Privacy policy

1. The short version

Your card is a public page, and everything on it is published.

Your contacts are yours. We never market to them, sell them or share them. We do not advertise and we do not sell personal information.

You can export or delete everything we hold about you from your account settings, and switch off section 16's measurement at the bottom of this page.

2. Who is responsible

Umbel is run by South Design (Pty) Ltd, trading as Umbel, registration number 2025/343417/07, of 32 Kloof St, Gardens, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa. Under the Protection of Personal Information Act we are the responsible party for the personal information described here.

Write to Umbel's Information Officer at info@umbel.me about anything on this page, including a request about your own information.

3. Who this policy covers

People with an Umbel account, people who open somebody's card, people whose details are in somebody's Umbel contacts, and members of a team that uses Umbel.

If your details are in somebody's contacts, sections 7 and 8 say who decides and what you can ask for.

4. What we collect

From you: your name and email address, what you put on a card, pictures you upload, and what you write to us.

From your card: when it is opened, tapped or shared, and what a visitor sends through its form.

From your device: the kind of device, operating system and browser, in broad categories, and the address the request came from, which tells visits apart and is never stored beside your details.

From elsewhere: your plan and payment status from the merchant of record, the fact of a purchase from Apple or Google, and the details read from a paper card you photograph.

Anything about you that did not come from you came from the person whose card or contacts it is attached to.

5. Why we process it

To give you your cards, run your account and take payment: the agreement between us, which we cannot perform without this information.

To keep Umbel working and safe, and to keep the records the law requires: our legitimate interest, and the law.

To measure how Umbel is used, which you can switch off, and to email you about the product, which you can stop. Where we rely on consent you may withdraw it at any time.

We make no decision about you automatically, and nothing here is used for advertising.

6. Your card is public

Anyone with a card's address can open it, and the same details travel in its QR code, contact file and wallet pass. There is no expectation of privacy in what you publish.

Card pages are not listed in search engines. Our terms forbid automated collection and we take measures against it. We cannot promise that nobody will copy a card by hand.

A visit is counted for the cardholder: the kind of device, roughly where in the world it was opened, and how the card was reached. We build no profile of a visitor, and section 16's measurement never runs on a card page.

7. Who decides, you or us

For your account, your billing, and the security and abuse of the service, we decide and we are the responsible party.

For the contacts on your cards, the paper cards you photograph and the lists you import, you decide and we are your operator: we hold them, keep them safe, use them for nothing of our own, and delete them when you do.

A request to change or delete a contact record of yours is passed to you to answer, and we say so to whoever asked. Where we hold the same information for a reason of our own, such as a security record, we answer that part.

8. If you are not an Umbel user

Your details may be in somebody's Umbel contacts: because you filled in a card's form, because they photographed a card you gave them, because they imported a list, or by any other route a person adds a contact.

We hold those records for that person. They decide what is kept and why, and we act on their instructions, as section 7 says.

Write to info@umbel.me and we pass your request to the person whose contacts they are, and tell you we have done so. You may also ask them directly to correct or delete what they hold.

Whether or not you have an account, you may ask us what we hold about you, ask us to stop processing it, and complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa.

9. Scanned business cards

A photograph of a business card is read by an AI service, under a data processing agreement with us. It may be processed outside South Africa, and it is not used to train AI models.

The photo is deleted when you save the contact without keeping it, when you delete the contact, or after 30 days unreviewed. A photo kept with a contact goes when that contact does.

10. The share-back form

The form's spam check loads only when a visitor opens the form, never when they open your card.

The form says who will receive what is sent and what it is for. What a visitor sends reaches the cardholder as a contact, with the consent line they agreed to beside it.

11. Imported contacts

A file you import is read in your browser and never sent to Umbel. Only the contacts it becomes are stored.

Those people agreed to nothing, so the responsibility for holding them is yours, as our terms say.

12. Team cards

If you hold a team's card, the team's Owner and Admins can see the card, its contacts, its codes and how often it has been opened, and can email your wallet pass to the address on your membership.

When you leave a team, your team cards are archived and unassigned, and their contacts stay with the team.

13. Wallet passes

A pass puts your card's public details on your phone through Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Google keeps a copy of a Google Wallet pass on its servers.

An iPhone adding a pass sends us an identifier for itself and an address for updates, so the pass changes when your card does. Both go when the pass is removed or your account is deleted.

14. Signing in with Google

If you sign in with Google we receive your name, your email address and the fact that Google has verified it, and we use them only to identify you and to open or create your account.

Umbel's use of information received from Google APIs follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements. We never use it for advertising, we do not sell or transfer it except as that policy allows, and no person reads it except for security, to comply with the law, or with your permission.

15. Payments

Payments on our website are handled by Polar, as merchant of record. Everyone with an account is a Polar customer from the day they sign up, on the free plan too, so Polar holds your name and email address.

Deleting your account deletes your Polar customer, anonymised. Polar keeps its own record of any past orders, without your name or email address.

A plan bought in the app is sold by Apple or by Google, which hold your payment details under their own policies; Umbel never sees them. A service we use reads the store's record of the purchase, under an id and never your name or email address, and deletes it when you delete your account.

16. How we measure Umbel

We record how Umbel's website and apps are used, to find and fix what is broken: page views, clicks, performance, errors, and in the web app recordings of sessions with everything you type hidden. That is our legitimate interest.

Switch it off for your browser at the bottom of this page, or in the app under Settings, with Measure how I use Umbel. A browser sending Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track is left out without asking.

It is recorded by an analytics service in the European Union, under a data processing agreement with us. It knows you by an id, never your name or email address, and never runs on a card page. Nothing goes to an advertising network, and it is deleted with your account.

17. Cookies and storage

Umbel sets one cookie of its own, which keeps you signed in. Measurement sets one more, with random ids, kept for a year, and keeps the rest of its state in your browser. Switching measurement off replaces them with a note that you asked. Visits to our own pages are also counted without a cookie. The share-back form's spam check may set one, only after a visitor opens the form.

Nothing here is used for advertising. If that changes, you will be asked first.

18. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information. It goes to the service providers that make Umbel work, each receiving only what it needs: the company that hosts Umbel and stores its files, the one that delivers our email, the AI service that reads a scanned card, the spam check on the share-back form, the payment provider, the service that reads a purchase made in a phone app, and the service that measures how Umbel is used.

Apple and Google receive what a wallet pass needs, and take the payment for a plan bought in the app.

We also share it where the law requires, or to establish or defend a legal claim. If Umbel were sold or merged it would go with the business, and you would be told before anything about you was handled differently.

19. Information that leaves South Africa

Some providers keep or process personal information outside South Africa: in the European Union, in the United States, and in other countries where they run data centres. If you are in the European Union, your information also leaves it for those countries and for South Africa.

Each receives only what it needs, under terms that protect it, as section 72 of POPIA and, for people in the European Union, the GDPR require.

20. How long we keep things

Your account, cards and contacts: while your account is open. Closing it removes them from the live service at once, and from the copies below as those age out.

The photo of a scanned business card: until you save or delete the contact, or 30 days unreviewed.

Your handle, and an anonymised record of the account that held it: for good, because a handle is never reused.

How a card has been used: 25 months.

Measurement of how you use Umbel: 25 months, and deleted with your account.

Request and security logs: 30 days.

Copies of Umbel's database, kept as backups: up to 35 days, and one a month for up to 12 months.

What you write to us, and anything you attach: 2 years.

The record of each plan you paid for, with its dates and currency but never your name or email: seven years after your account is deleted, as South African law asks of business records.

A wallet pass registration: until the pass is removed or your account is deleted.

21. How we keep it safe

Personal information is encrypted as it travels and where it is stored, access is limited to what a role needs, and a picture is kept as a private original nobody can fetch directly.

We store no password, only a value a password can be checked against, and no payment card details at all. Our providers are bound in writing to keep what we give them confidential and use it only as we instruct.

22. If something goes wrong

If personal information is accessed or taken by somebody who should not have it, we will tell the Information Regulator and the people affected as soon as reasonably possible after we find out, as section 22 of POPIA requires.

We will say what happened, what it means for you, what we have done and what you can do, by email and on this website if we cannot reach you.

23. Children

Umbel is for people of 18 and over, and we do not knowingly process a child's personal information.

If we find that an account belongs to somebody under 18, we close it and delete what is attached to it. If you believe a child's information is on Umbel, write to us.

24. Your rights

You may ask what we hold about you and get a copy, have it corrected, have your account and everything attached to it deleted, object to our processing, and withdraw a consent you gave.

Your account settings do the first and the third yourself, and umbel.me/legal/delete-account says how deletion works and what we keep. Otherwise write to Umbel's Information Officer at info@umbel.me. We answer within 30 days, and may ask you to show who you are first.

You may also make a formal request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, on Form 2, as our PAIA manual says.

If you are not satisfied with how we have dealt with you, complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za. You do not have to come to us first.

25. Marketing

Email about your account, your cards and your plan is part of the service and cannot be switched off while you have an account.

Email about the product goes only to people with an account, or to somebody who asked for it, and carries an unsubscribe link we act on at once.

We never market to the contacts on your cards.

26. Automated processing and AI

The only place Umbel uses AI is reading a photographed business card into fields you then check. It decides nothing about anybody, and nothing is kept until you save it.

Nothing on a card, and nothing in your contacts, is used to train anybody's AI model.

27. Changes to this policy

We will say so on this page, and email you, before a change that affects you takes effect. The date above is the day this policy last changed.

28. Contact and complaints

Write to Umbel's Information Officer at info@umbel.me, or to South Design (Pty) Ltd, trading as Umbel, 32 Kloof St, Gardens, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa. We answer within 30 days.

If that does not settle it, the Information Regulator of South Africa takes complaints about personal information, at inforegulator.org.za.

29. The PAIA manual

The Promotion of Access to Information Act gives you the right to ask us for records we hold. Our manual lists those records and how to ask, at umbel.me/legal/paia.