Privacy policy

Who is responsible

Cerkel runs this service and is responsible for the data about merchants described here. For the shoppers of each store, the merchant who runs that store is responsible, and we process their data on the merchant's behalf.

What we collect

From merchants and their team: name, WhatsApp number, email address if you add one, store details, and what you do in the admin or the Cerkel app (kept in an activity log). From shoppers, for the store they buy from: name, phone numbers, delivery address, the order, and how they arrived at the store (for example an ad click). If a shopper chooses to share it, the map location of their delivery address, so the courier can find them; it is never required and never kept with an unfinished checkout.

Why we use it

To run the service: sign-in codes, taking and confirming orders, WhatsApp updates, courier cash records, reports, preventing fraud, and support. We do not sell personal data and we do not advertise to shoppers ourselves.

Who receives it

Meta, to deliver WhatsApp messages. The couriers a merchant uses, to deliver orders. The ad platforms a merchant connects, with phone numbers hashed before they leave. Our own ad and analytics accounts, when a merchant signs up on this site: Meta and TikTok receive the phone number hashed, with the IP address and browser; Google Analytics receives the sign-up without it. Connecting Google Ads only lets us read that account's reports; that connection sends Google no shopper data. If a merchant adds a Google Analytics measurement ID, Google Analytics receives the store's order events (an order reference, value, items and the browser's analytics ID). Google, from the barcode reader in the Cerkel app for Android: diagnostics that do not identify you (see "The Cerkel merchant app"). Our hosting and database providers, in the EU. Authorities, only when the law requires it.

How long we keep it

As long as the store is active, and after that only as long as the law or an open dispute needs. A merchant who leaves can ask for their store's data and have it deleted from live systems within 90 days.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete data about you. To delete your Cerkel account, follow Delete your account. Shoppers should ask the store first; we help the merchant answer. Message us on WhatsApp from this site or email support@cerkel.ai, and we reply within 30 days.

Cookies

We use a few first-party cookies: to keep you signed in, remember your language and your cart, and — on this site — how you arrived, so a partner who referred you gets credit. No cross-site tracking.

The Cerkel merchant app

Our Android app, Cerkel for Merchants, lets you and your team run your store from your phone. It shows your store's orders, products and cash records from our servers, and sends back what you do in it (call outcomes, order notes, status and stock changes, product edits), recorded under your name in your store's activity log. To sign in, it sends your WhatsApp number, or your email address and password.

For security, with each sign-in we keep the phone's name, the IP address it connected from and when it was last used. The app keeps your sign-in encrypted on the phone (Android Keystore). So that you can keep working when the signal drops, it also keeps a copy of recent orders on the phone for up to a day, and the actions you take until they are sent. Uninstalling the app removes all of this from the phone.

The app asks for the camera only to scan product barcodes. The picture is read on the phone and never leaves it; only the barcode's number is sent, to find the product. Barcodes are read by Google's ML Kit, which sends Google diagnostics that do not identify you: the kind of phone and its Android version, the app's version, how scans performed, error codes, and an ID for that installation of the app. The app does not use the microphone, your location, contacts, photos or files, and does not read your call log: the call button opens your phone's own dialer.

The app shows no ads and does not use the advertising ID. Apart from the barcode reader's diagnostics, it has no analytics, tracking or crash-reporting tools. We do not sell anything the app collects. To delete your account, follow Delete your account.

Suggested words while you set up your store

When you set up your store you can tick a box to let us suggest words for it. Only then do we send your own answers and the public text of the pages you linked to our text-suggestion provider — never your customers' data, your orders or another merchant's data. Leave the box unticked and nothing from setting up your store is sent. Later, when you click "Suggest words" while editing your store's design, we send your store's name, a few of your product names and the words you are changing — and your set-up answers only if you ticked the box. Under our provider's terms, what we send is not used to train its systems. The page text we read is deleted after 30 days; the words you choose become your store's content.

Google user data (Google Ads)

When you click "Connect Google Ads" in your admin (Settings → Tracking and pixels), Google asks you to give Cerkel access to your Google Ads. Connecting asks Google for this one permission only: not your name, your email address or anything else in your Google account. Google Ads has no read-only permission, so the one Google shows you also allows changes; we only ever read.

What we read: the Google Ads accounts your Google login can open — each one's ID, name, currency and time zone, and whether it is a manager account — so you can pick one. Then, every hour, from the account you picked: its currency and time zone, the ID and name of each campaign, and for each day each campaign's cost, impressions, clicks, conversions and conversion value, and the account's total cost. We use this only to show your store's ad spend and return on ad spend next to its sales in your admin's reports. We never create, change or delete anything in your Google Ads account, and this connection sends Google nothing about your shoppers or orders.

Google gives us a key that keeps this access open (a refresh token). We encrypt it (AES-256-GCM) before saving it, keep it only on the store that connected it, and only our servers use it, to fetch these reports. The figures we import are kept with that store's data, with our hosting and database providers in the EU.

We do not sell Google user data, use it for advertising or use it to train machine-learning systems. We share it with no one except the providers who host it for us and whoever you choose: your team, a report you download, or a tool you connect to your store yourself. Cerkel staff look at it only to support your store, or when security or the law requires it. Cerkel's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. You can read that policy at https://developers.google.com/terms/api-services-user-data-policy.

You can stop our access at any time by removing Cerkel at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions. The saved key then stops working: we can no longer read your Google Ads and nothing new is imported. To have the saved key and the imported figures deleted, message us on WhatsApp from this site and we delete them within 30 days; until then, figures already imported stay in your reports. If you delete your account, they are deleted with the rest of your store's data (see "How long we keep it").

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we say so on this page before the change takes effect.