1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how Pesa Wire (“Pesa Wire”, “we”, “us”) collects, uses, shares, and protects your information when you use the Pesa Wire mobile application (the “App”). Pesa Wire is a digital wallet for Uganda that lets you top up via mobile money or bank, buy and hold foreign currency through licensed forex offices, send money to other users, pay bills, and make withdrawals. We only collect the information needed to run these services and to meet our legal and regulatory (KYC/AML) obligations.
2. Information We Collect
2.1 Information you provide
- Account details: first name, last name, email address, phone number, and a password (stored only as a salted hash — never in plain text).
- Identity verification (KYC): your ID issuing country, document type (National ID, Passport, or Alien/Refugee ID) and document number, plus photographs of your identity document (front/back) and a self-portrait photo (“selfie”) used to confirm you match your ID.
- Transaction details you enter: amounts, the mobile-money number used to fund or receive money, recipients of peer-to-peer transfers, biller account/meter numbers for bill payments, and, for transfers that involve a bank, the beneficiary’s name, bank name and account number.
2.2 Information created when you use the App
- Wallet & transaction history: your balances per currency, and a record of your deposits, currency purchases, withdrawals, bill payments, transfers and remittances (amounts, currencies, status, dates and references).
- Technical/log data: our servers automatically record basic request logs such as IP address and timestamps for security, fraud-prevention and reliability.
2.3 Information stored only on your device
- App-lock PIN: your 4-digit PIN is hashed with a device-specific salt and stored in your phone’s secure storage. It is never transmitted to our servers.
- Sign-in token: kept in your device’s secure storage to keep you logged in.
2.4 Device permissions
The App requests only the Camera permission — used to scan QR codes when paying another user and to capture your identity-document and selfie photos for verification. The App does not request location, contacts, microphone, or background-tracking permissions.
3. How We Use Your Information
- To provide the service: create and operate your account, process deposits, currency purchases, transfers, bill payments and withdrawals, and show your balances and history.
- Identity verification & security: verify your identity (KYC), authenticate you (password, OTP, and the on-device PIN), and detect and prevent fraud and abuse.
- Communications: send one-time verification codes and transactional notices by SMS, and account/verification emails.
- Legal & regulatory compliance: meet anti-money-laundering (AML), know-your-customer (KYC), and financial record-keeping obligations.
- Reliability: diagnose problems and keep the service secure and available.
4. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell your personal data. We share information only with the service providers needed to operate the App, and only the data needed for each purpose:
- SMS provider (EgoSMS / Pahappa): receives your phone number and the message text to deliver verification and security SMS.
- Mobile-money providers (MTN MoMo, Airtel Money): receive your mobile-money number and the amount to process wallet top-ups and payments.
- Email provider: receives your email address to send verification and password-reset emails.
- Secure cloud storage: stores your KYC document and selfie images.
- Licensed forex offices / billers / banks: the minimum details needed to complete a currency purchase, withdrawal, bill payment or transfer you request.
- Exchange-rate data providers: we fetch market rates from external sources; no personal data is sent to them.
- Regulators, law enforcement or courts: when required by law or to prevent fraud or illegal activity.
- Business transfers: in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, your data may pass to the successor entity under equivalent protections.
5. Identity Document & Selfie Photos
The ID and selfie photos you submit are used solely to verify your identity for regulatory compliance and fraud prevention. They are reviewed by authorised personnel and stored securely. Pesa Wire does not run automated facial-recognition or create biometric templates from these photos.
6. Data Security
We use industry-standard safeguards: encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS), salted-hash password storage, an on-device hashed PIN, one-time codes (OTP/2FA) for sensitive actions, role-based access to data, and secured server hosting. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we work to protect your information against unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure.
7. Data Retention & Deletion
We keep your personal and transaction information for as long as your account is active and as long as required to meet legal, tax, accounting and AML record-keeping obligations.
You may request deletion of your account and associated personal data at any time through the App or by contacting us. Because we are a financial service, certain transaction and KYC records may need to be retained for a legally mandated period even after an account-deletion request.
8. Your Privacy Rights
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you;
- Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete data;
- Withdraw consent for processing (where processing is based on consent);
- Request deletion of your data, subject to the legal retention limits above.
To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details below.
9. Children’s Privacy
Pesa Wire is intended only for users aged 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have collected information from a minor, we will delete it promptly.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated policy on this page and revise the “Effective Date” above. Please review it periodically.
11. Contact Us
For any question about this Privacy Policy or your data, contact us at: