Effective date: 11 November 2026
Trust-a-Tradie ("we", "our", "us") operates the Trust-a-Tradie mobile application, which connects customers with independent tradespeople ("tradies") for home improvement and trade services in South Africa. This policy explains what personal information we collect from customers and tradies, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices and rights you have — including how to delete your account.
This policy applies to both the customer side and the tradie side of the app — the same information practices apply regardless of which role you sign up as.
Name, email address, phone number, profile photo, bio, and address/suburb/province. If you sign up or sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and profile photo from Google.
For tradie accounts: trade categories, years of experience, hourly rate, CIPC and VAT numbers, licence/insurance/certification documents, portfolio images, and banking details (bank name, account number, branch code, account type) used to pay out completed jobs.
Job postings and photos, quotes, site-visit scheduling, messages exchanged between a customer and tradie about a job, completed-job photos, ratings and reviews, and records of quote acceptance, escrow status, commission, and payout amounts.
Payments are processed through TradeSafe, a licensed escrow payment provider. We do not store your card or bank login details ourselves — TradeSafe processes the payment and we store only the resulting transaction status and amounts. (Trust-a-Tradie's TradeSafe integration is currently in sandbox/test mode; no real payments are processed while this is the case.)
With your permission, we use your device's location to show tradies jobs posted nearby, and to show customers tradies operating in their area.
We use automatic crash and error monitoring (via Sentry) that runs in the background while you use the app. If the app crashes or encounters an error, it automatically collects the error message, a stack trace, the screen you were on, app version, your account ID and role, and basic device information (device model, OS name and version) so we can diagnose and fix the issue — this happens automatically and does not require you to submit a report yourself. If you additionally send us a manual bug report, we collect the same kind of information for that report. We also store a push notification token so we can send you job, message, and payment notifications.
We do not sell your personal information. We share information with:
Some of the providers listed above — including Supabase, Sentry, Expo, and Google — may store or process your information on servers located outside South Africa. Where this happens, we rely on those providers having appropriate safeguards in place (such as contractual data protection terms) or on the transfer being necessary to perform our contract with you (for example, to provide database, crash-reporting, or notification services the app depends on), as permitted under section 72 of POPIA.
We retain your information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account (see below), we anonymize your personal information. Job, quote, transaction, payment, invoice, rating, and message records are retained even after account deletion, because they form part of the other party's records and because South African tax law requires us to retain financial records for a statutory period regardless of an account deletion request.
Under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), you have the right to access, correct, and request deletion of your personal information. You can update most of your information at any time from your profile. You can also delete your account directly from the app, under Profile → Delete Account.
Deleting your account:
If you have a complaint about how we handle your information, you may also contact South Africa's Information Regulator at POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za or via inforegulator.org.za.
We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit and database access controls that restrict each user to their own data. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Trust-a-Tradie is intended for users who are 18 years or older. We do not knowingly collect information from children.
We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version on this page with a new effective date.
If you have questions about this policy or how your information is handled, contact us at admin@trustatradie.co.za.