Privacy Policy
This is the privacy policy for BluePadel — a South African padel platform for booking courts, playing rated matches and tournaments, and tracking your results on an Android phone or iPhone and a paired Wear OS watch or Apple Watch. BluePadel (Pty) Ltd is the "Responsible Party" under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA). This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and your rights.
1. Who we are
The Responsible Party is BluePadel (Pty) Ltd, a South African company operating BluePadel under the package identifier za.co.bluepadel.cloud. You can reach us — and our Information Officer for POPIA purposes — at hello@bluepadel.co.za.
2. What personal information we process
- Account & sign-in. Your email address and a securely hashed password, or — if you choose Google sign-in — the basic profile Google returns (name, email). We never see your Google password.
- Profile. Your display name, padel rating and rating history, and optional details such as phone number, date of birth, and the city/region you select during onboarding.
- Padel activity. Matches you play and their scores, court bookings, tournament entries, and your in-app actions.
- Social. The players you follow and who follow you, and the messages you send in match and tournament chats.
- Payments & wallet. Your wallet balance and a record of top-ups and charges. Card payments are processed by Paystack; we receive a confirmation and reference, never your full card details.
- Product usage. A count of key steps you take in BluePadel — for example signing up, your first scored match, watching or sharing a highlight clip, or starting Premium — recorded under a random code rather than your name or email, and never joined to advertising. You can switch this off in the app under My Account → Privacy.
- Shared clips. If you share a highlight clip, the link and how many times it was opened and led to a sign-up. A clip you appear in is only shown on a public link if every player in that match has switched on "Public clip sharing"; otherwise its link opens only for the players who were in the match.
- Technical. A push-notification token (so we can send match and booking alerts) and basic security/diagnostic logs such as the time and IP address of sign-in attempts.
Location. We don't track your device's GPS location. The only location we hold is the city/region you choose yourself when setting up your profile or finding clubs.
Heart rate (watch only). If you use a paired watch, your heart rate is read on the watch to show a live readout during a match. It is processed on your watch and phone and is not uploaded to our servers.
Shot motion clips (watch only). During a scored match on a BluePadel camera court, a paired Wear OS watch or Apple Watch with the "Shot types" setting switched on records a short clip of accelerometer and gyroscope readings (about a second) around each shot you hit. With each batch of clips we also receive which wrist the watch is on, whether that is your racket hand, the type of watch app and its version, and the time. The clips travel from your watch to your phone and then to BluePadel over an encrypted connection, are stored encrypted, and are linked to your account and to that match. We use them to work out your shot types and, together with the court cameras, which player hit each shot. Only you and authorised BluePadel staff can see them; we don't sell them, share them with other players, or use them for advertising. "Shot types" is on by default; you can switch it off at any time in the watch's settings, and nothing is recorded while it is off. On Apple Watch, BluePadel runs a private workout session only to keep the motion sensors working during the game — it reads none of your Apple Health data and does not save a workout to Health.
We don't process your contacts, photos, browsing history, advertising identifiers, or precise location.
3. Why we process it (purpose & lawful basis)
- To provide the service — create and secure your account, and run bookings, matches, ratings, tournaments and chat (POPIA s11(1)(b), performance of contract).
- To process payments — top-ups, court fees and entry fees (performance of contract).
- To keep the service safe and working — fraud prevention, security, and debugging (legitimate interest, s11(1)(f)).
- To meet legal obligations — keeping transaction records for tax and financial law (s11(1)(c)).
- To identify your shot types — the shot motion clips above, an optional feature you can switch off on your watch (legitimate interest, s11(1)(f); you can object at any time, s11(3)).
- To understand and improve how BluePadel is used — the product-usage counts above, which you can switch off (legitimate interest, s11(1)(f)).
- For optional extras — such as notifications, public clip sharing, and news and offers by email, each of which you can turn off at any time (your consent, s11(1)(a); every marketing email has a one-click unsubscribe).
4. Who we share it with
We don't sell your personal information. We share it only with the providers needed to run BluePadel:
- Google — sign-in (if you use Google), push notifications, in-app billing where applicable, and the Wear OS Data Layer that links your phone and watch.
- Apple — if you use the iPhone or Apple Watch app: push notifications and the WatchConnectivity link between your iPhone and watch.
- Paystack — to process card payments and wallet top-ups. Paystack handles your card data under its own terms; we don't store it.
- Resend — to deliver our emails (sign-in links, receipts and, if you opt in, news and offers).
BluePadel's own data is stored on secure cloud server infrastructure that we operate. Some providers may process data outside South Africa; where that happens we rely on the conditions permitted under POPIA s72.
5. Retention
We keep your account and profile data, and any shot motion clips, for as long as your account is active. Shot motion clips are erased as soon as you delete your account. When you delete your account (or ask us to), we delete or anonymise your personal data within 30 days — except records we're legally required to keep, primarily transaction and payment records, which we retain for the period required by South African tax and financial law (generally up to 5 years) and then delete or anonymise.
6. Security
Connections to BluePadel use HTTPS/TLS encryption. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes, never in plain text. Access to production data is restricted and authenticated. Card data never reaches our systems — it goes directly to Paystack.
7. Your rights under POPIA
You have the right to:
- Know what personal information we hold about you (s23).
- Request correction or deletion (s24) — see the account deletion and data deletion pages.
- Object to processing (s11(3)).
- Lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa at inforegulator.org.za.
To exercise any of these, email hello@bluepadel.co.za; we respond within 30 days.
8. Children
BluePadel is intended for users aged 18 and over and we don't knowingly process the personal information of children. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll remove it.
9. International transfers
Some of the providers we rely on (for example certain Google and Paystack services) may process personal information outside South Africa. Where information is transferred across borders, we rely on the conditions permitted by POPIA s72, including providers bound by comparable data-protection obligations.
10. Our marketing site, forms and cookies
bluepadel.co.za (this marketing site, separate from the BluePadel app) uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless — it doesn't set a cookie, doesn't use a tracking script that persists across visits, and doesn't build a profile of you. We don't use Google Analytics, Meta or Google ad pixels, or any other cross-site tracker on this site.
If you submit a club, partner, investor, press or contact form, we use the information you give us to respond to your enquiry and, where relevant, to run our sales pipeline. We only send you marketing email if you tick the opt-in checkbox on the form — it's unticked by default. Every marketing email includes a one-click unsubscribe, and you can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us.
We also capture simple attribution for each enquiry (for example which campaign link, referral or QR code brought you to the form) so we know what's working. This is stored in your browser's session storage, not a cookie, and clears when you close your browser tab.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that affects you materially, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top and post the new version at this same URL before the change takes effect.
12. Contact
Privacy questions, POPIA requests, or anything else: hello@bluepadel.co.za.