Back to Fides
Fides

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: August 1, 2026Last Updated: August 1, 2026

At Fides (a product owned and operated by Merus, merushq.com), we believe that your financial books are private business. Who owes you money, what you sell, and how much you earn should stay strictly between you and your business.

This Privacy Policy explains in plain, transparent language what data we collect, how we protect it, where our technical boundaries lie, and how you maintain complete control over your information.

1. Our Core Privacy Promise

A breach of our servers exposes nothing readable, and we permanently keep as little of your data as possible.

We do not sell customer lists, we do not monetize your transaction data, and we do not profile your business for advertisers.

2. Information We Collect & How We Use It

Fides operates directly within WhatsApp to manage your sales, stock, and debts. Here is what we collect to provide this service:

  • Transaction Messages & Media:
    • When you type a transaction (e.g., “Patrick yishyuye 5000”), we process the message to extract transaction details (amount, customer/item, payment status) and update your ledger.
    • Voice notes and images sent to Fides are parsed in memory and never saved to disk.
    • Raw message text is automatically shredded and deleted after 30 days. We retain only the structured ledger entry and an opaque message receipt ID (WhatsApp's unique message identifier) to maintain auditability and prevent duplicate entries.
  • Phone Numbers & Pseudonymous Identity:
    • Your phone number is used to route messages on WhatsApp.
    • On our database servers, we do not store your raw phone number as your account identifier. Instead, your identity is represented by a one-way cryptographic hash derived from your phone number using a secret key stored outside our database.
  • Ledger Entries (Customers, Amounts, Notes):
    • We store the structured accounting data you create (customer nicknames, sale amounts, unit descriptions).
    • All text fields (customer names, item details, notes) are scrambled with AES-256 encryption before being written to disk.

3. Data Minimization & Privacy by Design

We deliberately structure our systems to collect the absolute minimum data necessary:

  • No Contact Imports or Enrichment: We never access your phone address book, look up who a phone number belongs to, or buy background data about your customers. A customer named “Mama Keza” in your ledger is strictly a nickname you typed. We do not know who that is, nor do we try to find out.
  • Automatic 30-Day Message Shredding: Message logs are purged automatically every night after 30 days.
  • Zero Ad Trackers: Our applications contain no third-party marketing pixels, advertising identifiers, or tracking scripts.

4. How We Secure Your Data

We protect your records using three main technical safeguards:

  1. Pseudonymous Identity: Your phone number is converted to a secure one-way code using secret keys stored separately from our main database. If a thief steals our entire database, they see only scrambled codes and cannot turn them back into phone numbers.
  2. Isolated Per-Shop Data Encryption: Every customer name, note, and message body is encrypted using AES-256—the industry standard for online banking and secure applications. Each shop has its own distinct key. Your competitor or neighbor cannot decrypt your records, and our database engineers cannot read your entries in plain text.
  3. Key Destruction (“Delete Means Delete”): When you delete your Fides account or request data removal, we destroy your shop's encryption key. Every copy of your data across all servers, disks, and nightly backups instantly becomes permanently unreadable mathematical noise.

5. Third-Party Data Processors & Boundaries

To deliver Fides safely and reliably, we work with select infrastructure partners under strict data protection constraints:

A. Artificial Intelligence (Google Gemini — EU Region)

Fides uses Google Gemini to understand natural language sales messages in Kinyarwanda, French, English, and Swahili.

  • PII Stripping: Before any message leaves Fides servers for AI parsing, our system automatically redacts sensitive personal data, including phone numbers, national ID numbers, email addresses, and mobile money transaction IDs.
  • No Model Training & No Logging: We use enterprise API endpoints hosted in the European Union (EU) with logging explicitly disabled. Google does not store your messages or use your data to train AI models.

B. WhatsApp / Meta Platforms

Fides connects with you via WhatsApp.

  • Platform Boundary: Messages between you and Fides are delivered via Meta's WhatsApp Business API. WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption protects messages in transit between users, but when messaging a business service, encryption terminates at the service's API endpoint. Meta delivers the messages and processes them under its own terms and privacy policy.

C. European Data Storage

Our databases and application servers run within secure data centers in the European Union (EU) under European data privacy standards.

6. Legal Requests & Subpoena Policy

We will never sell, rent, or trade your data. We disclose information only when legally compelled by a binding court order or valid legal process.

Because your ledger is stored using pseudonymous identifiers and per-shop data encryption, an unauthorized leak or raw database seizure produces only unreadable scrambled text.

7. Your Rights & Data Control

You maintain complete ownership of your business records:

  • View & Export: Request your full sales summary or ledger export anytime directly in WhatsApp.
  • Correct Records: Correct or void entries instantly in chat.
  • Permanent Erasure: Request full account deletion at any time to trigger immediate key destruction and data wipe. For simple instructions, email templates, and step-by-step timelines, see our Data Deletion Request Guide.

8. Updates to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as our service evolves. Any updates will be posted with a revised “Last Updated” date. Material changes will be communicated directly to active users via WhatsApp notification.

9. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or how your data is handled:

  • Company: Merus (merushq.com)
  • WhatsApp: Message Fides directly in chat
  • Email: privacy@merushq.com
  • Location: Kigali, Rwanda