Jump to a section
- 1. Introduction
- 2. What EquoMate Does
- 3. Local Groups
- 4. Shared Groups
- 5. Information We Collect
- 6. How We Use Information
- 7. Information Shared With Other Group Members
- 8. Supabase and Service Providers
- 9. Data Security
- 10. Data Retention
- 11. Account Deletion
- 12. Your Choices and Rights
- 13. Children’s Privacy
- 14. International Data Processing
- 15. Changes to This Privacy Policy
- 16. Contact Us
1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how EquoMate collects, uses, and shares information when you use the EquoMate mobile app. EquoMate is built around a simple rule: a regular group is entirely private to your device, and only the optional shared-group feature involves a backend at all.
This policy does not use blanket claims like “we collect no data” or “there is no backend,” because that would no longer be accurate once you use shared groups. Instead, every section below distinguishes clearly between Local Groups and Shared Groups, since the two features have genuinely different data practices.
2. What EquoMate Does
EquoMate is an expense-splitting app for trips, flats, dinners, and other group outings: you log who paid for what, and EquoMate works out the smallest possible set of payments needed to settle the group up. It offers two independent ways to keep a group:
Local groups
The default. Created with “Create a group.” No account, no sign-up, no network requests, ever.
Shared groups
Optional. Created with “Create shared group” or “Join with code.” Syncs live between members via Supabase.
Sections 3 and 4 below describe each in full detail. Nothing in the shared-groups sections of this policy applies to a local group, and nothing in the local-groups sections applies once you create or join a shared group.
3. Local Groups
A regular group, what you get from “Create a group,” is stored only in a local SQLite database on your device. Creating, editing, and deleting groups, members, expenses, and settlements never makes a network request. Specifically, a local group never involves:
- An account, sign-up, or login of any kind
- A server or backend of any kind
- Analytics, usage-tracking, or advertising SDKs
- Crash-reporting SDKs that transmit data off-device
- Any network call of any kind, for any reason
The only way a local group’s data ever leaves your device is if you explicitly choose to export it, using Settings → “Export all data as JSON,” or a group’s “Share summary” (image, or copied text). Both write a file or image on your device and then hand it to your device’s native share sheet or clipboard; you choose where it goes (Messages, Mail, a chat app, Files, etc.) every time. We never receive a copy.
In short
If you only ever use local groups, EquoMate collects nothing about you, transmits nothing about you, and has no way to identify you.
5. Information We Collect
Local groups collect nothing: see section 3. Everything below applies only once you create or join a shared group.
What shared groups store
| Data | Details |
|---|---|
| Anonymous account identifier | Generated automatically on first use of a shared group; not derived from any personal identifier you provide. |
| Display name | The name you type when creating or joining a shared group. Can be anything; it is not verified and does not have to be your real name. |
| Avatar color | A color automatically assigned to your account; not personal information. |
| Group details | Name, emoji, currency, invite code, and creation date of each shared group you create or join. |
| Membership | Which shared groups you belong to, your role (owner, co-organizer, or member), and when you joined or left. |
| Expenses | Description, amount, currency, category, optional note, date, who paid, and how it’s split, for every expense in a shared group you belong to. |
| Settlements | Who paid whom, how much, when, and the payment method (cash, bank, or other) for “mark as paid” records in a shared group. |
| Activity log | An automatic, permanent log of who joined, left, added, edited, or deleted an expense, or recorded a settlement. This powers the group’s Activity tab and cannot be turned off, since it is what keeps everyone’s view of the group honest. |
Before you join a group, its invite code lets the app show you a small preview (group name, emoji, member count, and the creator’s display name) so you know what you’re about to join, nothing more, and no financial data, is shown before you actually join.
What EquoMate does not collect
This applies to local groups and shared groups alike:
None of these are requested by the app, stored by the app, or transmitted anywhere, not for local groups, and not for shared groups either.
6. How We Use Information
Everything collected for shared groups (section 5) is used for exactly one purpose: running the shared-groups feature itself, showing the group’s expenses, computing balances and settle-up suggestions, and keeping the activity log accurate. Specifically, we use it to:
- Identify you to the other members of a shared group you belong to (your display name and avatar color)
- Synchronize expenses, settlements, and membership between everyone’s devices in real time
- Calculate each member’s balance and the minimum set of payments needed to settle up
- Maintain the group’s activity log, so membership and financial changes stay auditable to the people they affect
- Enforce access control, so only actual members of a group can read or write its data (see section 9)
We do not use any information collected by EquoMate for advertising, ad personalization, analytics, or profiling. The only computation performed on your data is the transparent balance and settle-up math the app already shows back to you, not a hidden inference.
8. Supabase and Service Providers
Shared-group functionality is built on Supabase, which acts as our infrastructure provider for:
- Anonymous authentication (creating and verifying your device’s shared-group session)
- Database storage (the tables described in section 5)
- Realtime synchronization (pushing changes to every member’s device live)
Supabase is our data processor, not an independent user of your data; it does not use shared-group content for its own purposes, and we do not use Supabase for advertising or analytics. Supabase, as the infrastructure that runs our backend, necessarily processes standard connection metadata (such as your device’s IP address) to serve any network request, the same as any web or app service would. We do not access, log, or use this metadata ourselves for any purpose.
All traffic between the app and Supabase is encrypted in transit using HTTPS/TLS. We do not use any analytics, advertising, or crash-reporting SDKs anywhere in the app, in local groups or shared groups. Supabase is the only third-party service that receives any data from EquoMate.
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with any third party for their own marketing or advertising purposes.
9. Data Security
Shared-group data is protected by Postgres Row Level Security policies on our Supabase project, so a request can only read or write data for groups you’re actually a member of, enforced by the database itself, not just by what the app’s screens show you. Sensitive actions (joining, leaving, deleting a group, recording a settlement, and account deletion) go through server-side functions with their own authorization checks, rather than raw table access.
Your session credentials are stored using your device’s secure keystore/keychain, not in plain text, and all traffic to Supabase uses HTTPS/TLS encryption.
We use reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect your information. No method of electronic storage or transmission is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
10. Data Retention
Local groups
Remain on your device until you delete the group, use Settings → “Erase all data,” or uninstall the app. We never hold a copy, so there is nothing on our side to retain or delete.
Shared groups
Information is retained for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the shared-group feature and to preserve the shared financial history that other members rely on. See section 11 for exactly what happens on deletion.
We do not apply a fixed retention period (such as “30 days” or “7 years”) to shared-group data, because a shared group’s ledger needs to remain intact for as long as its members are actively using it. Settlements and the activity log in particular have no delete path short of deleting the whole group, by design, so the audit trail can’t be tampered with by any single member.
- Leaving a shared group stops your device from syncing with it. The expenses and activity you contributed remain visible to the remaining members, the same way they would in a shared spreadsheet after someone leaves. This is necessary so everyone else’s balances and history stay accurate.
- Deleting a shared group can be done by its owner, which permanently removes that group’s members, expenses, settlements, and activity log for everyone, immediately and without a recovery option.
11. Account Deletion
You can delete your anonymous shared-group account in-app, at Settings → Privacy → “Delete EquoMate Account.” This section explains exactly what that does; we do not claim that all data is immediately deleted, because that would not be accurate for accounts with shared-group history. Instead, what happens splits cleanly into three outcomes: deleted, anonymized, and retained.
If your account has no shared-group history
The underlying anonymous account is deleted outright. This is the case for an account that was created but never actually used to create or join a shared group.
If your account has shared-group history (the common case)
- Deleted: your display name is replaced everywhere with “Deleted user,” and your active membership is removed from every shared group you belong to.
- Anonymized, not deleted: the expenses, splits, settlements, and activity entries you were part of are not removed. They remain, attributed to “Deleted user,” so the other members of those groups keep an accurate, complete financial history.
- Retained: the underlying account record itself is not deleted from our database; it is permanently disabled (banned) instead, so it can never be signed into or used again.
Why some records are kept instead of deleted
Financial records inside a shared group also belong to that group’s other members, not to you alone. Erasing your expenses, splits, or settlements outright would silently corrupt the running balances and payment history that the remaining members depend on, the same way deleting a row out of a shared spreadsheet would break everyone else’s totals. Anonymizing your identity while preserving the numbers is how we protect your privacy without corrupting other people’s data.
Either way, your device’s local session is cleared immediately once deletion completes, and a brand-new, unrelated anonymous account is created automatically the next time you use a shared group again.
An access token issued before an account is disabled can remain technically valid until its normal short expiry, a property of how login tokens work rather than a gap in this process; the account cannot be signed into or refreshed again afterward.
If you own a shared group that still has other active members, you’ll be asked to delete that group or wait until you’re its only member before your account can be deleted, since group ownership currently cannot be transferred to someone else.
12. Your Choices and Rights
EquoMate gives you direct, in-app control over your data:
- Export your local data: Settings → “Export all data as JSON,” or a group’s “Share summary.”
- Erase your local data: Settings → “Erase all data,” or uninstall the app.
- Leave a shared group: stops syncing for you; see section 10.
- Delete a shared group you own: permanently removes it for every member; see section 10.
- Delete your shared-group account: Settings → Privacy → “Delete EquoMate Account”; see section 11 for exactly what this does.
For anything not covered by an in-app control (for example, help resolving a group you own before deleting your account), contact us using the details in section 16.
13. Children’s Privacy
EquoMate is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from children. Local groups collect nothing from anyone by design; shared groups collect only what’s described in section 5, and only from people who deliberately create or join one. We do not make any certification regarding compliance with children’s privacy laws such as COPPA.
14. International Data Processing
Shared-group data is hosted on Supabase’s infrastructure. Because Supabase is a cloud-hosting provider, using shared groups may involve your information being processed in a country other than the one you live in. We do not currently make specific representations about particular processing locations, subprocessors, or regional data-residency guarantees beyond what is stated in this policy.
15. Changes to This Privacy Policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this same address with a new “Last updated” date at the top of the page.
16. Contact Us
Questions about this policy, or a request related to deleting your anonymous account and associated shared-group data, can be sent to: