Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Cirqle is run by its three co-founders in London.

For any privacy question or to exercise your rights, contact privacy@cirqle.co.uk.

2. What data we collect

• Account data: your first and last name, email address, password (stored only as a secure bcrypt hash — never in plain text), your Instagram handle, and the date you signed up. Before a new account goes live, you confirm your email address and a member of our team reviews the account.
• Referrals: if a friend recommended a purchase to you, the Instagram handle you enter for them when you upload your receipt; and, if you are the one who recommended it, the fact that a friend named you. We use this to pay both of you the referral bonus and to stop people referring themselves.
• Withdrawals: to withdraw, you verify your identity and add a bank account on Stripe’s own secure form. Stripe collects and keeps those details; we never see your bank details or ID documents. We keep only your Stripe account reference, whether it is ready for payouts, and a record of each withdrawal.
• Receipts you upload: photos of receipts you upload (stored privately), the deal it is for, the Instagram post linked to it (if any — a repeat visit can be logged without one), and the cashback amount and its status (pending, confirmed, paid, or rejected).
• What your receipt says: we read each receipt automatically to check it. From that reading we keep the shop's name, the total, the currency, the purchase date and the order or transaction number. We do this to confirm the purchase is genuine and not a duplicate, and to tell the brand what their deals earned. The automatic reading is done by AI, which receives the receipt image itself — see section 5. This is not used to train any AI model. We also keep the ability to read a receipt using Amazon Textract inside our own AWS account, used when a receipt needs a manual re-check.
• Instagram post data: where you provide an Instagram handle and refresh your feed, we collect public posts that tag our brand account — see section 4.
• Technical data: our website is hosted on GitHub Pages and our API on Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of normal operation and security, those providers process standard request data such as your IP address, the time of the request, and your browser type. Our API also holds your IP address in memory for a few minutes to limit abuse (for example, repeated failed sign-ins); it is never written to our database. We do not run our own advertising or analytics tracking.
• Deal views and clicks: when a deal page is opened, or its “Shop” link is followed, we count it so the brand can see how the deal performs. The count is anonymous: it records the deal, whether it was a view or a click, and the time. Nothing that identifies you is attached.
• Brand / partnership data: if you apply to partner with us as a brand, we collect your first name, work email, phone number and how you heard about us. Once approved, you add your business details in the merchant portal. Top-ups to a brand’s balance are paid on Stripe’s own checkout page, so card details never reach us.

We do not collect payment card numbers, and we do not buy personal data or track you across other websites.

3. How & why we use it

Under UK GDPR we must have a "lawful basis" for each use of your data:

We only send marketing if you have opted in, and every marketing email has an unsubscribe link.

4. Instagram data

Cirqle's cashback model asks you to post about a purchase on Instagram and tag our account. (Once you have uploaded a receipt for a deal, some brands also let you log a repeat visit from just the receipt, with no post — that route involves no Instagram data at all.) To check that a qualifying post exists, we retrieve public Instagram posts that tag our brand account and match them to the Instagram handle on your account. For those posts we may process the post's URL, caption, timestamp, the posting account's username and display name, and public like/comment counts.

We use this only to check the receipts you upload. You control which handle is on your account, and you can remove or change it at any time. This retrieval is performed for us by a third-party provider (see section 5). We are reviewing this mechanism and may change how post verification works in future; we will update this policy if we do.

5. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with service providers ("processors") who act on our instructions, and where the law requires:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) — hosting, database, private receipt storage, and email delivery. Your data is stored in AWS's UK (London) region. AWS's Amazon Textract service is also used to read a receipt when a receipt needs a manual re-check.
• An AI provider — reads your receipt image automatically to check it, as described in section 2. Does not train its models on this data.
• Apify — retrieves the public Instagram post data described in section 4.
• postcodes.io — if you search for deals near a postcode, our server sends that postcode (not your IP address or anything else about you) to postcodes.io to find its map location. We don't store the postcode. If you tap "use my location" instead, your browser asks your permission and the location never leaves your device: distances are worked out on the page itself.
• GitHub (GitHub Pages) — serves our website.
• Google Fonts — serves the fonts our pages use; this may involve your browser's IP address being seen by Google.
• Brand partners: a brand you have earned cashback from can see your activity with that brand, in their partner dashboard. This is set out in full below.
• Other Cirqle members — only if you choose to join the referral leaderboard, which is off unless you turn it on. This is set out in full below.
• Stripe — pays out member withdrawals (Stripe checks your identity and holds your bank details directly), and processes brands’ balance top-ups.
• Authorities or advisers — where we are legally required to disclose, or to protect our rights.

What a brand can see about you

When you earn cashback from a brand, that brand pays for it, and they get a dashboard showing how their deals performed. Because a receipt is something you did with them, your activity appears in it. We think you should know exactly what that means, so here it is in full.

A brand you have uploaded receipts for can see, about you:

• Your Instagram handle, and the public post you tagged them in — its image, caption, and public like and comment counts.
• How many receipts you have uploaded for them, and the dates of your first and most recent one.
• The total printed on the receipts you uploaded to them, and the cashback they paid you.
• Whether someone referred you to them and that person's Instagram handle — and, if you referred anyone to that same brand, their handles too.

A brand can never see:

• Your name, email address, phone number, postal address, date of birth, or bank and payment details.
• Your receipt images, or the individual items on them. Only the total is shared.
• Anything at all about your activity with any other brand. Each brand sees only their own shop. A brand cannot learn that you also shop with a competitor, how much you spend elsewhere, or how many brands you use Cirqle with.
• Your Cirqle balance, withdrawals, or account history.

Where a brand's dashboard shows grouped statistics — for example the share of their customers who returned in a given month — we withhold any group containing fewer than five people, so that a figure can never be traced back to one person.

We share this because it is necessary for the contract between us: the brand funds your cashback, and cannot reasonably be asked to pay for purchases they are shown nothing about. It is also our legitimate interest in running a marketplace that brands will fund. Brands act as separate data controllers for what they see, and our partner agreement forbids them from using it to identify you beyond your handle, from combining it with data from elsewhere to do so, or from contacting you outside Cirqle.

If you would rather a brand did not see this, do not upload receipts for them. You can also ask us to delete your account at any time (section 8), which removes your receipts from every brand dashboard.

What other members can see about you

We run a referral leaderboard: a table of members ranked by how many people they have referred to Cirqle. You are not on it unless you choose to be. It is off for every account by default, and joining is a decision you make on the leaderboard page.

If you join, other signed-in members can see:

• A name for you — either one you type in yourself, or, if you don't, the Instagram handle on your account.
• How many people you referred during the current three-month season, and your position in the table.

Other members can never see:

• Your real name, email address, or any contact details — unless you type your own name in as your display name.
• Anything you bought, any brand you shop with, any receipt, or any amount of money: not your cashback, not your balance, not your withdrawals.
• Who referred you, or who you referred.

You can leave the leaderboard at any time, which removes you from the season currently running. A season that has already closed keeps the standings it had, because the prizes for that season were decided on them. Deleting your account (section 8) removes you from every leaderboard, past and present.

We rely on your consent for this, which is why it is off by default and why turning it off again is always available.

If you win a prize

Members who finish in the top ten of a season win a cash prize. To pay it we will contact you and ask for the bank details we need to make the transfer. We do not store bank details on your account. We use them to make the one payment, keep whatever record of the payment we are required to keep for tax and accounting, and delete the rest.

6. International transfers

Your account and cashback data is stored in the UK (AWS London region). Some of our providers (for example our AI provider, Stripe, Apify, Google, and GitHub) may process limited data outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on appropriate safeguards — such as UK "adequacy" decisions or the International Data Transfer Agreement — to keep your data protected to UK standards.

7. How long we keep it

• Account data — while your account is open, and for a short period after closure to handle any final queries.
• Cashback and financial records — up to 6 years, to meet UK tax and accounting requirements.
• Email confirmation and password-reset links — they expire quickly by design.
• IP addresses used to limit abuse — minutes, in memory only.
• Anonymous deal view and click counts — kept, as they contain nothing about you.
• Cached Instagram posts — until you refresh them or close your account.

You can ask us to delete your account and associated data at any time (subject to records we must keep by law).

8. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Have inaccurate data corrected.
• Have your data erased ("right to be forgotten").
• Restrict or object to certain uses of your data.
• Receive a portable copy of the data you gave us.
• Withdraw consent (for anything based on consent) at any time.

To exercise any of these, email privacy@cirqle.co.uk. We aim to respond within one month. If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk.

9. Security

We protect your data with measures including: passwords stored only as bcrypt hashes; receipt images held in private storage and viewable only through short-lived, signed links; encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS); and hosting on AWS's UK infrastructure. No system is ever completely secure, so please use a strong, unique password for your Cirqle account and keep it private.

10. Cookies & storage

We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. To keep you signed in and remember a few preferences, we use your browser's local storage. Full details are in our Cookie Policy.

11. Changes & contact

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we'll post a notice on the site and, where appropriate, email you. Questions or requests: privacy@cirqle.co.uk, or via our contact page.