Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 2026
1. Information We Collect
Breadwinner collects the following information to provide spending insights:
- Account information: name, email address, phone number (optional), household size
- Optional profile details you choose to add: gender, date of birth, marital status, town or city, and occupation. Every one of these can be left blank or cleared later, and none of them are required to use Breadwinner
- Receipt data: store names, purchase dates, item lists, prices and totals extracted from your slips
- Receipt images: used to read your slip at the moment you upload it (see section 4)
- Usage data: number of receipts uploaded, feature interactions, and device information for performance optimisation
- Points activity: the points you earn, the rewards you redeem, and the running balance, so your history reconciles and nothing is lost or double-counted
2. How We Use Your Data
Your data is used solely to provide and improve the Breadwinner service. We process receipt images to extract structured spending data, which is displayed in your personal dashboard. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not permit your data to be used to train or improve third-party artificial intelligence models - receipt processing runs on paid, business-tier AI services where inputs are not used to develop the provider's products.
3. Your Consent Choices
Consent is granular and separate - you can change any of these at any time in Settings without affecting your access to the service:
- Data use - required for the core service (reading your slips and showing your insights)
- WhatsApp messages - optional contact channel
- Anonymised data - optional participation in aggregated, de-identified insights
- Market-wide insight - optional contribution to community price comparisons
- Leaderboard visibility - off by default; your name is not shown to other shoppers unless you switch it on, and you can use an alias instead of your account name
4. Receipt Images and Retention
When you upload a slip, the image is sent to our processing partners (see section 5) to read the text, and the extracted data is stored on your account. We do not keep your receipt images. What we retain is a one-way cryptographic hash of each image, used only to detect when the same slip has already been uploaded. A hash cannot be turned back into an image.
Structured receipt data (store, date, items, prices, totals) is retained for as long as your account is active so you can see your history and price trends. You can delete any individual receipt at any time, or your whole account, and the associated data is removed.
5. Sub-Processors
We use a small number of service providers to run Breadwinner. Each one receives only what it needs for its specific task, and each is bound to process that data solely on our instructions.
| Provider | Purpose | Data involved |
|---|---|---|
| Railway | Application hosting and database | All account and receipt data |
| Google Cloud Vision (Google LLC) | Reading text from your receipt image | Receipt image, at upload time |
| Google Gemini API (Google LLC) | Understanding the slip to extract items, quantities and prices | Receipt image and its extracted text, at upload time |
| Resend | Sending verification and notification emails | Name, email address, email content |
| TextBW | Sending verification codes by SMS | Phone number, message content |
These providers operate infrastructure outside Botswana, so your data may be transferred to and processed in other countries (principally the United States). Where that happens we rely on the providers' contractual data-protection commitments, and we share only the minimum needed.
6. Anonymised and Aggregated Insights
Only if you opt in, we may use de-identified, aggregated spending data (for example, "the average price of bread in Gaborone") to power community price comparisons and published market insights. We never publish an individual's basket, and aggregated figures are not attributable to any person. You can withdraw this consent at any time and your data stops contributing from that point.
The points leaderboard is separate from this and is private by default. Your name is never shown to other shoppers unless you explicitly opt in, and when you do you can set an alias so the name on your account stays private. Opting out again removes you from the board.
7. Your Rights
Under Botswana's Data Protection Act (Act 18 of 2024) and applicable law, you have the right to:
- Access the data we hold about you, using the "Export Data" button in your dashboard
- Request correction of inaccurate data
- Delete your account and its associated data permanently
- Withdraw any optional consent (WhatsApp, anonymised data, market-wide insight) at any time
- Object to processing, and lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority
8. Contact Us
For any privacy-related questions, data requests or concerns, contact us at privacy@breadwinner.bw. We aim to respond within 30 days.