Privacy policy

[Your registered business name], trading as Marketplace, is the data controller for the information described here.

Write to [your@email.com] about anything on this page — a copy of your data, a correction, a deletion, or a complaint.

This is written to meet Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843). If you are not satisfied with how we answer you, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission.

Only what the service needs to work. Specifically:

• Your name, email address and password when you register. The password is stored as a one-way hash — we cannot read it, and neither can anybody who obtains our database.
• The name and phone number you give with an order, because that is how the shop reaches you.
• A delivery address, when you choose delivery. Required then, because a shop cannot deliver without one.
• Your orders, bookings, and any notes you add to them.
• Messages you send to shops or to us.
• Reviews you write, which appear publicly with your name.
• If you are a seller: your bank or mobile money details for payouts. We store the bank or provider name, the account holder's name, and the last four digits only — never the full account number.
• If you apply to open a shop: your Ghana Card number, the name printed on the card, photographs of both sides of it, a photograph of you holding it, and pictures of what you sell. This is dealt with separately below, because it is the most sensitive thing we hold.

We do not collect anything about you that you have not typed in, and we do not buy information about you from anybody.

We ask for proof of who you are, and this is exactly what happens to it.

**Why we ask.** A buyer here hands cash to a stranger at their door. If that goes wrong, we are the only party they can find, and "we do not know who the seller was" is not an answer anybody should accept. So every shop on this marketplace belongs to a named person whose identity we have checked.

**What we ask for.** Your Ghana Card number, the name as printed on the card, a photograph of each side of it, and a photograph of you holding it. Also pictures of what you sell — or, where the work genuinely leaves nothing to photograph, a written description instead.

**Where it goes.** The photographs are encrypted before they are stored. They are never shown on your shop page, never served publicly, and cannot be reached by a link. The only way to view one is through a page that first checks the viewer is a member of our review team.

**Who sees it.** The people reviewing your application, and nobody else. Not buyers, not other shops, not your own staff once you have some.

**How long we keep it.** The photographs — both sides of the card, the selfie, and the pictures of your work — are deleted 90 days after a decision, whether you were approved or refused. We keep the card number, the name, and the fact that a check was done, because that is the record that we vetted you. If you would rather the photographs went sooner, ask us and we will delete them.

**If you do not want to.** Then we cannot approve a shop for you. You are still free to buy here with an ordinary account, which asks for none of this.

Your card number, your mobile money PIN, and your CVV. Those are entered on Paystack's systems and never reach ours. We receive only a reference for the transaction and whether it succeeded.

Your full bank account number, if you sell here. We keep the last four digits so you can recognise which account it is; the number itself lives with Paystack.

Your location. We ask which city you are in so we can show you nearby shops, and that is a choice from a list, not a reading from your phone.

When somebody repeatedly fails to sign in, we count the attempts so that an account cannot be attacked by guessing. Counting them means recognising where they came from.

We do this without keeping the address. It is put through a one-way hash first, so what is stored cannot be turned back into an IP address — not by us, and not by anyone who obtains the records. Those records are counts, and they are deleted as they age out.

One cookie, for signing in. It holds a session identifier, nothing else, and it is what keeps you signed in as you move between pages. It cannot be read by other websites, and it is sent only over an encrypted connection.

That is the whole list. There is no advertising cookie here, no tracking pixel, and nothing that follows you to other sites. Signing out removes it.

A short and specific list. Each of these does one job:

• The shop you buy from sees your name, phone number, delivery address and what you ordered. They need it to fulfil the order. They see nothing about your other purchases elsewhere on the marketplace.
• Paystack processes payments and holds the payment details.
• Our hosting and database providers store the data so the service can run.
• An image store holds photos that shops upload.
• An email provider sends order confirmations and password resets.
• Where we use a messaging service to alert our own support team, a notification may contain the subject of your message.

We do not sell your data, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not pass it to anybody not on this list — except where the law requires it.

Some of these providers store data outside Ghana. Where that happens, we choose providers that commit to protecting it to a comparable standard.

Your account and its orders, for as long as you have an account, and afterwards only where we have to.

Records of completed transactions are kept for the period Ghanaian tax and accounting rules require, because those we are obliged to hold. Requests to delete an account are honoured for everything else.

Sign-in attempt records are short-lived and cleared as they age out. Messages stay with the order or booking they belong to, which is what makes them useful if a dispute comes up later.

Under Ghana's Data Protection Act you can:

• ask what we hold about you, and get a copy;
• have something corrected if it is wrong;
• ask us to delete your data, subject to records we must legally keep;
• object to a particular use of it;
• complain to the Data Protection Commission.

Write to [your@email.com]. We will reply, and where we cannot do what you have asked we will tell you why rather than ignore it.

Passwords are hashed, never stored as text. Connections use encryption. Access to the database is limited to the people who run the service. Within the marketplace, a shop can only see its own orders and its own conversations, and that separation is enforced by the system rather than by policy.

No service can promise it will never be breached. If one happens and it affects you, we will tell you and the Data Protection Commission rather than hope nobody notices.

This service is for adults. We do not knowingly hold data about children, and if we learn that we have, we delete it.

When this policy changes we update the date at the top. Where a change affects how your data is used, we will tell you rather than rely on you re-reading the page.