Privacy Policy

1. About this Privacy Policy

Savv Store (“we”, “us” or “our”) respects your privacy and processes personal information in accordance with applicable South African privacy law, including the Protection of Personal Information Act, 4 of 2013 (“POPIA”).

Savv Store is a software platform and brand owned and operated by Savv Store (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2026/687824/07), a private company registered in the Republic of South Africa. Savv Store remains the product and platform referred to throughout this Policy.

This Policy applies to people who visit Savv Store, create or manage a Savv Store account, operate a merchant store, contact Savv Store, or interact with a merchant store hosted through the Platform. It should be read together with the Savv Store Terms of Service.

2. Information you provide to Savv Store

Depending on how you use Savv Store, we may collect information you provide directly, including:

• your name and email address;
• account, login and email-verification information;
• store name and selected Savv Store address;
• business and store information;
• telephone, WhatsApp or other contact details you choose to provide;
• opening hours, delivery, collection and location settings;
• products, services, prices, descriptions and categories;
• subscription, billing and transaction-related information;
• promotion, campaign or access-code information linked to your account;
• support messages, reports and other information you voluntarily send to Savv Store;
• Customer contact details processed before a supported Merchant payment-link redirect;
• invoice and invoice-customer information entered by a Merchant when using the Invoice Maker;
• optional marketing preferences, consent records, communication preferences and unsubscribe status.

Please do not send passwords, card security codes or unnecessary sensitive personal information through Savv Store support or contact forms.

3. Information and content you publish

Merchants may add business names, logos, cover images, product or service images, descriptions, prices, policies, contact details, social links and other store information.

Information a Merchant chooses to publish on a live store is intended to be public and may be viewed, shared, indexed, cached or copied by search engines, social platforms, messaging services or other third parties.

Removing information from Savv Store or taking a store offline does not guarantee that every independent third-party copy, cache, search result or screenshot will disappear immediately.

Merchants are responsible for ensuring that they have the right to upload and publish their content and must not publish personal, confidential or sensitive information that they are not entitled to make public.

Uploaded images may be resized, compressed, re-encoded or otherwise optimised for store performance. Merchants should keep their own original copies of important images and files.

4. Technical, device and security information

When Savv Store is accessed, we may automatically process technical information reasonably necessary to provide and protect the Platform. This may include IP address, browser or device information, request timestamps, login and verification events, failed-login activity, session information, error information and security or anti-abuse signals.

This information may be used to deliver pages, secure accounts, investigate technical problems, prevent fraud or abuse, apply reasonable rate limits and protect the availability of Savv Store.

Savv Store may also record limited account-linked product activity, such as whether a Merchant shares a store, which Savv Plus features a Free Merchant attempts to access, the signup method used, the first Savv Store page visited during the signup journey and privacy-light campaign or referral information associated with signup. Savv Store uses this information to understand activation, feature demand and service performance, improve the Platform and make product and business decisions. It is not used to build third-party advertising profiles.

5. Customer requests and merchant contact

Savv Store may allow a Customer to add products or services to “Your Request” and send the request to a Merchant through an available channel such as WhatsApp or email.

Request selections may be stored temporarily in the Customer's browser or device so that the feature can work. Browser-stored information can expire, be cleared or become unavailable.

Where Savv Store needs to process request details to generate or transmit an email or other supported request, the relevant information may pass through Savv Store systems and service providers as reasonably necessary to complete that action.

Once information is sent to a Merchant through WhatsApp, email, telephone or another service, the Merchant and the relevant third party may process that information independently. Savv Store does not control a Merchant's independent handling of Customer information.

When a Customer uses a Savv Plus payment-link feature, Savv Store may process the Customer’s name, email address and mobile number so that Savv Store can notify the Merchant about the attempted transaction. Savv Store may attempt that notification before redirecting the Customer and may retry it if immediate email delivery fails. A notification failure does not by itself prevent the Customer from continuing to the Merchant’s independent payment provider, and Savv Store does not treat that redirect as confirmation that a payment succeeded.

6. Cookies and browser storage

Savv Store may use cookies, sessions, local browser storage and similar technologies where reasonably necessary to operate and secure the website and Platform.

These technologies may support authentication, secure sessions, essential preferences, temporary Customer request information, form protection, security and abuse prevention.

During a public-site browsing session, Savv Store may temporarily keep privacy-light campaign, referral and first-page information in session storage so that it can be associated with an account if the visitor completes signup. Savv Store does not write that temporary attribution information to its account database for an anonymous visitor who does not create an account.

Savv Store is preparing additional first-party Experience Analytics to understand which pre-defined page controls are used, how often important actions are attempted, and when certain merchant actions succeed. This expanded collection is not currently enabled. Before activation, Savv Store will review and document the applicable lawful processing basis and provide any additional choice required by law; publishing this Policy alone does not constitute consent.

If approved and enabled, Experience Analytics will keep daily totals for fixed event categories (for example, a signup-button click, product-editor submission or successful save), not raw messages, form contents, customer contact details, unrestricted URLs, precise click coordinates or a person-level browsing trail in the analytics aggregate. Technical security and abuse-prevention systems may separately process request information as explained in section 4. Savv Store does not sell these analytics to advertisers or automatically transmit reports to ChatGPT.

Savv Store may also record limited aggregate store activity for Store Insights, such as store views, item views, WhatsApp or email clicks, shares and payment-link attempts. These counters are designed as aggregate business activity rather than a customer advertising profile, and Savv Store may use short browser-session deduplication to reduce repeated or abusive events.

7. Why we use personal information

Savv Store may process personal information where reasonably necessary to:

• create, verify, secure and manage accounts;
• provide, host and operate merchant stores;
• save Merchant settings and store content;
• operate Customer request and communication features;
• manage Savv Free, Savv Plus, subscription, promotional and complimentary access;
• process, reconcile and record Savv Store subscription payments;
• send essential account, security, payment and service communications;
• respond to enquiries and support requests;
• detect and investigate fraud, abuse, unauthorised access or security threats;
• investigate reports and possible breaches of the Terms of Service;
• maintain, troubleshoot and improve Savv Store;
• understand Merchant activation, feature usage, plan demand and how Merchants discover Savv Store so that we can improve onboarding, product decisions and service performance;
• protect Savv Store, Merchants, Customers and other persons;
• maintain records reasonably required for financial, security, dispute or legal purposes;
• comply with lawful obligations and requests;
• send or retry payment-link contact details to the relevant Merchant in connection with an external payment redirect;
• provide invoice creation and stored invoice records requested by a Merchant;
• provide aggregate Store Insights and protect those counters against obvious duplicate or abusive events;
• record and honour optional marketing consent, communication preferences, unsubscribes and suppression choices;
• send optional Savv Store communications to contacts who have opted in and, where appropriate, select or tailor those communications using relevant account, plan or limited store-activity information.

8. Account and service communications

Savv Store may send communications reasonably necessary to operate an account or provide the service, including email-verification messages, password resets, security alerts, payment confirmations, failed-payment notices, Savv Plus, subscription or expiry reminders, deletion or recovery messages and important Platform updates.

You are responsible for keeping your account email address accurate and for maintaining reasonable access to it. Delivery may be affected by incorrect addresses, mailbox limits, spam filtering, provider outages or other circumstances outside Savv Store's control.

Essential operational communications are separate from optional marketing, promotional or performance-summary communications. Opting out of optional communications does not prevent Savv Store from sending messages reasonably necessary to operate, secure or administer your account or subscription.

9. Optional marketing and merchant communications

Savv Store may offer optional electronic communications such as Savv Store news, merchant tips, product or feature updates, offers, surveys, re-engagement messages and optional store-performance summaries.

Savv Store sends these optional marketing communications only where the relevant contact is recorded as having opted in or otherwise given the required permission. Marketing consent is not required merely to use Savv Free or Savv Plus.

Where you opt in, Savv Store may use relevant information already associated with your Savv Store account, such as your current plan, account status and limited store activity or aggregate Store Insights, to select a relevant audience or make a communication more useful. Savv Store will not use this permission to send unrelated third-party advertising or to sell your contact details to advertisers.

Savv Store may record when and how consent was provided, the wording or version associated with that consent, communication preferences, unsubscribe events and suppression status. A manually added contact is not treated as opted in merely because the address was added to Savv Store's contact records.

Optional marketing emails will provide an unsubscribe or equivalent opt-out method. When you withdraw consent or unsubscribe, Savv Store may retain enough information on a suppression list to honour that choice and prevent accidental future marketing sends.

Opting out of optional marketing does not prevent necessary security, billing, payment, account or service communications.

10. Subscription and payment information

Savv Store uses third-party payment providers to process Savv Store subscription payments. Those providers may collect payment-method, billing, identification or transaction information required to process or verify a payment.

Payment-card information entered directly into a payment provider's environment is handled by that provider. Savv Store does not intend to store full payment-card numbers or card security codes such as CVV values in the ordinary Savv Store account database.

Savv Store may retain transaction references, payment status, amounts, dates, subscription details and other records reasonably necessary for access control, receipts, reconciliation, accounting, fraud prevention and dispute handling.

Merchant payment links are different from Savv Store subscription payments. When a Customer leaves Savv Store for a Merchant’s supported payment link, the independent provider handles the actual payment. Savv Store does not need the Customer’s card number or CVV for that external payment-link handoff.

11. Service providers

Savv Store may use third-party providers to help operate and protect the Platform, including hosting, infrastructure, email delivery, email-marketing and campaign-delivery services, DNS and networking, security and fraud-prevention, payment processing and other technical services.

Personal information may be provided to these service providers where reasonably necessary for them to perform the relevant service or where otherwise permitted by law.

Where Savv Store uses an email-delivery or marketing provider, that provider may process information such as recipient email addresses, sender information, campaign content, message identifiers, delivery or failure events, bounce information, unsubscribe events and related technical data needed to send and manage the communication.

Savv Store may use services such as Cloudflare to protect websites, forms and traffic against automated abuse, malicious requests and other security threats. Those services may process technical information such as IP addresses, browser or device information, cookies, request information and security signals.

12. External services and Merchant-controlled channels

Savv Store and merchant stores may link to or interact with independent services such as WhatsApp, email providers, social networks and other external websites.

When information is sent through or to an external service, that service may process information under its own privacy practices.

Savv Store is not responsible for the independent privacy practices or security of a Merchant's own WhatsApp account, email account, social profile or other third-party service selected or controlled by the Merchant.

A Merchant may also use a supported third-party payment link. The payment provider will process the Customer’s payment under that provider’s own terms and privacy practices, and the Merchant remains responsible for the payment relationship with the Customer.

Where Savv Store provides an optional referral or partner link to an external payment or business-service provider, the link may contain referral or campaign identifiers. The external provider may process click, signup and related information under its own privacy practices. Savv Store may receive a referral fee, commission or other commercial benefit if a Merchant signs up or qualifies through such a link.

13. When information may be disclosed

Savv Store may disclose personal information where reasonably necessary:

• to provide, maintain or secure the Savv Store service;
• to service providers supporting Savv Store;
• to process or reconcile Savv Store subscriptions and payments;
• to investigate fraud, security incidents, abuse or unlawful activity;
• to investigate or enforce the Terms of Service;
• to respond to a valid legal process or lawful request;
• to protect the rights, safety, security or property of Savv Store or others;
• to establish, exercise or defend legal rights;
• as part of a legitimate sale, transfer, financing, restructuring or succession involving Savv Store, subject to applicable privacy requirements.

Savv Store does not sell personal information to advertisers.

14. Cross-border processing

Some service providers supporting Savv Store may process or store information outside South Africa.

Where personal information is transferred across borders, Savv Store will take reasonable steps to handle the transfer in accordance with applicable South African data-protection requirements.

15. Information security

Savv Store uses reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, unauthorised disclosure, alteration or destruction.

Measures may include secure connections, authentication controls, server-side validation, access controls, rate limits, security monitoring, anti-abuse measures and other safeguards appropriate to the Platform.

No internet-connected service can guarantee absolute security. Users are also responsible for protecting their passwords, email accounts and devices and for promptly reporting suspected account compromise.

16. Security incidents

If Savv Store becomes aware of a security compromise involving personal information under its control, we may investigate the incident, take appropriate containment or remediation steps and preserve information reasonably necessary for the investigation.

If Savv Store experiences a security compromise involving personal information, we will notify the Information Regulator and affected individuals as required by applicable law.

17. Retention

Savv Store keeps personal information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, another compatible or lawful purpose, or the operation and protection of the Platform.

If expanded Experience Analytics is approved and activated, its daily aggregate event counters are scheduled for deletion after 120 days. Separate security, payment and account records follow the applicable retention rules described in this Policy.

Retention periods may differ for account, subscription, payment, transaction, security, fraud-prevention, support, marketing-consent, communication and dispute records.

Information may remain after a subscription or complimentary access period expires, a store goes offline or an account closes where there is a legitimate operational or legal reason to retain it. Temporary backups, logs and technical copies may also remain until overwritten or removed through normal system processes.

Account-linked product-usage, signup-attribution and feedback records may be kept for reasonable product, operational and business-analysis purposes. When an account deletion becomes final, identifiable Intelligence records linked to that account may be deleted or anonymised in accordance with Savv Store's deletion process, while non-identifying aggregate statistics may be retained where lawfully appropriate.

Invoice records created by a Merchant may be kept while the account remains active and for a reasonable period where needed for account operation, recovery, disputes, security or lawful record-keeping. Payment-link contact details are not treated by Savv Store as a completed-order database. Where immediate Merchant notification delivery fails, those contact details may be held briefly in Savv Store’s operational delivery and retry queue. Successfully delivered payment-link notification records are ordinarily removed from that queue sooner, and payment-link notification records are not intended to remain there for more than seven days.

Genuine store reports and related trust-and-safety records may remain after an account is deleted where reasonably necessary to investigate fraud, abuse, impersonation, security or safety concerns, resolve disputes, enforce the Terms of Service, respond to lawful requests or establish, exercise or defend legal rights. Savv Store may delete, redact or de-identify personal information in those records when it is no longer reasonably necessary to retain it in identifiable form.

Where a person has opted out of optional marketing, Savv Store may retain the email address and related suppression information for as long as reasonably necessary to honour that opt-out, avoid accidental re-subscription and demonstrate compliance. Campaign and delivery history may also be retained for a reasonable period for operational, security, complaint and compliance purposes.

18. Account deletion and recovery

Eligible Merchants may request account deletion through Savv Store's available account functionality.

When an eligible deletion request is accepted, the public store may be taken offline and the account may enter a recovery period of up to 30 days. During that period, the account holder may be able to recover the account through the available recovery process.

After the recovery period, account information may be deleted or anonymised through Savv Store's deletion process, subject to information that Savv Store must or may lawfully retain.

Deletion does not necessarily remove financial, transaction, security, anti-fraud, dispute or legal records that remain reasonably necessary or lawfully retained.

19. Your privacy rights

Subject to applicable law and lawful limitations, you may request information about personal information Savv Store holds about you and may have rights to request access, correction, updating, deletion or destruction of personal information, or to object to certain processing.

Where processing is based on consent, including optional electronic marketing where applicable, you may withdraw that consent. You may also use the unsubscribe or preference method provided in an optional marketing communication.

Savv Store may need to verify your identity or authority before disclosing, correcting or deleting information and may decline or limit a request where permitted or required.

You may also contact Savv Store through that page with a question or objection concerning analytics processing. Where consent is legally required for additional collection, Savv Store will implement the appropriate choice before enabling it.

Privacy requests may be submitted through the Savv Store Contact page.

20. Merchant responsibility for Customer information

Merchants are separately responsible for personal information they receive and use in operating their own businesses, including information received through WhatsApp, email, telephone or another Merchant-controlled service.

Merchants should collect only information reasonably necessary for their transactions, protect Customer information appropriately, avoid unnecessary disclosure and comply with privacy requirements applicable to their own business.

Savv Store does not become responsible for a Merchant's independent use or misuse of Customer information merely because the Customer first discovered or contacted that Merchant through a Savv Store.

This includes Customer contact details received from payment-link notifications and Customer information a Merchant enters into invoices. Merchants should protect that information and keep it only for legitimate business, transaction and legal purposes.

21. Children and sensitive information

Savv Store is not intended for a child who lacks the legal capacity or required authorisation to create and operate an account.

Merchants must not knowingly use Savv Store to unlawfully collect, publish or process children's personal information.

Savv Store is not designed as a repository for identity documents, medical information, payment credentials or other highly sensitive information. Users should not submit such information unless it is genuinely necessary, supported by Savv Store's functionality and lawfully permitted.

22. Changes to this Privacy Policy

Savv Store may update this Privacy Policy where reasonably necessary to reflect changes to the Platform, technology, service providers, security practices, business operations or privacy requirements.

The current version will be published on this page. Where a material change significantly affects existing users, Savv Store may provide an additional notice where reasonably appropriate.

23. Contact and privacy complaints

If you have a question, privacy request or complaint about personal information handled by Savv Store, please contact us through the Savv Store Contact page.

We may ask for information reasonably necessary to identify the relevant account or verify that the person making the request is entitled to receive or change the information concerned.

Nothing in this Policy prevents a person from approaching the South African Information Regulator where that person has a lawful right to do so.