Privacy Policy

Élané (Pty) Ltd operates the ELANE marketplace and determines the purposes and means of processing personal information described in this Policy.

You may contact our Information Officer and Data Protection contact at legal@elane.co.za for any question relating to this Policy or your personal information.

We collect the following categories of personal information:

• Identity and account data: full name, email address, mobile number, password (hashed), date of birth (where required), profile photograph and role (Customer or Provider).
• Provider profile data: trading name, business address, services offered, pricing, portfolio images, qualifications, identity verification documents and business registration information.
• Booking and transaction data: service booked, appointment date and location, communications with the counterparty, ratings, reviews, invoices and transaction history.
• Payment data: billing name, address, partial payment method identifiers, subscription status and payout details. Full payment card numbers are collected and processed directly by our authorised third-party Payment Processors and are not stored by ELANE.
• Device and usage data: IP address, device identifiers, operating system, browser type, referring URL, pages visited, features used, session times and diagnostic logs.
• Location data: approximate location derived from IP address, and precise location where you enable location services on your device.
• Communications: messages exchanged through the Platform and correspondence with our support team.
• Marketing preferences: your consents and choices in relation to marketing communications.

Where the law treats certain information as “special” or “sensitive” (for example, biometric information used for identity verification), we process it only with your explicit consent or where otherwise permitted by law.

We process personal information for the following purposes and on the following legal grounds under POPIA and, where applicable, GDPR:

• To operate the Platform and perform our contract with you — account creation, authentication, hosting profiles, enabling Bookings, processing payments and Subscriptions, routing communications between Customers and Providers.
• Legitimate interests — securing the Platform, preventing and detecting fraud and abuse, enforcing our Terms, product analytics, product improvement and internal reporting.
• Compliance with legal obligations — tax, accounting, anti-money laundering, consumer protection and responding to lawful requests from authorities.
• Consent — direct electronic marketing, non-essential cookies, and processing of special personal information for identity verification.
• Vital interests and public interest — where processing is necessary to protect a person’s life, health or safety.

We share personal information only in the following circumstances:

• Between Customers and Providers to the extent necessary to enable a Booking (for example, name, contact number, appointment details and reviews).
• Authorised third-party service providers acting as our operators or processors, including cloud hosting, communications, analytics, email delivery, customer support tools, identity verification providers and secure third-party Payment Processors.
• Professional advisers such as auditors, lawyers and accountants under duties of confidentiality.
• Regulatory, tax and law enforcement authorities where required or permitted by law, or to protect the rights, property or safety of ELANE, our Users or the public.
• Corporate transactions in the context of a merger, acquisition, financing, restructure, or sale of all or part of our business, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information with third parties for their own independent direct marketing purposes without your consent.

We use cookies, local storage and similar technologies to keep you signed in, remember your preferences, analyse usage, measure marketing performance and secure the Platform.

You may accept, reject or manage non-essential cookies via our in-Platform cookie preferences centre or through your browser settings. Strictly necessary cookies cannot be disabled as they are required to operate the Platform.

Certain of our operators are located outside the Republic of South Africa, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom. Where we transfer personal information across borders, we do so only where an adequate level of protection is ensured, whether by an adequacy decision, the use of Standard Contractual Clauses, binding corporate rules, your explicit consent, or other lawful mechanisms recognised under POPIA and applicable law.

We retain personal information only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this Policy, including:

• Account data — for the duration of your account, and up to twelve (12) months following closure for security, dispute-handling and legal defence purposes.
• Booking, invoicing and commission records — for a minimum of five (5) years to comply with tax and accounting obligations, and longer where required by law.
• Marketing preferences — until you withdraw consent or unsubscribe, plus a reasonable period thereafter to record and honour that choice.
• Device and analytics logs — typically no longer than twenty-four (24) months, in identifiable form.

Where longer retention is required by law or is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, we will retain data accordingly.

We maintain appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational safeguards to protect personal information against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. These include encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access controls, database row-level security, activity logging, regular vulnerability review and staff confidentiality obligations. No system is entirely secure; you must also protect your account credentials and notify us promptly of any suspected compromise.

Subject to applicable law, you have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

• to be notified about, and access, personal information we hold about you;
• to request correction, updating or deletion of your personal information;
• to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing;
• to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent, without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing;
• to restrict processing or request data portability, to the extent provided by GDPR or equivalent law;
• not to be subject to solely automated decisions producing legal or similarly significant effects, save where permitted by law;
• to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, including the South African Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za) or your local EU/UK data protection authority.

To exercise any right, please contact legal@elane.co.za. We may require verification of your identity before responding and will reply within the time limits required by law.

The Platform is not directed to persons under the age of eighteen (18). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided personal information to us, please contact legal@elane.co.za and we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

We may amend this Policy from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email or through prominent notice on the Platform prior to taking effect. Please review this Policy periodically.

For any question or request relating to this Policy, please write to the ELANE Information Officer at legal@elane.co.za.