Privacy Policy

This policy explains what Shop9ja does with your personal information, why, and what you can do about it. It covers both Shop9ja Grocery — the store we run ourselves — and the wider marketplace of independent vendors.

Last updated: 17 August 2026.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR DATA

Shop9ja Ltd is the data controller for the information described here. We are a private limited company registered in England and Wales, company number 16218545, with our registered office at Unit 5 Trafalgar Business Park, Broughton Lane, Manchester, England, M8 9TZ.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at info@shop9ja.co.uk or 0161 563 0966.

Independent vendors on the marketplace are separate controllers of the order information they receive from us to fulfil what you bought from them. If you want to know what a particular vendor does with your details, ask us and we will put you in touch.

WHAT WE COLLECT, AND WHY WE ARE ALLOWED TO

We only collect what the platform actually needs. For each type of information, this is the legal basis we rely on under UK GDPR:

- Account details — your name, email address, phone number and password. To create and run your account. Basis: performance of a contract with you.
- Delivery addresses — the addresses you save, and a copy of the one you chose kept on each order. To deliver what you bought and to prove where it went. Basis: performance of a contract.
- Order and booking records — what you bought or booked, from which store, when, and what you paid. Basis: performance of a contract, and legal obligation for the tax records we must keep.
- Payment references — a Stripe or PayPal identifier for each payment. We never see or store your full card number; your card details go straight to the payment provider. Basis: performance of a contract.
- Delivery notes you write at checkout — for example "leave with a neighbour". Basis: performance of a contract. Please do not put health information here; if you tell us about an allergy we treat it as given with your consent and delete it a day after the order is complete.
- Support conversations and messages you send to vendors or to us. Basis: our legitimate interest in running a marketplace where problems can be resolved.
- Reviews and ratings you publish. Basis: our legitimate interest in helping shoppers judge a seller.
- Your device's sign-in token and, if you turn on notifications, a push token. Basis: performance of a contract.
- Your approximate location from your IP address, used once to pre-select your country and currency. Basis: our legitimate interest in showing you the right prices without making you set them by hand.
- A record of each page view on our own servers — the page you looked at, the website you arrived from, and the date. We do not store your IP address for this; we store a one-way scrambled version of it that changes every day, so it cannot be traced back to you or used to follow you from one day to the next. If you are signed in, the record is linked to your account. Nothing is stored on your device for this. Basis: our legitimate interest in knowing which parts of the shop are used.
- If, and only if, you agree to analytics cookies: information about how you use the site, collected through Google Analytics. This is described in the next section. Basis: your consent.

WHAT WE DO NOT DO

We think it is worth being specific about this, because most privacy policies are vague here.

- We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels.
- We do not build advertising profiles of you, and we do not track you across other websites.
- We never sell your personal information to anyone.
- We do not share your details with vendors you have not bought from.

COOKIES, AND THE CHOICE YOU HAVE

These are the cookies used on this site. The first four are essential: they are what makes signing in, your basket and card payment work, and the site cannot function without them.

- A sign-in cookie, which keeps you signed in while you use the site.
- A security cookie (XSRF-TOKEN), which stops other websites submitting forms on your behalf.
- A cookie that records the analytics choice you made below, so we do not ask you again on every page. It stores only the word "granted" or "denied" and lasts a year.
- Two cookies set by Stripe, our card payment provider, which Stripe uses to detect fraudulent payments. Stripe is a separate controller for these; their notice is at stripe.com/privacy.

Then there is one choice, which is yours:

- Analytics cookies (Google Analytics). If you accept, Google Analytics is loaded and sets cookies that let us see which pages and products are used, and where people give up. If you refuse, it is never loaded at all — not loaded and switched off, but never requested. Doing nothing counts as refusing.

You are asked the first time you visit, and refusing takes exactly one click, the same as accepting. You can change your mind at any time using the "Cookie choices" link at the foot of any page, and in the app under Settings. When you withdraw, the analytics cookies are deleted.

We turned Google Analytics on in August 2026, having previously used none. We updated this policy first and we ask before it loads, which is what we promised to do. If anything else changes — for example if we ever introduced advertising measurement — we would do the same again.

IF YOU SELL OR DELIVER ON SHOP9JA

Vendors and delivery drivers give us more than shoppers do, so this part is
about you.

- Business and contact details — your shop or business name, address, phone
number and email. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
- Your bank or payout details. These go to Stripe; we hold only what is needed
to show you which account you chose.
- Identity verification. If you drive for us we collect your driving licence
number and hold it for as long as you deliver with us. We do not collect a
photograph of your face, and we do not ask for a passport or a national ID.
Where the check runs through Stripe, you complete it on a page hosted by
Stripe, your document goes from your device to Stripe without passing through
Shop9ja, and what comes back to us is a reference number, whether the check
passed, and when.
While we finish moving driver checks over to Stripe, the driver sign-up form
may still ask you to upload a copy of your licence. If you upload one it is
stored on our own systems, encrypted and readable only by staff reviewing
your application, and it is deleted a week after your application is decided.
We are removing that step. Basis: our legal obligation to know who is trading and
delivering on the platform, and our legitimate interest in preventing fraud.
- Your business documents, where a category needs one — for example a food
hygiene rating. These are about the business, not your identity, and we do
hold them.

Stripe verifies you for two different reasons and this affects who is
responsible for what. For drivers, Stripe runs the identity check on our
instruction, so we remain responsible for it. For vendors, Stripe also runs its
own checks because it is the regulated provider of your payout account, and for
that part Stripe decides independently what it needs. Stripe's own privacy
notice covers what it does with your document.

Because we never hold the document, we also cannot return it to you or delete
it for you. If you want Stripe to erase what it collected, ask us and we will
send Stripe the instruction to redact that verification.

A small number of vendors and drivers who joined before this changed did upload
a document to us directly. Those files are being destroyed, and no new ones are
accepted.

WHO ELSE SEES YOUR INFORMATION

- The vendor you bought from, who receives your name, phone number and delivery address so they can fulfil the order. They do not receive your payment details.
- Stripe and PayPal, who process payments and pay vendors their share.
- Stripe Identity, which receives the identity document and photograph of any
vendor or driver being verified. Shoppers are never asked for one.
- Delivery partners, who receive the delivery address: our own drivers, Shippo (for courier labels) and Uber Direct (for on-demand delivery).
- Suppliers who ship certain marketplace items directly, where a vendor uses one.
- OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service, which receives an address you type into the address search box so it can suggest matches.
- ip-api.com, which receives your IP address for the one-off country lookup described above.
- OpenAI, if you use the in-app shopping assistant. What you type there, and the conversation so far, is sent to OpenAI to generate a reply. Please do not type anything into the assistant you would not want to leave the platform.
- Our hosting and email providers, who process data on our instructions.

Some of these providers are outside the UK. Where that happens we rely on the UK's adequacy regulations or on the International Data Transfer Addendum, so your information keeps the same protection it has here.

HOW LONG WE KEEP IT

- Order, payment and invoice records: six years after the end of the tax year they fall in, because HMRC requires it.
- Your account and profile: for as long as you have an account, and then removed when you ask us to erase it.
- Delivery addresses in your address book: until you delete them or close your account.
- Support conversations and messages: three years, so we can deal with disputes and repeat problems. This covers both messages you send us through the contact form and conversations with vendors.
- Delivery notes, item notes and gift messages on an order: deleted a day after the order is complete. If you told us about an allergy, that goes with them.
- A driving licence you upload while we are still moving driver checks to Stripe: deleted a week after your application is decided.
- Sign-in sessions and device tokens: until you sign out, or the device is removed.
- Short-lived technical caches, such as delivery quotes and address lookups: a few hours at most.
- Server logs: these can contain your IP address and are kept short-term for security and fault-finding.
- Page-view records: 13 months, then deleted automatically.
- Google Analytics data, if you agreed to it: held by Google under Google's own retention setting, and deleted from our side the moment you withdraw.
- Vendor and driver verification records: the reference number and its result
are kept for as long as you trade or deliver with us, and then for six years,
because they evidence a check we are required to have made. The document
itself is held by Stripe under Stripe's own retention rules, not ours.

When you ask us to erase your data, we remove your name, contact details, addresses, delivery details, review text and messages. We keep the financial record of what was ordered and paid, without your identity attached to it, because tax law requires us to and data protection law expressly allows it.

YOUR RIGHTS

You can:

- Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
- Ask us to erase your personal information.
- Ask us to restrict how we use it, or object to us using it.
- Ask for your information in a portable format.
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on your consent.

STOPPING MARKETING

You have an absolute right to object to direct marketing. There is nothing for us to weigh up and nothing to approve — if you say stop, we stop.

You can do it yourself, immediately, in the app under Account then Privacy. You can also email info@shop9ja.co.uk. Either way we will keep sending you messages about orders you have placed — confirmations, delivery updates and refunds — because those are part of the service, not marketing.

To exercise any other right, email info@shop9ja.co.uk. We will respond within one month. We may ask you to confirm who you are first, particularly for erasure, so that nobody else can delete your order history.

SECURITY

Passwords are stored hashed and can never be read back. Payment card numbers never reach our servers. Traffic to the site and app is encrypted. Access to customer information by our staff is limited by role and recorded.

No system is perfectly secure, but if something goes wrong that puts your rights at risk, we will tell you and the ICO as the law requires.

CHILDREN

Shop9ja is not intended for children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under that age. If you believe a child has given us their details, email info@shop9ja.co.uk and we will remove them.

COMPLAINTS

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first — most things we can fix quickly. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

CHANGES

We will update this policy as the platform changes, and we will post the new version here with a new "last updated" date. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you before it takes effect.

CONTACT

Questions about this policy or your data: info@shop9ja.co.uk or 0161 563 0966.