Privacy Policy

Rwendo Rides (“Rwendo”, “we”, “us”) is operated by Notch Innovations Lab (Private) Limited, a company registered in Zimbabwe with its address at 6608 Sunningdale 2, Mathiza Road, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Notch Innovations Lab (Private) Limited is the data controller for personal information processed through the Rwendo website, mobile app and related services. We process personal information in line with the Cyber and Data Protection Act [Chapter 12:07] and its regulations.

Information you give us

• Account details: your mobile number, name, and optionally your email address, profile photo and a short bio.
• Driver verification: if you offer rides, your National ID number, date of birth, residential address, driver’s licence number, class and expiry date, photos of your ID and licence, and a selfie with a liveness check used to confirm you match your documents.
• Passenger face verification: each passenger verifies their ID once by providing an ID or passport photo and camera photos, with consent to save a private face template. Each later booking requires fresh camera photos matched against that saved template. Source photos are processed without being stored. We retain the template, consent, verification results, and a photo digest that prevents exact photo reuse.
• Vehicle details: make, model, year, colour, number plate and seat count.
• Trips and bookings: routes, stops, dates, prices, seats, luggage, and the names and phone numbers of passengers you book for.
• Messages: chats between drivers and passengers, including pickup locations you choose to share.
• Emergency contacts: names, relationships and phone numbers of people you ask us to keep on file.
• Reviews and reports: ratings you give and receive, and safety or incident reports, including any photos you attach.

Information collected when you use Rwendo

• Location: only when you choose to share it, for example when you send your location in a chat or press the SOS button. We do not track your location in the background.
• Trip activity: boarding check-ins, PIN confirmations, no-shows, cancellations and completed trips.
• Payments: the amount, currency, method and status of each fare. If you pay through a mobile money or online payment provider, that provider handles your wallet or card details; we receive only a payment reference and status.
• Technical data: IP address, device and browser type, and logs of requests to our servers, used for security and to keep the service running.

• Create and secure your account, including sending one-time sign-in codes.
• Match passengers with drivers, manage bookings and seats, and confirm boarding.
• Verify drivers’ identity, licence and vehicle before they can publish rides.
• Let drivers and passengers coordinate pickups through in-app chat.
• Send booking updates, reminders and safety notifications.
• Respond to SOS alerts, incident reports and disputes, and contact emergency services or your emergency contacts when there is a risk to someone’s safety.
• Show ratings and reviews so people can decide who to travel with.
• Prevent fraud, fake profiles and misuse of the platform.
• Improve Rwendo, for example by understanding which routes are in demand.
• Meet our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests from authorities.

We do not sell your personal information.

We rely on one or more of the following grounds:

• Your consent, which you give when you create an account, submit verification documents or share your location. You can withdraw consent at any time, though some features may then stop working.
• Providing the service you asked for, such as completing a booking.
• Legal obligations that apply to us.
• Protecting the vital interests of you or another person, for example during an SOS alert.
• Our legitimate interests in keeping the platform safe and preventing fraud, where these are not outweighed by your rights.

Identity documents and biometric data from your selfie are sensitive. We collect them from drivers for driver verification and from passengers for each booking face check, with their explicit consent. Passenger face-check photos are processed without being stored.

• Other Rwendo users. When you book or accept a booking, the other person sees what they need for the trip: your first name, profile photo, rating, verification badges and pickup details. Drivers’ vehicle make, model, colour and number plate are shown to their passengers. Your phone number is shared only with people you have a booking with. Your ID number, licence number and documents are never shown to other users.
• People you share a trip with. If you use a trip-sharing link, anyone with that link can see the trip details it contains.
• Service providers who process data on our behalf under contract: cloud hosting and database providers, messaging providers that deliver sign-in codes and notifications by WhatsApp or SMS, email providers, and payment providers.
• Emergency services and authorities when required by law, or when we believe in good faith that sharing is necessary to protect someone’s safety.
• A buyer or successor if Notch Innovations Lab (Private) Limited is involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, under the same protections.

Some of our service providers store or process data on servers outside Zimbabwe. When we transfer personal information abroad, we use providers in countries or under contractual terms that give an adequate level of protection, as required by the Cyber and Data Protection Act.

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy:

• Account and profile information: while your account is open, and deleted or anonymised after you close it, unless we must keep it longer for the reasons below.
• Driver verification documents and selfies: while you are an active driver, and deleted within 12 months after you stop driving or close your account.
• Passenger face-check photos: processed in memory for the check without being stored. A private face template and one-time ID verification record are retained for future booking face checks, along with consent, match results and photo digests.
• Trip, booking and payment records: up to 6 years, to meet tax, accounting and legal requirements.
• Messages: for the life of the booking plus 12 months, so we can investigate any complaint.
• Incident and SOS reports: for as long as needed to resolve the matter and any related legal claim.
• One-time sign-in codes: stored only in hashed form and expire within minutes.

We use encryption in transit, hashed sign-in codes and passwords, access controls that limit who on our team can see verification documents, and logging of administrative access. No system is completely secure, so if we become aware of a breach that affects your personal information we will notify you and the Data Protection Authority as the law requires.

Under the Cyber and Data Protection Act you have the right to:

• Know what personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it.
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete your information, subject to records we must keep by law.
• Object to, or ask us to restrict, how we use your information.
• Withdraw consent you have given.
• Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that significantly affects you.

To use any of these rights, email privacy@rwendorides.com from the email address on your account, or contact us from the mobile number registered to it. We may need to confirm your identity first, and we will respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Data Protection Authority, the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).

We use your browser’s local storage to keep you signed in and to remember your preferences, such as language, currency and passenger or driver mode. We do not use advertising cookies. Clearing your browser data will sign you out and reset these preferences.

You must be 18 or older to create a Rwendo account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy as Rwendo changes or the law changes. When we make significant changes we will tell you in the app or by message before they take effect. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last updated.

For safety concerns during a trip, use the Safety Centre instead.