue in Arubis can be published so that your customers can pay them online through Olympus checkout;
- payments and settlements flow back into your books and are matched to the invoices they settle;
- the merchant platform applies its own verification and role checks before creating a pay link.
Data shared through pairing is used only to keep your books and to provide the services you have chosen, as described in the Privacy Policy. Unpairing stops new data flowing; it does not delete transactions already recorded in your books, because those are part of your accounting records.
8. How the services remain separate
Even when paired, Arubis and Olympus's financial services remain separate products:
- your money is held, if at all, only in Olympus Banking, subject to its terms, the Sandbox conditions and the absence of deposit insurance described above; nothing about using Arubis changes where your money is held or how it is protected;
- the figures in Arubis are your books, which you control and can adjust, reverse and annotate. Your bank's own records are the authoritative record of what happened in your bank account, and if the two differ, reconciliation in Arubis is how you find and resolve the difference;
- closing your Arubis books or your Arubis access does not close an Olympus bank or merchant account, and closing a bank or merchant account does not close your books;
- fees for Arubis are set out in the Subscription, Billing and Payment Terms and are separate from any fees for Olympus Banking or Merchant Services;
- complaints about Arubis are handled under these terms; complaints about Olympus Banking or Merchant Services are handled under the complaints procedure of those services.
We design Arubis to work equally well with any bank. Pairing with Olympus makes some things faster, but you will never be required to hold an Olympus account to use Arubis, and Arubis will not be degraded for customers who bank elsewhere.
9. Athena and automated processing
Arubis includes Athena, an assistant that uses large language models provided by a third party, and automation that categorises, matches and books transactions on rules you control. Athena and automation can make mistakes. They are designed so that people stay in control: Athena's proposals wait for approval, automated actions are logged and can be undone, and bills booked from receipts are labelled and keep the original document.
Athena does not give regulated advice, cannot move money, and acts only within the permissions of the person using it. The Athena and Automated Processing Terms explain how it works, what data it uses and who is responsible for its output.
10. Accounting standards and tax compliance
Arubis is designed around International Financial Reporting Standards, including IFRS for Small and Medium-sized Entities, which are the frameworks Botswana entities report under, and around the Value Added Tax Act, the Income Tax Act and the record keeping requirements of the Companies Act. Its statements follow IFRS presentation, it supports accrual and cash bases for management reporting, and its VAT workspace is built to the Botswana return.
You remain responsible for your compliance. In particular, you are responsible for the accuracy of what you record, the accounting policies you choose, the returns you file with the Botswana Unified Revenue Service, and the approval of your financial statements by your directors. Where your statements must be audited, the audit is a matter between you and your auditor, who can be given read-only access to your books in Arubis.
11. Conflicts of interest
Because Olympus Pay offers both Arubis and financial services, we could have an incentive to steer Arubis customers towards Olympus Banking. We manage that potential conflict by:
- making every Arubis feature available to customers who bank elsewhere, on the same terms;
- presenting Olympus Banking in Arubis only as an option, clearly labelled, with its regulatory status and limits disclosed;
- never using the contents of your books to make decisions about whether to offer you, or on what terms to offer you, a financial product, without your explicit consent;
- not sharing your accounting data with Olympus Banking unless you pair an account, and then only as described above.
If you believe we have fallen short of these commitments, please tell us.
12. Risks you should understand
Using online accounting software carries risks that you should weigh. The principal ones, and how they are addressed, are:
- availability: the service may occasionally be unavailable; your data is backed up, and you can export your books at any time to keep your own copy;
- error: records are only as accurate as the information entered, imported or read; reconciliation, review of automated work and the involvement of a qualified accountant reduce this risk;
- security: accounts can be compromised if credentials are shared or weak; use strong, unique passwords, keep devices secure, remove people who leave, and use approval controls for significant transactions;
- dependency on third parties: Arubis relies on hosting, email and inference providers; we select them carefully and can change them, but an outage at one of them may affect the service;
- regulatory change: tax and reporting rules change; we update Arubis to reflect changes in Botswana law, but you should confirm how a change affects you.
Where you pair Olympus Banking, the risks of that service, including the Sandbox limits and the absence of deposit insurance, are disclosed in its own terms.
13. Complaints
If you are dissatisfied with Arubis, please contact us at support@olympuspay.co. We will acknowledge your complaint promptly, investigate it fairly, and give you a written response explaining what we found and what we will do. Complaints about personal data may be sent to privacy@olympuspay.co and may also be made to the Information and Data Protection Commission.
Complaints about Olympus Banking or Merchant Services should be made under the complaints procedure published for those services. Where those services operate within the Bank of Botswana Regulatory Sandbox, that procedure explains any further avenues available to you.
14. Becoming an Olympus Banking or Merchant customer
If you would like to use Olympus Banking or Merchant Services alongside Arubis, you apply for them separately. Applications involve identity verification of the business and the people who control it, checks required by the Financial Intelligence Act, 2022, and an assessment of whether the business is eligible under the conditions of the Bank of Botswana Regulatory Sandbox. Some businesses, such as those in restricted sectors, may not be eligible.
Information you have recorded in Arubis is not used in that application unless you choose to provide it. Being an Arubis customer does not entitle you to an account, does not move you up the waiting list, and does not affect the outcome of an application, except that you may choose to share your financial statements from Arubis where the application asks for them.
If your application is approved, you can pair your new account with your books from the Accounts page in Arubis, as described above.
15. Information shared with regulators
As a member of the Bank of Botswana Regulatory Sandbox, Olympus Pay reports to the Bank of Botswana about its banking and payment services, including information about customers and transactions in those services, as the Sandbox conditions require. The contents of your books in Arubis are not part of that reporting.
Like any business, Olympus Pay may be required by law to disclose information to the Botswana Unified Revenue Service, the Financial Intelligence Agency, the Information and Data Protection Commission, the courts or the police. The Privacy Policy and the Data Processing Addendum explain how we handle such requests, including our practice of referring requests for a customer's own records to the customer where the law allows.
16. Terms used in this disclosure
In this disclosure:
- "books" means the accounting records of a business kept in Arubis, including its ledger, documents, bank lines and attachments;
- "pairing" means linking an Olympus Bank, Merchant Services or Invoicing account to a set of books, so that data flows from that service into the books;
- "Regulatory Sandbox" means the regulatory sandbox operated by the Bank of Botswana, which allows admitted firms to provide innovative financial services under supervision and within conditions;
- "deposit insurance" means a scheme that repays depositors up to a limit if a bank fails; balances with Olympus Pay are not covered by such a scheme;
- "Olympus identity" means the sign-in shared by Olympus services, which lets one person use Arubis, Olympus Banking and Merchant Services with one login where they hold those services.
17. Changes to our status and to this disclosure
Our regulatory status may change, for example if Olympus Pay is granted a licence on leaving the Sandbox, if the Bank of Botswana changes the conditions under which it operates, or if we begin to offer new services. We will update this disclosure promptly when that happens, publish the new version with its effective date, and ask you to acknowledge it where the change is material to how you use Arubis or Olympus services.
Earlier versions of this disclosure are available on request from support@olympuspay.co, so that you can see what was disclosed at any time.
18. Your money when you use Arubis to get paid
When your customers pay invoices issued from Arubis, the money goes to the account you nominate, never to Arubis. If you include an Olympus pay link, the customer pays through Olympus Merchant Services, and the funds are settled to your merchant settlement account under the terms of that service. If you show your bank details on the invoice, the customer pays your bank directly.
In either case, Arubis records the payment in your books when it is reported by your bank feed, your statement upload, Olympus Merchant Services, or when you record it yourself. Arubis showing an invoice as paid means that a payment has been recorded against it in your books; it is not confirmation from a bank that funds have cleared.
19. Your acknowledgement
By acknowledging this disclosure in Arubis, you confirm that you understand that:
- Arubis is accounting software provided by Olympus Pay Proprietary Limited and is not a bank, payment service or source of professional advice;
- Olympus Pay is an admitted member of the Bank of Botswana Regulatory Sandbox for its banking services, is not a licensed commercial bank, and balances held with it are not covered by deposit insurance;
- creating an Arubis account does not open an Olympus Bank or Merchant Services account, and Olympus Banking is available by invitation;
- Arubis works on its own with statements from any bank, and pairing with Olympus services is optional and can be undone;
- you remain responsible for your accounting and tax compliance.
We record the date and version of your acknowledgement. If this disclosure changes materially, we will ask you to acknowledge the new version.