Privacy Policy

Who this covers

This policy is for anyone who uses TrustBirr: the owner who pays for a pack, the staff who scan receipts, and anyone whose payment screenshot is photographed at the counter so the shop can check it.

TrustBirr is a receipt-verification service for Ethiopian merchants. It never moves money. Questions about this policy go to help@trustbirr.et.

What we collect

We only keep what the product needs to log you in, check a receipt, show reports, and bill the shop.

• Your name and Ethiopian mobile number, and a PIN you choose. The PIN is stored as a hash, not as the digits you type.
• The business name, type, area, and the bank accounts you add so a receipt can be matched to a destination you actually own.
• Staff you invite: their name, number, role and branch.
• Receipt checks: the photo (when one is taken), the reference, amount, date, sender and destination printed on it, the verdict, who scanned it, and which branch.
• Pack purchases: which pack, how many credits remain, and invoices. Checkout runs on Chapa, Telebirr only. We do not see your Telebirr PIN.
• Sign-in records: that a session started, the device name the app sent (or the browser's user-agent if none was sent), and the IP address of that request, so a stolen phone can be signed out.

People who pay in your shop

When a cashier photographs a receipt, that image can include a customer's name, phone or account as the bank printed them. We use that only to compare the receipt with what the bank returns, and to keep a log the shop can review.

We do not market to those customers. We do not sell that information. The shop is responsible for telling its own customers that receipts may be checked this way.

What we use it for

Each record has a job in the product. We do not use it for anything else.

• To run the check: read the receipt, ask the bank or wallet about that reference, and return a verdict.
• To show the shop its own log and reports, limited by role — cashiers see what they scanned, managers their branch, owners the business.
• To send a one-time SMS code when a number is first set up or a PIN is reset.
• To take payment for a pack and keep the invoice the owner can reopen.
• To keep the service safe: lock a PIN after too many guesses, suspend a shop we have reason to believe is abusing the product, and debug a bank that has stopped answering.

Who else sees it

A check only works if we can ask the bank or wallet about the reference on the receipt. A pack only works if Chapa can take the Telebirr payment. We do not sell lists of shops or receipts.

• The bank or wallet named on the receipt, with the reference and the fields needed to compare it.
• OpenRouter (Google Gemini) reads the receipt photo and, when needed, the text of the bank's own page, so we can compare what the customer showed with what the bank recorded. That image and text leave our servers for that read.
• Chapa, to start and confirm a pack payment.
• The SMS provider that delivers a setup or PIN-reset code to the number you typed.
• Staff on the same business, according to the role the owner gave them.

How long we keep it

A receipt photo is kept for 90 days, which is long enough for a dispute at the shop and short enough that a till camera is not an archive. The log of the check itself — reference, amount, verdict, who scanned it — stays while the business account is open, because that is the report the owner paid for.

If the owner asks us to close the account, we delete the business, staff, receipts and photos after we have finished any unpaid invoice. We may keep a minimal billing record if required by law.

What you can ask us to do

Owners can already see and edit the business, staff and bank accounts in TrustBirr. Staff can see the receipts their role allows.

Write to help@trustbirr.et if you want a copy of what we hold on a number, a correction we cannot make in the product, or deletion of an account. We will need enough to know it is you.

How we look after it

PINs and one-time codes are hashed. Sessions use short-lived tokens. Staff over a pack's seat limit are locked rather than silently copied out of the database. Receipt photos are stored separately from the public website.

No till phone is a vault. Do not screenshot a PIN. Sign out of a shared device. Tell us at help@trustbirr.et if a number that is not yours starts receiving our codes.

When this policy changes

If we start collecting something new, or using it for a new purpose, we will update this page and the date above. The Terms of Service say how the product itself is offered.