Privacy Policy

Effective date: [Effective date to be set at publication]

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains how [NJONDA Holdings -- registered entity name to be confirmed] ("NJONDA", "we", "us", "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you use the NJONDA marketplace and services platform -- our mobile apps (customer and driver/provider), our vendor and admin web portals, and njonda.com (together, the "Services").

We built NJONDA around a simple principle: we only collect what the Services actually need to work, we never sell your personal information, and we tell you plainly who else sees it and why.

This policy is written to align with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) of South Africa and, for any users in the European Union or United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). If a specific right or obligation under either law differs from what's described generally below, the stricter standard applies to users covered by that law.

2. Information We Collect

We collect information in three ways: what you give us directly, what's generated automatically as you use the Services, and what we receive from third parties involved in fulfilling your requests.

Account information: your name, email address or phone number, password (stored as a salted hash, never in plain text), profile photo if you add one, and account role (customer, vendor, driver/service provider, or admin).
Order and booking information: what you buy or request, delivery or pickup addresses, recipient details for orders placed on someone else's behalf, ride pickup/dropoff locations, service booking details, and your order/booking history.
Payment information: we never see or store your full card number, banking PIN, or mobile money PIN. Payments are processed by PayChangu and PayPal, who share back with us only the transaction status, amount, currency, and a reference number needed to confirm your order. For manual payment methods (Mukuru, Mama Money), you send us a reference number and, if you choose, a screenshot of your transaction -- an admin manually verifies this before your order proceeds.
Prescription and health-related information: if you order a prescription medicine through the Grocery/Pharmacy category, we collect the photo of your prescription you upload. This is treated as special category / sensitive personal information -- see Section 9 for how it's specifically protected.
Location information: with your permission, your device's GPS location (to set a pickup point or estimate delivery fees), and, if you're a driver or service provider, your live location while you have a job active (shared only with the customer of that specific job and stopped the moment you go offline or the job ends).
Communications: messages you send to vendors, drivers, our support team, or our AI assistant ("Shaheed AI") through in-app chat, and any documents/photos you attach.
Device and usage information: device type and operating system, app version, a push-notification token if you allow notifications, IP address, and general usage data (which screens you visit, which features you use) collected through our analytics tooling.
Information from others: if someone adds you as a delivery recipient, we receive the name, phone number, and address they provide about you.

3. How We Use Your Information

To create and secure your account, and verify it's really you signing in.
To process and fulfil your orders, bookings, and payments, including matching you with a vendor, driver, or service provider.
To communicate with you about your orders, bookings, account, and (if you opt in) promotions.
To operate Shaheed AI, our in-app assistant -- see Section 10 for exactly what's sent to which AI provider.
To verify prescription-only purchases with a licensed pharmacist before they're released.
To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and platform-security incidents.
To improve the Services -- understanding what features people actually use, and fixing what doesn't work.
To comply with legal obligations, including tax, consumer protection, and law enforcement requests.

4. Legal Basis for Processing

Where POPIA or GDPR applies, we process your information on one or more of these bases: performance of a contract with you (processing your order is impossible without your delivery address, for example), your consent (which you can withdraw at any time -- see Section 7), our legitimate interests (fraud prevention, service improvement) balanced against your rights, and compliance with a legal obligation.

5. How We Share Your Information

We share information only where it's genuinely necessary to provide the Services -- never to data brokers, and never sold.

With vendors, drivers, and service providers: only what they need to fulfil your specific order or booking -- your name, phone number, and delivery/pickup address. A driver sees your live chat and location for their active job only.
With payment processors: PayChangu and PayPal receive the transaction amount, currency, and your email (for a receipt) -- never your NJONDA password or full order contents beyond what's needed to charge you correctly.
With AI providers: when you talk to Shaheed AI, your message and the minimum account/cart context needed to answer it are sent to our AI provider (Google Gemini, and if that's unavailable, Groq, Mistral, or DeepSeek as a fallback) to generate a response. See Section 10.
With infrastructure providers: our database, authentication, file storage, and hosting are provided by Supabase and Vercel, who process data on our behalf under their own data-processing agreements and never use it for their own purposes.
With push notification and analytics providers: a device push token and anonymized usage events, never your password or payment details.
For legal reasons: if required by law, court order, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of NJONDA, our users, or the public.
In a business transfer: if NJONDA is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may transfer as part of that deal, subject to this policy continuing to apply.

6. Data Retention

We keep your account and transaction information for as long as your account is active, and for a reasonable period after (typically the applicable tax/consumer-protection retention period, at least 5 years for financial records) to meet legal obligations and resolve disputes. Prescription images are retained only as long as needed for the specific purchase they verified plus the same record-keeping period, then deleted. If you request account deletion (Section 7), we deactivate your account and remove or anonymize personal information not required to be kept for legal reasons.

7. Your Rights

You have the following rights over your personal information, which you can exercise from the app or by emailing us:

Access: request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. In-app: Account/Profile → Privacy → Export My Data.
Correction: fix inaccurate or incomplete information -- most of this you can edit directly in your profile.
Deletion: request deletion of your account and associated personal information. In-app: Account/Profile → Privacy → Delete My Account. We'll explain what's deleted immediately versus retained for legal reasons, and for how long.
Portability: receive your data in a structured, commonly-used, machine-readable format (we provide this as JSON).
Objection and restriction: object to or ask us to limit certain processing, such as marketing communications.
Withdraw consent: where we rely on your consent (e.g. marketing messages, optional location access), withdraw it at any time without affecting processing already carried out.
Complain to a regulator: in South Africa, the Information Regulator (POPIA); in the EU/UK, your local data protection authority.

8. Data Security

We use industry-standard safeguards: encryption in transit (TLS) for all traffic between the app and our servers, encryption at rest for stored data, row-level database access controls so a user can only ever read or write data they're authorized for, and hashed (never plain-text) password storage. No system is 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security, but we treat security as an ongoing responsibility, not a one-time checkbox.

9. Prescription and Health Information

Prescription photos are stored in a private, access-controlled location that only you and an authorized pharmacist/admin reviewer can access -- never publicly viewable, never used for advertising or shared with any third party beyond what's needed to verify the specific medicine you're purchasing. Once a prescription is approved or rejected by a reviewer, the image itself can no longer be altered, preserving an accurate record of what was actually reviewed.

10. Shaheed AI (Our AI Assistant)

When you chat with Shaheed AI, your message and relevant context (recent conversation history, and only for actions you ask it to take, things like your cart contents or a recipient's address) are sent to a third-party AI provider to generate a response. Our primary provider is Google (Gemini); if that's temporarily unavailable, we automatically fall back to Groq, Mistral, or DeepSeek, in that order, so the assistant stays usable. All four providers process your message only to generate that response -- they don't use it to train their models under our agreements with them, and we don't send them your payment details or password.

Shaheed AI can search products and stores, manage your cart, and -- only after you explicitly confirm in a follow-up message, never automatically -- create a manual payment or submit a booking request on your behalf. Every action it takes runs under your own account permissions, exactly as if you'd tapped the button yourself, and is logged for your own review.

11. Children's Privacy

The Services are not directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn we've collected information from a child without appropriate consent, we'll delete it.

12. International Data Transfers

Our infrastructure providers and AI providers may process data outside your home country. Where this involves a transfer out of South Africa or the EU/UK to a country without an equivalent data-protection standard, we rely on contractual safeguards with those providers to protect your information to the same standard described in this policy.

13. Cookies and Similar Technologies (Web)

Our web apps use essential cookies to keep you signed in and remember your session, and, if you consent, analytics cookies to understand how the Services are used. You can control cookies through your browser settings; disabling essential cookies will prevent you from staying signed in.

14. Changes to This Policy

We'll update the effective date above whenever this policy changes, and for material changes, notify you in-app or by email before they take effect.

15. Contact Us

For any privacy question, request, or complaint: privacy@njonda.com

[NJONDA Holdings -- registered entity name to be confirmed], [Registered business address to be confirmed]