Privacy notice

1. Data controller

The data controller is the operator of the BillMate service (billmate.it). To exercise your rights you can also delete your account from your profile at any time.

2. Our commitment on your data

The data you enter in BillMate (expenses, groups, balances, payments) is used only to make the service work for you and for the people you choose to share it with.

We do not sell or hand over your data, we do not use it for advertising, marketing, profiling, commercial analysis or to train artificial-intelligence systems, and we make no automated decisions about you. We use no third-party analytics or tracking. The automatic category suggestion for expenses is computed on our own server with rules and your own history, sending nothing to third parties.

If in future we want to use data for purposes other than these, we will tell you first and ask you to accept the documents again: until you do, the app will not be usable and you can delete your account at any time.

3. Data we process

• Account data provided by Google when you sign in: Google identifier, name, email address and profile picture.
• Data you enter: groups and members, friends, expenses (description, amount, currency, date, category, notes, attached receipts), splits, recorded payments, comments, preferences (language, currency, theme, notifications).
• Payment methods (IBAN, PayPal, etc.): they are encrypted end-to-end on your device before being sent. The server only stores ciphertext and public keys and cannot read them; only your devices and those of the friends and group members you choose to share with can.
• Technical and security data: IP address and user agent of sessions, security event log (sign-ins, sensitive changes), temporary counters to limit abuse.
• Acceptance record: which documents and versions you accepted, and when.
• If the service’s outgoing mail is enabled, your email address for the notifications you request.

4. Purposes and legal bases

• Providing the service (account, groups, expenses, balances, notifications): performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.
• Security, abuse and fraud prevention, service continuity: legitimate interest of the controller, Art. 6(1)(f).
• Keeping proof of your acceptances and complying with legal obligations: Art. 6(1)(c) and 6(1)(f).
• Optional backup of the recovery key on your Google Drive: your consent, Art. 6(1)(a), which you can withdraw at any time by turning the backup off.

5. Recipients and transfers

Data is processed by the controller on its own systems. Other users see it only within the sharing you choose: group members see the group’s expenses, friends see the balances between you.

Google (Google Ireland Ltd / Google LLC) is involved when you sign in with your Google account and, only if you turn it on, for the key backup on Google Drive: in that case Google acts as an independent controller under its own notice, and may transfer data outside the European Economic Area with the safeguards it provides (adequacy decision / standard contractual clauses).

If outgoing mail is enabled, the message goes through the mail server configured by the controller. Automatic exchange-rate retrieval, if enabled, contacts a public service without sending personal data.

6. How long we keep data

• Account data and content: as long as you keep your account. When you delete it, identifying data is anonymised and payment methods and keys are erased; the accounting records other group members need to keep balances correct remain, with no link to your identity.
• Sessions: up to 30 days after last use, then deleted.
• Security event log (including IP and user agent): 12 months.
• Acceptance record: kept to document consent and for legal protection, for the period required by law.

7. Your rights

You may at any time ask for access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and object to processing based on legitimate interest (Arts. 15-22 GDPR). You may withdraw a consent already given, without affecting the lawfulness of earlier processing. Many of these you can do yourself in the app: profile editing, CSV export of expenses, account deletion.

To exercise your rights you can also delete your account from your profile at any time.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Italian data protection authority (www.garanteprivacy.it) or with the authority of your country.

8. Whether providing data is required, and minimum age

To use BillMate your Google account data is needed: without it the account cannot be created. The service is for people aged 14 or over (Art. 2-quinquies of the Italian Privacy Code): if you are under 14 you may not register without the consent of a parent or guardian.

9. Security

We adopt appropriate technical and organisational measures: encrypted connection (HTTPS), encryption at rest of names, emails, descriptions, notes, comments, logs and attachments with keys kept apart from the database, sessions with tokens not stored in clear, CSRF and injection protection, end-to-end encryption of payment methods, administrator access with strong authentication. Daily database backups, encrypted on the server before upload, are kept for a limited period (normally 14 days) in the controller’s personal cloud storage: data of a deleted account may remain in the backups until they expire. No system is invulnerable, however: in case of a personal data breach we will inform the data subjects and the authority where and when the law requires.

10. Changes to this notice

If processing changes significantly we will publish a new version and ask you to accept it again at your next sign-in, saying what changed. The version you accepted is recorded.