Privacy policy

Msika Plus is a marketplace for Malawi, on the web at msikaplus.com and in the Msika Plus app. Buyers post what they need, sellers send offers, and the two agree a deal. This policy covers both the website and the app.

Questions about your data go to support@msikaplus.com, or to Support inside the app.

Only what running the market needs:

• Your account. Your email address and a password. The password is stored scrambled (hashed); nobody at Msika Plus can read it.
• Your profile. Your name, phone number and district.
• If you sell. Your business name, the kinds of goods and the districts you sell in, and where you want to be paid — a mobile money number or a bank account, with the account name.
• What you post and send. Requests, offers, messages with buyers, sellers and our support team, the photos and videos you add, and reviews.
• Orders and payments.What was agreed, delivery updates and delivery photos, and — when you pay through Msika Plus — the payment's reference, amount, status and whether it was paid by card or mobile money.
• Your device. A notification token, so we can send alerts to your phone or browser. Our hosting providers keep standard technical logs.

We do not collect your location from your device — the district is what you type. There are no advertising or tracking tools in the app or on the website.

Card and mobile money details are entered on Paychangu's payment page, not ours. We never see or store your card number or mobile money PIN.

• To show your request to sellers who deal in what you need, and bring their offers to you.
• To connect a buyer and a seller once the buyer shortlists an offer.
• To hold payments made through Msika Plus, pay sellers, and send refunds.
• To send alerts about your requests, offers and orders — in the app, by email and by push notification.
• To answer you when you write to support, and to settle disputes.
• To keep the market safe: limiting how many requests a new account can open, removing phone numbers and email addresses typed into messages, and removing people who scam or abuse others.

• Anyone can see an open request: what is wanted, how many, the district, the category and any photos. Your name is shown on requests and offers.
• Only the buyersees the offers on their request. Sellers never see each other's prices.
• Your phone number is shared only with the person on the other side of a deal, and only after the buyer shortlists an offer.
• Msika Plus staff can see accounts, orders, payments and support conversations to run the service, answer you and settle disputes. What staff do to accounts, orders and money is recorded.

We do not sell your data to anyone, and we do not use it for advertising.

A few companies run parts of Msika Plus for us. They process data only to provide that service:

• Convex — our database and backend.
• Vercel — hosts the website.
• Resend — sends our emails.
• Paychangu — takes payments made through Msika Plus and sends payouts and refunds.
• Expo, Google and Apple — deliver push notifications to phones.

Some of these companies store data outside Malawi, including in the United States.

We keep your data for as long as you have an account.

When you delete your account, your name, email address, phone number, district, seller and payout details, notifications and support conversations are removed straight away, and you are signed out on every device.

Orders you completed stay on record, with your name replaced by “Deleted account”. The other person relies on that record for their own history, and we need it for disputes, fraud prevention and accounting. Records of payments are kept for as long as the law requires.

• See and change your name, phone number and district at any time in your profile.
• Delete your account yourself, in the app (Account, then Delete account) or on the web at msikaplus.com/delete-account.
• Ask us for a copy of your data, or to correct something you cannot change yourself, at support@msikaplus.com.

Everything travels over encrypted connections. Passwords are stored hashed. Staff access is limited to the people who run the service, and what they do is logged. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong that affects your data, we will tell you.

Msika Plus is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly hold accounts for anyone younger. If you think a child has an account, tell us and we will remove it.

If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. If the change is significant, we will tell you in the app before it applies.