1. Scope
This Privacy Policy explains how FundaWay may collect, use, store and share personal information when you create an account or use learner, community, funding, premium and administrative features. FundaWay is designed primarily for South African users and aims to handle personal information in line with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
2. Information we may process
- Account and profile: name, email, phone number, city/town, province, grade, profile photo, FundaWay account number and account role.
- Learning: quiz attempts, scores, challenges, study plans, goals, saved resources and career-planning choices.
- Community: posts, comments, reactions, statuses, study-team messages, reports and files deliberately shared with other users.
- Funding/application: requests, application progress and documents deliberately uploaded for application-support workflows.
- Premium/payment: plan, payment reference, subscription status and transaction metadata. Card or banking credentials should be handled by the configured payment provider rather than stored in the FundaWay page.
- Technical: authentication/session information, browser storage, device/browser information needed for security or troubleshooting, consent choices and interface preferences.
- AI interactions: questions sent to an enabled AI feature and information needed to return a response.
3. Why information is used
Information is used to create and secure accounts, provide learner features, synchronise progress, support application workflows, operate community features, prevent abuse, administer subscriptions, improve the service, send requested notifications and comply with legal obligations. FundaWay should process information only where there is a lawful justification under applicable law.
4. Service providers and external platforms
FundaWay uses or is designed to use third-party infrastructure including Supabase for authentication/database/storage, Vercel for website hosting, Google for OAuth and potentially advertising, email-delivery providers for account communication, AI providers where enabled, and payment providers where paid checkout is enabled.
External university, bursary, college, employer and learning links are controlled by those organisations and are subject to their own privacy policies.
5. Google AdSense and advertising
If Google AdSense is activated after approval, Google and other advertising technology providers may collect, share or use information as a consequence of ad serving. Technologies may include cookies, web beacons, IP addresses or other identifiers used for functions such as ad delivery, measurement, security, fraud prevention and frequency control.
FundaWay does not intend to use a learner’s grade, school information, private messages or other sensitive account information to build personalised advertising profiles. Where advertising is enabled, FundaWay intends to favour non-personalised or appropriately restricted advertising for learner audiences and to comply with Google’s age-related and privacy requirements.
Where Google requires consent in the EEA, United Kingdom or Switzerland, FundaWay will use a Google-certified consent management platform (CMP). FundaWay’s own local cookie-preference control is a site preference and is not presented as a replacement for a required certified CMP.
Google explains how it uses information from partner sites and apps at How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.
6. Community, private communication and uploaded files
Content posted publicly or to a learner community may be visible to other users and may be moderated. Do not publish passwords, identity numbers, banking information, precise home addresses, intimate images or other information that should remain private.
Private messages are treated as private communication areas. FundaWay’s advertising design does not place ad units in private-message screens.
7. Retention and security
FundaWay should keep personal information only as long as reasonably needed for the purpose for which it was collected, account administration, legal obligations, dispute handling or security. Reasonable technical and organisational safeguards should be used, but no online system can guarantee absolute security.
8. Your choices and rights
Subject to applicable law, you may request access, correction, deletion where appropriate, restriction or objection to certain processing and information about how your data is used. You may withdraw consent where processing depends on consent.
Privacy requests: kupadoctor6@gmail.com or k.ratsoma5000@gmail.com. A South African data subject may also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator.
9. Cookies and browser storage
Essential browser storage supports login, security, preferences and feature state. Optional advertising technology is not treated as essential. Read the Cookie Policy and Advertising Choices for more information.
10. Changes to this policy
This policy may be updated as FundaWay features, providers or legal requirements change. The updated version will be published on this page.