Privacy Policy

Msafiri Technologies (Pty) Ltd, operating in Namibia, is responsible for the personal information described in this policy.

For any privacy question or request, contact us at hello@msafiri.africa or +264 81 839 5546.

This policy covers the Msafiri mobile app, the msafiri.africa website, and the Msafiri Solutions dashboard used by transport companies.

When you create an account and use Msafiri, we collect:

• Account details — your name, email address, phone number and password. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google instead of a password.
• Profile details — your role (passenger, driver or operator) and the home town or area you tell us you are based in. This is text you type; we do not track your device's GPS location.
• Trip and booking details — the routes you travel or publish, dates and times, number of seats, and for parcels, the description of what is being sent.
• Requests you post — ride or parcel requests, which are visible to drivers on the platform so they can respond.
• Messages — the in-app chat between you and the driver or passenger for a trip.
• Driver and vehicle documents — if you register as a driver, your driving licence and vehicle documents, including the images or files you upload, plus vehicle details such as make, type and seating capacity.
• Payment records — wallet top-up requests, the amount, currency, payment method and the reference number of the payment. We do not collect or store full card numbers.
• Support and safety reports — what you tell us when you contact support or report another user.

When you use the app or website we collect limited technical information, including your device type and operating system, app version, IP address, and basic logs of actions taken in the app such as when a booking was created or a document uploaded. We use this to keep the service running, investigate faults and detect abuse.

If the app crashes or hits an error, diagnostic information about that event — including the device type, app version and the technical details of the fault — is sent to our error monitoring provider so we can fix it.

If you allow notifications, we store a push notification token for your device so we can send you booking updates.

We want to be specific about this, because it matters:

• We do not request or collect background or real-time GPS location from your device. The app does not ask for a location permission.
• We do not record audio. Microphone access is explicitly blocked in the app.
• We do not read your contacts, your SMS messages, or your call history.
• We do not access your photo library except at the moment you choose to upload a specific picture or document, such as a driving licence.
• We do not sell your personal information to anyone, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

We use your personal information to:

• create and manage your account and verify who you are
• match passengers with drivers, process bookings and requests, and let you message each other about a trip
• verify driver licences and vehicle documents so passengers can travel with checked drivers
• process wallet top-ups, booking payments and refunds, and keep accurate financial records
• send you booking confirmations, trip updates and service notifications
• provide customer support and investigate safety reports, fraud and misuse
• understand how the platform is used in aggregate so we can improve it and report on our growth
• meet our legal, tax and regulatory obligations in Namibia

Msafiri only works if passengers and drivers can identify each other, so some information is shared between users:

• When you book a trip, the driver or operator sees your name, phone number, the seats or parcel booked, and your chat messages.
• When a driver accepts your booking, you see the driver's name, phone number, vehicle details and the route they have published.
• When you post a ride or parcel request, drivers on the platform see the request, including the route, timing and description you entered.

Your driving licence images, wallet balance, payment references and support reports are never shown to other users. Contact details are shared only in connection with an actual booking or request, and users may not use them for any other purpose.

We share personal information only where necessary, and only with:

• Service providers who run our infrastructure and process data on our instructions — Supabase (database, authentication), Cloudflare R2 (document and image storage), Expo (push notifications), Sentry (crash and error diagnostics), Resend (transactional email), and our hosting and caching providers.
• Paystack, our payment processor, together with our banking partners, to take and reconcile wallet top-ups and payouts.
• Transport companies, where you book a trip operated by that company, so they can manage the booking through the Solutions dashboard.
• Law enforcement, regulators or courts, where we are legally required to disclose information, or where disclosure is necessary to protect someone's safety or to investigate a serious incident.
• A buyer or successor, if the business is sold or restructured. We would notify you before your information became subject to a different privacy policy.

Msafiri uses cloud infrastructure, and your information may be stored or processed on servers outside Namibia. Where that happens, we take reasonable steps to ensure your information remains protected to the standard described in this policy and that our providers are bound by appropriate contractual obligations.

We keep your information for as long as your account is active, and after that only as long as we need it:

• Account and profile details — deleted or anonymised after you delete your account, subject to the retention below.
• Trip, booking and payment records — retained for up to five years after the transaction, to meet Namibian tax, accounting and audit obligations.
• Driver licence and vehicle documents — retained while you are an active driver and for up to two years afterwards, so we can respond to a safety or regulatory query about a past trip.
• Safety and fraud reports — retained for as long as necessary to investigate and to prevent repeat abuse.
• Aggregate statistics, such as total trips or sign-ups, which no longer identify anyone, may be kept indefinitely.

We use encrypted connections, access controls that limit which staff can see personal information, database-level security rules, and audit logging of administrative actions. Licence documents and other uploads are stored in restricted storage rather than being publicly accessible.

No system is completely secure. If a breach occurs that is likely to put you at risk, we will notify you and the relevant authorities without undue delay.

You can:

• access and correct most of your details directly in the app profile screen
• ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete
• delete your account and ask us to erase your information, as described in our Account & Data Deletion policy
• turn off push notifications in your device settings at any time
• object to a particular use of your information, or ask us to restrict it

To exercise any of these, email hello@msafiri.africa. We will verify your identity and respond within 30 days. If you are unhappy with our response, you may lodge a complaint with the competent authority in Namibia.

Msafiri is not intended for children under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. A child may travel as a passenger under a booking held by a responsible adult. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.

The msafiri.africa website uses only the cookies and local storage needed to make the site work and to remember your light or dark theme preference. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking pixels on the website.

We will update this policy as the service changes. The current version is always on this page, with the date it was last updated at the top. If we make a material change to how we use your information, we will notify you in the app or by email.