Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Nia is a family-support app for diaspora families. Depending on what’s enabled for your account, Nia helps you plan and track family support, send money to a family member through our payment partners, or draw on a Nia credit facility.

2. Information we may collect

We collect the information reasonably needed to provide Nia’s family-support, money-transfer, and credit features:

• Name, email address, and telephone number
• Country and preferred language
• Login and authentication information, including one-time verification codes
• A user ID associated with your account
• Family-member information you enter, such as names, relationships, and countries
• Family-support plans, including amounts, due dates, frequency, and category (for example monthly support, school fees, or rent)
• Notes or purposes you attach to a plan
• Application activity, such as plans created, updated, or marked as sent
• Transfer and credit records, including the amount, funding source, status, and repayment history, when you send money through Nia or draw on a Nia credit facility
• Payment information you provide to fund a transfer or repayment, such as payment method type and transaction amount — your full card or bank account number is collected and stored directly by our payment processor, Stripe, not by Nia
• Identity-verification information you submit for compliance purposes, such as a government-issued ID and a verification result, processed on Nia’s behalf by our identity-verification provider, Didit
• Device information, browser information, and IP address (used for security)
• Log information and crash information
• Support messages you send us
• Account-deletion requests
• Communication and reminder preferences

We do not collect your full card number, banking password, card PIN, or online-banking credentials — these are collected and stored directly by our payment processor, Stripe. We do not collect your precise GPS location, your personal contact list, health records, or credit reports.

3. How information is collected

• Information you enter directly when you create an account or use Nia
• Account registration and sign-in
• Activity within the Nia app
• Forms and messages submitted through this website
• Communication with our support team
• Authentication and security systems
• Technical and error logs generated automatically as the service runs
• Service providers that help us operate the platform

4. How information is used

• Creating and managing your account
• Authenticating you when you sign in
• Providing family-support planning, money-transfer, and credit features
• Displaying upcoming obligations you have set up
• Sending reminders you have opted into
• Saving family-member information you provide
• Processing a transfer or credit draw you initiate, including required compliance checks (identity verification, sanctions screening, transaction limits)
• Providing customer support
• Responding to privacy requests
• Processing account-deletion requests
• Improving reliability and diagnosing technical problems
• Preventing misuse and maintaining security
• Complying with legal obligations, including financial-services regulatory obligations

We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not run advertising trackers.

5. Consent and legal basis

We use personal information with your consent, to provide the services you request, for legitimate operational and security purposes, or where required by law. Where we rely on consent, for example for optional reminders, you may withdraw that consent at any time.

6. Service providers

We use a small number of service providers to operate Nia. We only list a provider here when its use is confirmed in our production systems:

• Twilio — delivers SMS sign-in codes and WhatsApp messages.
• Stripe — processes payments when you fund a transfer or credit repayment by card or bank account; stores your payment method details directly, not Nia.
• Afriex — our payout partner for deliveries to Kenya and Uganda, used to disburse funds to your recipient.
• Didit — performs identity verification (KYC) required for compliance before certain transfers or credit draws.
• MongoDB Atlas — hosts our application database.
• Render — hosts our backend application infrastructure.
• Resend — delivers transactional email.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) — delivers push notifications you opt into.
• Sentry — error and crash reporting, used to diagnose technical problems.
• Google Fonts — delivers the typefaces used on this website.

Each provider processes only the information necessary to perform its function and is not permitted to use it for its own advertising purposes.

7. International data processing

Our service providers may process information outside of British Columbia or Canada, including in the United States, and in Kenya and Uganda, where our payout partner Afriex delivers funds to your recipient. We take reasonable steps to require our service providers to protect personal information consistent with this Policy, but we do not promise that all information remains in Canada.

8. Information sharing

Nia Payments does not sell personal information. We share information only:

• With the service providers listed in Section 6, to operate the platform
• With professional advisers, such as legal or accounting counsel, where necessary
• With authorities, where required by law or legal process, including financial-crime reporting obligations
• With a successor entity in connection with a legitimate corporate transaction, such as a merger or acquisition

9. Data retention

We retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, maintain appropriate records, resolve disputes, prevent fraud or misuse, meet legal obligations, and complete account-deletion requests. When you request deletion of your account, we deactivate it immediately and permanently delete the associated personal data within 30 days, except where limited information must be retained to comply with law, in which case it is anonymized where appropriate.

10. Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect personal information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

11. User choices and rights

Depending on your account, you may be able to:

• Access the information associated with your account
• Correct inaccurate information
• Update your communication preferences
• Withdraw optional reminder consent
• Request deletion of your account, described at niapayments.io/delete-account
• Contact Nia Payments about any privacy question using the details in Section 15

12. Children

Nia is not intended for children to create independent accounts. An adult user may enter limited family information for planning purposes, including information about a family member who is a minor.

13. Cookies and analytics

This website does not currently run advertising trackers, advertising pixels, or behavioral analytics. The website loads webfonts from Google Fonts, which may receive your device’s IP address as part of delivering those fonts. The Nia mobile application uses local device storage to keep you signed in and to remember your app preferences. If this changes, we will update this section.

14. Policy changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Updates will be posted on this page with a revised “Last updated” date.

15. Contact

Privacy Contact

16. Regulatory registration

1562023 B.C. LTD., which operates Nia Payments, is registered as a Money Services Business (MSB) with Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC). Registration with FINTRAC confirms we’ve met the legal requirement to register — it is not an endorsement, certification, or license from FINTRAC or the Government of Canada, and we do not represent it as one.