Privacy Notice
1. Who we are
Proper Stake Holdings SA (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2025/560156/07), trading as PayMe Gov, of 82 Marais Street, Heidelberg, 1441 (“PayMe Gov”), is the responsible party for the personal information described here. The exception is information our customers record about other people, for which we act as the customer’s operator (clause 4).
Our Information Officer is Johannes Petrus Janse van Vuuren, who can be reached at support@paymegov.co.za.
2. What we hold, and why
| Information | About whom | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Name, email address, a one-way hash of your password (never the password), your sign-in sessions including the IP address and browser used for each, security events such as failed sign-ins, and which version of these documents you accepted | Account holders | To let you sign in, keep others out, and show what you agreed to |
| Company name, registration and VAT numbers, addresses, contact details, the bank account for your invoices (account number encrypted), members and their roles | Account holders and their colleagues | To identify your business and control who may do what |
| Invoices, payments, promises to pay, contracts and progress claims | Your business; sometimes a named official | To work out what you are owed and keep track of it |
| Uploaded documents, their file names and malware scan results | Whoever the documents concern | To keep the evidence behind your records |
| Follow-up letters, exactly what was approved and sent, delivery reports from our email provider, and replies received | Account holders; government officials | To pursue payment, and show what was said, by whom and when |
| Documents you email from your Business Vault, the recipients’ addresses, your message, and a record of what was sent, to whom and when | Account holders; the people you send them to | To send the documents you choose, and show what was sent |
| For a company registration: the applicant’s and each director’s full name, date of birth, identity or passport number, address, cellphone number and email address; certified identity documents; the signed power of attorney and consents to serve | The applicant and each director | To prepare and lodge the registration with CIPC |
| Payment attempts and the payment provider’s reports. No card number, expiry date or security code is stored. | Payers | To collect and account for our fees |
| Tender opportunities and supplier-readiness declarations you record | Your business | To help you organise bids |
| Notifications we have shown, emailed or sent to your Telegram, your email preferences, and the Telegram chat you connected for alerts | Account holders | To tell you when something needs you |
| Rate-limit counters, fault records and application logs, which never contain document contents, letter text, banking details or passwords | Account holders | To keep the Service secure and working |
| For each invoice: which government organisation received it, the date it received it, the date or dates it paid, and whether it was paid by the date the Service expected | Customers (the supplier businesses) | To show customers pooled figures about how government organisations pay, never with amounts, names or single invoices, and only when based on at least five customers and twenty invoices (Terms clause 5.4). You can switch this off in your settings. |
| Questions to Paya that PayMe’s check refused as an attempt to make it set aside how it works, or as not about your business - only the kind of refusal and when, never your words - and any warning, pause, reason you chose, review and appeal that followed | People who use Paya | To warn, and then pause, someone who keeps asking Paya for what it is not for, and to let them put their side |
Your employees, if you run payroll. If your business runs payroll in PayMe Gov, we hold what you record about each employee: their name, employee number, date of birth, start and end dates, identity number, income tax number and bank account (the last three stored encrypted), their salary, the payslips PayMe Gov works out, and their leave. We use it only to work out pay, PAYE, UIF and SDL and the figures for your EMP201 and EMP501, which you submit to SARS yourself. It stays in South Africa and is not sent to any other company. An employee you link to their own PayMe Gov account can see their own payslips and leave, and nobody else’s. You are the responsible party for your employees’ information; PayMe Gov processes it on your behalf.
We process this information because it is necessary to provide the Service you signed up for, to comply with the law (for example, keeping financial records), and for our legitimate interest in keeping the Service secure (section 11 of POPIA).
3. Information about directors
For a company registration, the applicant gives us each director’s details. Each director also signs a consent to serve, which says how their details will be used. A director’s details are used only to prepare and lodge that registration with CIPC.
To prepare and lodge a company registration with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission on CIPC’s own website, using PayMe Gov’s own CIPC account. PayMe Gov’s filing software checks your documents and lodges the application; a member of staff steps in only if something goes wrong.
For a director who is married, CIPC asks for the date of the marriage and the spouse’s identity number. PayMe Gov collects these only to lodge the registration, shows the spouse’s number masked, and erases it with the director’s own identity number under the retention policy.
PayMe Gov’s software checks the documents you upload for a company registration - that each form is signed and witnessed, that each identity copy is certified, and that the names and identity numbers match the application. To do this, a copy of each document is sent to Anthropic in the United States, whose AI reads it. Anthropic does not train on it.
4. Information about government officials
Our customers record the names, work email addresses and roles of officials they deal with about unpaid invoices, and keep the replies officials send. For that information, the customer is the responsible party and PayMe Gov processes it on the customer’s behalf as its operator. An official who wants to know what is held about them, or to have it corrected, may contact the customer concerned or write to us at support@paymegov.co.za, and we will pass the request on.
Our customers may also save the details of the businesses they sell to: a business’s name, address and VAT number, and the name, email address and telephone number of a contact person there. For that information too, the customer is the responsible party and PayMe Gov processes it on the customer’s behalf as its operator. It is seen only by that customer’s own organisation and is not shared with any other customer. A contact person who wants to know what is held about them, or to have it corrected, may contact the customer concerned or write to us at support@paymegov.co.za, and we will pass the request on.
5. Who we share it with, and where
We share personal information only with the service providers below, only as each needs it to provide its part of the Service, and never for their own purposes. We do not sell personal information, and we use no advertising or analytics trackers. Pooled payment figures (Terms clause 5.4) are shown to other customers only in de-identified form: they never include your name, any amount or any single invoice, and appear only when at least five different customers and twenty invoices contribute. They contain no information about government officials.
| Provider | Role | Receives | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| Render | Hosts the application and database | Everything the Service holds | Germany (Frankfurt) |
| Cloudflare (R2) | Stores uploaded documents in a private store | Contents of uploaded documents | Western Europe |
| Resend | Sends email, and receives replies to follow-up letters | Recipient, subject, text and attachments of follow-up letters; documents you email from your Business Vault, with the recipients’ addresses and your message; replies; account emails | United States |
| Yoco | Takes card payments for our fees | Card details (entered directly with Yoco), amount and reference | South Africa |
| Anthropic | Reads a published tender document, and answers a question about one, when you ask, and reads a slip you upload to your Books, when you ask; answers your questions to Paya; and, for a company registration, checks the documents you upload and reads CIPC website pages PayMe Gov’s filing software has not seen before | That tender document, including any officials’ contact details printed in it, and the question you typed, and the photo of that slip; your questions to Paya, the earlier part of the conversation, PayMe’s sentences about the records you asked about, and any document you attach or pick from your Business Vault; for a review of a pause on Paya, the kinds and days of the counted questions, the pauses, the reasons chosen and the account’s age - nothing naming you or your organisation; and, for a company registration, each document you upload and the CIPC page, as described in section 3 and below | United States |
| Telegram | Sends you short alerts, if you connect Telegram to PayMe Gov | Your Telegram chat number, and the alert headline (for example “A reply arrived on one of your cases”) with a link to PayMe Gov. Never an amount, a name, a case or invoice number, or any document | United Arab Emirates (Telegram FZ-LLC), with data stored in several countries |
| CIPC | Registers companies | The registration details, identity documents, power of attorney and consents for your application | South Africa |
Where personal information is stored outside South Africa, the provider is bound either by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation or by a binding data-processing agreement with us. Both provide protection substantially similar to POPIA (section 72(1)(a)). When you ask PayMe to read a published tender document, that document, including any officials’ contact details printed in it, is sent to Anthropic, an artificial-intelligence service in the United States, to be read. When you ask PayMe a question about such a document, your question is sent to Anthropic with the document. Anthropic does not use either to train its models, and deletes them after the limited period its terms allow. When you ask PayMe to read a photo of a slip or supplier invoice you have uploaded to your Books, that photo is sent to Anthropic to be read, so that PayMe can suggest the figures on it for you to check. A slip can show a cashier’s name or the last digits of a bank card. Anthropic does not use it to train its models, and deletes it after the limited period its terms allow. PayMe only sends a slip when you press “Ask PayMe to read the slip”. When PayMe Gov’s filing software meets a page on CIPC’s website it has not seen before, a picture and the text of that page are sent to Anthropic in the United States so that its AI can say which buttons and fields to use. Identity numbers, home addresses, contact details and PayMe Gov’s CIPC password are hidden before anything is sent; the proposed company names and the directors’ names may be visible. Anthropic does not train on it and deletes it after the period its terms allow. The documents you upload for a company registration are sent to Anthropic as described in section 3. When you ask Paya, PayMe’s assistant, a question, PayMe sends Anthropic your question, the earlier part of that conversation, and sentences PayMe writes from your records about what you asked - for example what is outstanding on an invoice or when a tender closes. These can include the name and work email address of a government official who wrote to you about a case. If you attach a document or a screenshot, or pick a document from your Business Vault, Anthropic receives that too. Anthropic does not use any of it to train its models, and deletes it after the limited period its terms allow.
Your conversations with Paya are private to you: other people in your organisation cannot read them. Please do not include other people’s personal information in a question, and only attach a document you are entitled to share.
If you keep asking Paya to set aside how it works, or keep asking it about things that are not about your business, PayMe’s own check counts those questions. Three within 24 hours bring a warning. Each further one pauses Paya for you: for 1 hour, then 3 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, a week and a month. After that, Paya stays paused until PayMe’s automated reviewer decides whether to switch it back on for you. One step is taken off for every 30 days in which nothing is counted. PayMe records the kind of question and when, never your words. You can put your side on a counted question within 30 days by choosing one of five reasons, and the reviewer takes it into account. The reviewer is an AI agent: for a review, the kinds and days of your counted questions, the pauses, the reasons you chose and how old your account is are sent to Anthropic, in the United States - nothing that names you or your organisation. You are told the outcome, the reason and which questions it relied on. If Paya stays paused, you can ask once, after 90 days, for the decision to be looked at again. These numbers may be adjusted within fixed limits; a change only affects what happens after it.
Questions you ask about a tender document, and the answers, can be seen by the other people in your organisation’s PayMe account. Please do not include personal information about yourself or anyone else in a question. A question should be about the tender.
When you use PayMe to email documents from your Business Vault, PayMe sends the documents, the recipients’ addresses and your message through our email provider, which processes them primarily in the United States, and keeps a record of what was sent, to whom and when.
Telegram alerts are optional, and you connect them yourself by pressing Start on the PayMe Gov bot. You can disconnect at any time in your notification settings, and PayMe Gov then stops sending to Telegram. Telegram already holds your own Telegram account details under its own privacy policy. PayMe Gov does not receive your phone number from Telegram. Telegram messages are not end-to-end encrypted, which is why an alert contains only what happened and never the details, which you see only after signing in to PayMe Gov.
6. Who at PayMe Gov can see it
PayMe Gov staff have no general access to customers’ records. Each staff member has one defined role, and sees only what that role needs:
- Registration staff see company-registration applications, directors’ details and the documents supplied with them, in order to prepare and lodge the filing. Opening a document is recorded, and the applicant can see that it was opened.
- A full identity number is shown masked. The only ways to obtain a full number are a specific action by a named member of PayMe Gov staff, or PayMe Gov’s filing software reading it to type it into CIPC’s form. Each writes an audit record in the same instant it reads the number.
- Account-recovery staff see the email address on an account that has asked for help signing in. They cannot see the business’s records.
- Operations staff see records of software faults, and a list of payments for reading credits that need to be reconciled with our payment provider, identified by reference numbers only. Neither contains a document, a letter, a figure or a password.
No staff role can read an organisation’s cases, invoices, documents or letters through the Service. The person who administers the hosting and database, currently Johannes Petrus Janse van Vuuren, could technically access stored information. He does so only to operate and repair the Service.
Nobody at PayMe Gov reads the record of your counted questions to Paya, and other people in your organisation, including its owner, cannot see it.
7. How we protect it
- Each organisation’s records are separated in the database itself, beneath the application, and that separation is tested by attacking it directly.
- Bank account numbers are stored encrypted, and identity numbers cannot be read by the application except through the audited step in clause 6.
- Sensitive actions need a second sign-in factor, and uploaded files are scanned for malware before anyone can open them.
- Our logs never record document contents, letter text, banking details or passwords.
8. How long we keep it
| Information | Kept |
|---|---|
| Account details and sign-in records | While the account exists |
| Company records, cases, documents and tender records | While the organisation’s account exists |
| Issued invoices and notes, and payment records | At least 5 years, as tax law requires |
| The Telegram chat you connected for alerts | Until you disconnect it or your account is deleted, together with when you connected or disconnected it |
| Questions you ask about a tender document, and the answers | 90 days, and then deleted |
| Paya | Your conversations with Paya, meaning your questions and Paya’s answers, are deleted 30 days after the conversation starts. Files you attach to a question are deleted 24 hours after you attach them. PayMe’s deletion runs every six hours. Copies can remain in PayMe’s database backups for about nine days, until those backups roll over. |
| Records of counted questions to Paya, warnings, pauses and reviews | While your account exists |
| Follow-up letters and their approvals | While the organisation’s account exists, as a record of what was said and who approved it |
| Records of documents emailed from your Business Vault | While the organisation’s account exists, as a record of what was sent, to whom and when |
| Identity documents, identity numbers and other registration documents | 2 years after the company is registered, or 2 years after the application was withdrawn or finally refused, and then deleted |
9. Your rights
You may ask what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct or delete it. Where POPIA allows, you may also object to our processing it. Write to our Information Officer at support@paymegov.co.za, and we will reply within 30 days. Some records, such as issued invoices, may have to be kept even after you ask us to delete them; if so, we will tell you. You may also complain to the Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za).
If PayMe’s automated reviewer decides that Paya stays paused for you, you are told why. You can put your side, which it considers, and ask once, after 90 days, for the decision to be looked at again.
10. Cookies
We use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in and to protect your account. We use no advertising or analytics cookies.
11. Security incidents
If we have reasonable grounds to believe your personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as section 22 of POPIA requires.
12. Changes
Each version of this notice is numbered and dated. We will tell you about a material change before it takes effect.