Fee Schedule
Last updated: In force from 3 August 2026
This document is incorporated into the Terms and Conditions by reference and forms part of the same agreement (Clause 47.1). It is referenced at Schedule 1; Clauses 1.1, 4.3, 15.2, 17.6, 20.1, 20.2, 21.1–21.4. It may be amended on not less than 30 days’ notice under Clause 50. The full register of incorporated documents is at Membership documents.
This version of the Fee Schedule has been prepared for board adoption and has not yet been formally adopted. It is published here so that it can be served with the Terms and reviewed before it takes effect.
Schedule 1 of the Terms is deliberately left reserved so that this Fee Schedule can be amended without every Member having to re-execute the Terms. This document is what Schedule 1 reserves space for. It is incorporated into the Terms by reference, and Clause 20.2(c) means that the version in force from time to time is the version that applies to you.
Everything here is set by one figure: your Declared TAE. That figure is your own election, made at the end of the Suitability Call — the proportion of your Total Acceptable Expenses you intend to route through Silvatree over the following twelve months. There are no membership tiers, no joining classes and no badges. Two members declaring the same TAE pay the same fees, whatever size their business is.
1. Joining Fee
| Item | Rate |
|---|---|
| Headline rate | 2.0% of Declared TAE |
| Minimum | £200 |
| Maximum | £6,000 |
| Payable | Once, on admission |
| Re-charged | Only if you resign and later re-join, or where you voluntarily increase your Declared TAE — and then only on the difference (section 1.3) |
The Joining Fee is payable in pounds sterling. It covers onboarding administration, business verification and anti-money-laundering checks, the Annual Expense Analysis, and the initial allocation of Trading Headroom.
It is not a purchase of SILVA. Your opening SILVA balance is zero. SILVA enters your account only when you supply goods or services to another Member (Clause 6).
Because the fee is a percentage of what you declare, a member declaring £10,000 of annual throughput pays the £200 floor and a member declaring £300,000 pays the £6,000 cap. Nobody pays the same Joining Fee as a member ten times their size.
The Joining Fee is non-refundable, save where you exercise the 10 Business Day cooling-off right under Clause 21.5, where a refund is required by law, or where a refund is made under the Service Satisfaction Guarantee.
1.1 Existing members
Members who joined under Early Bird pricing hold that pricing on a grandfathered basis: £175 joining fee, £20 per month, and the same 6% + 1% transaction fee. That arrangement continues until separately agreed otherwise with the Member concerned.
1.2 Referral Programme
No Referral Programme fee waiver is currently in force. Clause 21.3(b) of the Terms applies only where this Fee Schedule provides one, and at present it does not.
Referrals do still matter to what you pay — a named business referral earns a Participation Credit, and Participation Credits are what keep the Network Participation Surcharge off your subscription. See section 6.
1.3 Voluntary increase in Declared TAE
You may elect at any time to increase your Declared TAE — because your appetite for routing spend through the platform has grown, or because you want the Trading Headroom that a larger declaration carries. Where you do:
Joining Fee top-up = (Joining Fee on your new Declared TAE) − (Joining Fee you have already paid)
subject to the same £200 floor and £6,000 cap applying to the total Joining Fee, not to the top-up. You never pay the whole fee twice, and the increase takes effect from the date the top-up is paid. Your Throughput Fee is re-rated to the new figure from the following month.
This section governs voluntary re-declaration only. Where you have not elected to increase your declaration but your actual volume has run above it, nothing is payable under this section — that situation is dealt with at the Annual TAE Review under section 4, and the charge that falls due there is the reconciliation top-up, not this one. The two never both apply to the same volume.
2. Monthly subscription
| Component | Rate |
|---|---|
| Platform Fee (fixed) | £20 per month |
| Throughput Fee | 0.2% of Declared TAE, divided by 12 |
| Total | £20 + (Declared TAE × 0.002 ÷ 12) per month |
The Platform Fee covers the lights-on cost of membership — directory listing, account access, regulatory infrastructure — and is identical for every Member. The Throughput Fee scales gently with the size of the trading appetite you have asked Silvatree to support.
| Declared TAE | Throughput Fee | Total monthly |
|---|---|---|
| £10,000 | £1.67 | £21.67 |
| £25,000 | £4.17 | £24.17 |
| £75,000 | £12.50 | £32.50 |
| £150,000 | £25.00 | £45.00 |
Monthly fees are payable on the first Business Day of each calendar month, in advance, by the payment method you have registered with us under Clause 22. Your first monthly payment is taken on the first Business Day of the month following your Activation Date, and the month of activation is charged pro rata.
VAT at the prevailing rate is charged on the monthly subscription.
3. Transaction Fee
The Transaction Fee is paid by the selling Member on each completed exchange.
| Component | Rate |
|---|---|
| GBP commission | 6% of transaction value, paid in pounds sterling |
| SILVA accrual | 1% of transaction value, paid in SILVA to the Reserve Fund — subject to suspension under the Reserve Policy |
| Total | 7% of transaction value while the SILVA accrual is in force; 6% while it is suspended |
Blended transactions. Transactions settle entirely in SILVA. A blended transaction is exceptional and requires our prior written approval in every case, under Clause 11.2 and section 3 of the Platform Rules. Where one is approved, the fee is charged at the same rate on the full transaction value, whatever the mix. The commission is for facilitating the exchange; it does not vary with how the exchange is settled. This means there is nothing to gain by structuring a transaction to change its cash proportion.
VAT. VAT at the prevailing UK rate (currently 20%) is charged on the full combined 7% commission — the 6% GBP element and the 1% SILVA element together — because HMRC treats the SILVA accrual as cash-equivalent consideration. VAT is collected in cash only, never in SILVA. Where the SILVA accrual is suspended under the Reserve Policy, VAT is charged on the 6% commission alone.
Worked example, a £1,000 trade. The seller pays £60 GBP commission plus £14 VAT — £74 in cash — and 10 SILVA to the Reserve Fund. While the SILVA accrual is suspended, the same trade costs £60 plus £12 VAT — £72 in cash — and no SILVA.
How the SILVA element is collected. The full SILVA amount of the sale is credited to the selling Member's account first (Clause 21.4(b)). The 1% accrual is then taken as a separate entry at the time of the transaction, from that account to the Reserve Fund Account. It is never netted off the sale itself, so each trade appears on your account and your Monthly Statement as two entries: the sale at its full value, and the accrual alongside it. You always receive the whole of what you sold before anything is taken.
No commission is charged on the accrual. The 1% transfer to the Reserve Fund is not itself a transaction that attracts commission. The Transaction Fee is charged once, on the value of the exchange between Members — never a second time on the movement of the fee.
VAT is the one exception, and it is charged as described above: on the combined 7%, which includes the 1% SILVA element, and collected in cash. That is £2 of the £14 on a £1,000 trade. It is not a fee on the accrual — it is VAT on the consideration the accrual forms part of.
Routing the 1% to the Reserve Fund per transaction means the reserve grows with network throughput — with the exposure it exists to cover — rather than with member count.
When the accrual is not charged. The Reserve Fund is not intended to grow without limit, and the SILVA accrual is suspended once the Fund reaches the target size set out in the Reserve Policy. While it is suspended the 6% cash commission continues unchanged and no SILVA is charged. The accrual resumes if the Fund falls back below the lower threshold, on not less than 30 days' notice. Suspension and reinstatement are the operation of the Reserve Policy and are not amendments to this Schedule.
4. Annual TAE Reconciliation
Declared TAE is a forecast. Your Joining Fee and Throughput Fee are priced against that forecast, so without a reconciliation step a member could under-declare, pay less, and trade well above the declaration. This section closes that gap. It is the reconciliation Clause 20.1(c) of the Terms refers to.
At each Annual TAE Review, we compare your actual transaction volume over the preceding twelve months against your Declared TAE for the same period.
4.1 Tolerance
A tolerance of 15% of Declared TAE applies. If your actual volume falls within 115% of what you declared, you have declared accurately and nothing is owed.
The tolerance is forgiven from the overage itself, not merely from the trigger — so a member who fractionally exceeds the band does not face a cliff-edge charge on volume that was always within forecasting noise.
4.2 Calculation
Overage = max( 0, Actual − (Declared TAE × 1.15) )
Where the Overage is zero, nothing is owed. Where it is positive, two retrospective charges fall due at the Annual TAE Review:
| Retrospective charge | Formula |
|---|---|
| Throughput Fee top-up | Overage × 0.2% — the annual Throughput Fee rate, recovering what would have been charged had the declaration been accurate |
| Joining Fee top-up | Overage × 2.0%, subject to the £6,000 total Joining Fee cap |
Any charge under this section is notified to you with the calculation shown, and is reviewable under Clause 40 of the Terms.
Your Declared TAE for the following year is then re-rated automatically to at least last year's actuals. You may declare higher. You may not declare lower than (last year's actuals ÷ 1.15) unless you give us a documented reason — the loss of a major customer, a structural change in the business — which we may accept or decline.
4.3 Where actual volume falls short
If you declared £25,000 and traded £12,000, you have paid more than your use of the platform turned out to require. No refund is owed. Declared TAE is a forecast of capacity you have asked us to provision, and the cost of provisioning it does not depend on how much of it you fill. You are free to revise your declaration downward at the next Annual TAE Review.
4.4 First-year and part-year members
If you joined part-way through the reconciliation period, your Declared TAE is pro-rated for time on the platform — six months on platform is compared against six months of forecast.
If you have been a Member for fewer than three months at the time of the Annual TAE Review, you are exempt from reconciliation that year. Fewer than three months of trading data is not enough to characterise anyone's throughput.
4.5 Worked examples
| Declared TAE | Actual volume | Overage | Top-ups owed | Next year's minimum TAE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £25,000 | £25,000 | £0 | Nil | £25,000 (unchanged) |
| £25,000 | £30,000 | £1,250 | £2.50 + £25.00 = £27.50 | £30,000 |
| £25,000 | £40,000 | £11,250 | £22.50 + £225.00 = £247.50 | £40,000 |
| £10,000 | £40,000 | £28,500 | £57.00 + £570.00 = £627.00 | £40,000 |
| £100,000 | £25,000 | £0 | Nil — no refund | May be revised down |
The Annual TAE Review itself is free of charge.
5. Trading Headroom
Trading Headroom is sized from Declared TAE, but the sizing methodology is not part of this Fee Schedule. It is published separately in the Trading Headroom Guidance, as Schedule 1 of the Terms states.
Headroom is not something you buy. A higher Declared TAE produces both a higher fee and more Headroom because both scale from the same figure — your own statement of how much you intend to trade — but the fees are consideration for the services listed at Clause 20.1(b), not payment for Headroom. Clause 4.3(f) of the Terms says this expressly.
6. Network Participation Surcharge
"Network Participation Surcharge" and "Participation Credit" are defined in Clause 1.1 of the Terms, and the Surcharge is charged under Clause 20.4. This section sets the rate, the qualifying activities, the threshold and the measurement period.
| Status, measured over a rolling three calendar month window | Effect |
|---|---|
| 9 or more Participation Credits earned across the previous three calendar months | No Surcharge. Subscription stays at £20 + 0.2% TAE ÷ 12. |
| Fewer than 9 Participation Credits across the previous three calendar months | +£20 per month Network Participation Surcharge, until engagement resumes. |
The threshold is a rolling three-month total, not a monthly test. Nine credits across three months averages three a month, but a quiet month is fine provided the rolling total holds. A member earning 5 + 0 + 4 is above the threshold; a member earning 2 + 2 + 2 is not.
The £20 headline subscription is priced for engaged members. Engaged members — those who submit purchase requests, make named referrals, and review the members they trade with — are what powers the matching algorithm and the sales pipeline that every other member benefits from. The Surcharge is how that is priced honestly rather than being cross-subsidised.
6.1 How a Participation Credit is earned
| Route | Identity | What qualifies |
|---|---|---|
| Silva Purchase Request | Anonymous to external prospects by default; you may opt in to be named | A valid SPR — description, target spend, timeframe — accepted and entered into the matching workflow. Submitting alone earns nothing. The credit is earned either when you take up an internal match we find, or when the request finds no internal match and descends to Standby or external recruitment, in which case it is provisional on descent and confirmed once a supplier is actually sourced. A request declined, snoozed or never actioned earns nothing. |
| Named business referral | Always named — a referral has to carry your name to convert | You identify a business as a candidate for membership and consent to us approaching them using your name. The credit applies when our sales team makes first documented contact, whatever the outcome. |
| Published review | Your choice, named or anonymous | A review of another Member's service relating to a transaction completed through the platform, of reasonable substantive length, subject to the Review Moderation procedure in the Platform Rules. Named reviews carry more weight in member-discovery results. |
There is no cap on credits earned above the threshold.
6.2 What we commit to in return
We will log an engagement attempt on every valid SPR within five Business Days of submission, keep you informed as your request moves through each stage of the workflow, and treat your SPR data as confidential to us and the matched seller, anonymised by default to external prospects. The matching workflow is best-effort: we do not guarantee a match at any stage.
6.3 Misuse
We may disqualify Participation Credits that appear designed solely to avoid the Surcharge — purchase requests with no realistic intent to transact, repeated submissions for the same purchase in a short window, referrals to businesses with no plausible interest in membership, or reviews that do not relate to a real transaction.
Disqualification is communicated to you with reasons and carries no compensation. Persistent misuse may result in suspension of credit-earning eligibility, by written notice stating the reasons and the period. A suspension does not affect Participation Credits you have already earned and which have not been disqualified.
Both disqualification and suspension are exercised under Clause 20.4 of the Terms, and a decision on either is open to review under Clause 40 (Dispute Resolution).
6.4 Permanent discharge from the Surcharge
Two things discharge you from the Network Participation Surcharge permanently. Once either is met, the Surcharge never applies again for as long as you remain a Member, whatever your Participation Credits do afterwards:
| Route | Test |
|---|---|
| Member introductions | You have introduced 10 Members into the network — that is, ten businesses admitted to Full Membership on a named referral from you |
| Early throughput | You have transacted 50% or more of your Declared TAE within your first six months of membership |
Discharge is assessed automatically and applied from the month in which the test is met. It is not reversed by a later fall in engagement, by a downward revision of Declared TAE, or by a period of inactivity.
A Member who has been discharged is under no obligation to continue submitting Silva Purchase Requests, referrals or reviews in order to hold the £20 headline subscription. They have demonstrated participation at a level the rolling three-month test exists to establish, and requiring them to keep demonstrating it would be asking for the same proof twice.
Discharge is lost only on resignation or termination. A Member who resigns and later re-joins re-enters on the ordinary rolling test at section 6.
A discharge you have already acquired is protected against later changes to this Fee Schedule. Clause 50.5 of the Terms provides that an amendment cannot withdraw or qualify it, so the permanence of the discharge does not depend on this section staying as it is.
7. Large Transaction Threshold
SILVA transfers with a value above SILVA 10,000 require additional Company authorisation before execution. This is the Large Transaction Threshold referred to at Clause 17.6 of the Terms.
The authorisation procedure, the criteria applied and the response time are in the Platform Rules.
8. Permitted surcharge categories
Clause 15.1 of the Terms prohibits overpricing: a SILVA price must be the price you would charge in a comparable cash transaction. Clause 15.2 creates a narrow exception, and this section is the methodology Clause 15.2(b) requires us to publish.
No surcharge category is currently in force. Every transaction on the platform is priced at parity.
Where we do permit a surcharge in future, it will be published here before it takes effect, and:
- it will apply only to a named category of goods or services where gross margin is structurally low, supply within the network is structurally constrained, or both;
- it will be capped at a stated percentage, published with the category;
- it will be disclosed to the buyer before they accept the transaction, as Clause 15.2(c) requires; and
- affected Members will be told directly, not left to find it here.
A surcharge is a permission, not an entitlement. It never licenses a Member to charge more than the published cap, and it never applies outside the named category.
9. Late payment
Where Cash Fees are overdue, we may charge interest at the rate prescribed by the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. We do not publish a different or lower contractual rate.
This applies only to overdue Cash Fees payable in pounds sterling. It does not affect Clauses 5.5 and 7.6 of the Terms, under which no interest and no financing charge of any kind ever arises on a SILVA balance — including a negative one.
10. Standby List
Standby List registration is free of charge. No Joining Fee, no monthly subscription, no Network Participation Surcharge, no Transaction Fee, no other recurring charge.
A Standby Account is not a membership. Standby registrants cannot post sales, transact or accept matches. Activation happens only when we present a confirmed sale — a purchase request matched to what you supply, with a buyer ready to trade — at which point Full Membership is offered on this Fee Schedule and its fees begin from the date of activation. The Joining Fee may, by prior agreement, be settled out of the proceeds of that first transaction.
Standby Accounts are governed by Clause 3.5 of the Terms.
11. Complete list of charges
For the avoidance of doubt, the charges in this Fee Schedule are the complete set of Cash Fees Silvatree charges:
- The Joining Fee (section 1), including any top-up on a voluntary increase in Declared TAE (section 1.3)
- The monthly subscription — Platform Fee and Throughput Fee (section 2)
- The Network Participation Surcharge, where it applies (section 6)
- The Transaction Fee (section 3)
- Amounts payable on reconciliation under Clause 20.1(c) (section 4)
- Statutory interest on overdue Cash Fees (section 9)
There is no account closing fee. The Account Winding Up Fee that appeared in earlier versions of the Terms and this Schedule has been removed entirely. Closing your account costs nothing.
There is no charge for the Annual TAE Review, no charge for a Trading Headroom adjustment review, and no charge for making a complaint.