Privacy policy.

Kopesha is a lender directory, a set of borrower guides, and a loan-management system used by financial institutions in Tanzania. This policy explains what information we collect, why, and the rights you have over it. It applies to this website and to the Kopesha mobile app.

What we collect

We collect and keep only the following, each for the reason stated:

• Your account details — full name, email address, phone number and a hashed password. Used to recognise you when you sign in.
• Your institution's details — registered name, trading name, licence number, TIN, the owner's NIDA number, address and location. Used to verify that an institution is genuine before it is shown to borrowers.
• Borrower records — name, phone number and the record of loans and repayments, entered by your institution. The institution owns these records; we store them on its behalf.
• Activity logs — who did what to a loan or a staff account, and when. Kept for audit.
• Call-back requests — the name and phone number of a person who asks an institution to call them about a loan.
• Open loan requests — your name, phone number, amount, loan type, region and purpose, when you post an open request on “Ask for a loan”.

Open loan requests, and who sees what

When you post an open loan request, you agree that the details above are shown to lenders registered on Kopesha that have published a listing in the region you chose (or across Tanzania, if a lender has said it serves the whole country), so that they can call you about your request. We do not sell your details to anyone.

• A request closes by itself after 30 days, and you can delete it at any time from “My requests”. Once deleted, lenders no longer see it.
• We keep a record of every lender that viewed your request and every one that said it contacted you — if you ask who was given your number, the answer exists.
• Kopesha lends no money, decides no loan, and vouches for no lender's terms. The agreement is between you and the institution.

Advertising

Kopesha's public pages — the lender directory and the borrower guides — may show advertising so that the service stays free for borrowers. The only ad network serving ads on Kopesha is Google: Google AdSense on this website and Google AdMob in the app.

Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website or to other websites. Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visit to Kopesha and/or other sites on the Internet. In the app, Google uses your device's advertising identifier instead of cookies. Google explains how it does this in how Google uses cookies in advertising and how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

You may opt out of personalised advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. You can also opt out of third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalised advertising at www.aboutads.info. If you opt out you will still see ads, but they will not be chosen from your past activity.

We give neither Google nor any advertiser your name, your phone number, the amount you ask for or anything about your finances, and we do not use your loan request to choose what you are shown. There are no ads on the loan request form, its confirmation page, or inside anyone's account.

What we do not collect

The app does not ask for the camera, the microphone, your contacts, your location, or your phone's call or SMS history. We do not read your text messages. The only permissions it uses are the internet, network state, vibration and biometrics (for the optional app lock). A lender may attach a photo from their own photo library to a loan record; nothing is uploaded unless they choose it.

The SMS we send

An institution may send its borrower a reminder, an overdue notice or a receipt by SMS. The message is sent by our server through an SMS provider, not from your phone, and its text is kept with the loan it concerns.

Payments

On Android and on the website, subscription payments are made by mobile money (Lipa Namba). We do not store bank card numbers. We keep a record of each payment — its amount, date and status.

On iPhone and iPad, payments go through Apple (In-App Purchase), as the App Store rules require. Apple takes the payment; we neither see nor store your card number or any of your payment details. What we receive is confirmation that a payment was made: Apple's transaction number, the plan you bought and the date it expires. That confirmation passes through RevenueCat, Inc., the company we use to manage App Store subscriptions, which receives your Kopesha account identifier so the plan is unlocked for the right institution. For Apple's and RevenueCat's privacy practices, see their own policies.

Who sees your information

An institution's records are visible only to that institution's staff, according to the permissions they were given. We do not sell anyone's information and do not hand it to advertisers. We may disclose it where the law requires us to.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself: in the app or on the website, go to Settings → Delete account. When you do, your sign-in stops working and your profile is erased, and there is no way to bring it back.

What remains: loans issued, repayments received and the institution's records stay in the institution's books. Those are the institution's business records, not your personal ones, and the law requires the institution to keep them. Your name stays on the log of what you did, so the institution knows who did what.

If you cannot sign in to your account, use the account deletion request page and we will handle your request.

Security

All traffic between the app and the server travels over HTTPS. Your password is never stored as typed. Every request to read or write is checked by the server, not by the device.

Children

Kopesha is for business use and is not intended for anyone under 18.

Contact

For any question about this policy, use the contact page.