Privacy policy

This policy is for everyone whose data MonEtalo processes on its own behalf: sellers, their team members, ambassadors and visitors to monetalo.com. It explains what data we collect, why, on what legal basis, how long we keep it, who we share it with and how you can exercise your rights. It supplements the terms of use. This English version is provided for convenience; if it differs from the French version, the French version prevails.

1. Definitions#

• MonEtalo, we, us: the MonEtalo service published by Cowa Services SARL-U, and its team.
• Personal data: any information that identifies a person, directly (name, email) or indirectly (phone number, IP address, device identifier).
• Processing: anything done with personal data: collecting, recording, viewing, changing, sending, deleting…
• Controller: the person who decides why and how data is processed.
• Processor: the person who processes data on behalf of, and on the instructions of, a controller.
• Seller: the person or business that creates and runs a store on MonEtalo.
• Team member: a person invited by a seller to help run their store (manager, products, orders).
• Ambassador: a person who has joined the Ambassador program to recommend MonEtalo.
• Store customer: a person who visits or orders from a store built with MonEtalo.

2. Who is responsible for your data?#

The controller is Cowa Services SARL-U (Société à responsabilité limitée unipersonnelle (SARL-U)), with its registered office in Côte d’Ivoire (ANGRE PETRO IVOIRE PRES DE L'EGLISE St AMBROISE DU JUBILE). Further company details are in the legal notice.

For any question about your data, or to exercise your rights, write to support@monetalo.com. We handle these requests as a priority.

This policy is governed by Ivorian law, in particular Law No. 2013-450 of 19 June 2013 on the protection of personal data, supervised by ARTCI. Where you are in another country, we also comply with that country’s mandatory data protection rules, such as Senegalese Law No. 2008-12 or, for people located in the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

3. Who does this policy apply to?#

This policy covers the data MonEtalo processes on its own behalf, meaning data about:

• sellers who open an account, create a store and subscribe to a plan;
• team members invited by a seller;
• ambassadors and people who apply to the program;
• visitors to monetalo.com, the sign-up pages and the help center;
• people who contact us (support, partnerships, content reports).

It does not cover how a seller uses their own customers’ data: see section 4.

4. Two different roles: MonEtalo and sellers#

4.1 MonEtalo as controller for its users#

For seller, team member and ambassador accounts, subscription billing and our website, MonEtalo decides the purposes and means of processing. This policy applies in full.

4.2 MonEtalo as processor for store customers#

When a customer orders from a store, their data (name, phone number, delivery address, optional email, orders, reviews, customer account) belongs to the relationship between that customer and the seller. The seller is the controller: they decide to sell, deliver, follow up or contact their customers. MonEtalo acts as a processor, only to run the store and on the seller’s instructions. Our commitments to sellers are set out in the data processing agreement.

Key point: if you are a store customer and want to access, correct or delete your data, contact the seller first. If you cannot reach them, write to support@monetalo.com with the store’s address: we will pass on your request and help the seller respond.

5. The data we collect#

We only collect data the service needs. Required fields are marked on our forms; without them we cannot create your account or provide the feature you asked for.

5.1 Sellers#

• Identity and contact: first and last name, email address, WhatsApp number (optional, used for your store and, if you turn them on, your alerts; never to log in).
• Login details: email address and password. Your password is stored hashed (Argon2id): nobody, not even our team, can read it.
• Store: name, name.monetalo.com address or custom domain, country, language, currency, logo, theme, settings, products, categories, pages, and the text and images you publish.
• Subscription and billing: chosen plan, dates, amounts, currency, invoices, payment status, transaction reference with the payment partner, and any billing details you enter. We never receive or store your card number or Mobile Money PIN: you enter them with the payment partner.
• Your store’s payments: credentials for your own account with a payment aggregator (PayDunya, PayTech, CinetPay), stored encrypted, so your customers’ payments go straight to you.
• Referrals: your referral link, stores created through it and the free days you have earned.
• Conversations with us: support messages, attachments, replies to our emails.

5.2 Team members#

• Name, email address, role assigned by the seller (owner, manager, products, orders), invitation and acceptance date, and key actions taken in the dashboard.

5.3 Ambassadors and applicants#

• Application: name, email, phone number, country, social networks you present (groups, pages, accounts), a description of your audience and how you plan to recommend MonEtalo, and proof of ownership (the MONETALO-XXXX code placed in your bio or description).
• Activity: personal code and link, clicks on your link, stores attributed to you, subscriptions paid by those stores, commissions, wallet balance.
• Commission payouts: Mobile Money number and operator, account holder’s name, withdrawal history.

5.4 Website visitors#

• Technical data: IP address, device and browser type, pages viewed, date and time, referring page. Used for security, for the service to work properly and for overall statistics.
• Audience measurement (website, store creation, ambassador space and seller space): pages read and time spent, reading depth, clicks on key buttons, channel of arrival (link, campaign, referring site), city and network worked out from the IP address, device model, screen size, connection quality (3G, 4G) and how fast pages show. The IP address is never stored: it is read on our own servers to work out the city and the operator, then forgotten. No third-party tool is used. If you create an account, the visit that led you there (channel, pages read, device) is linked to your account and visible to the MonEtalo team, to understand what convinced you and help you better. Nothing is measured if your browser asks not to be tracked (“Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control”).
• Preferences: chosen language, time zone (so we can suggest your country automatically), and referral or ambassador code if you arrived through a link. See the cookie policy.

5.5 Security and usage data (all users)#

• Login logs (date, time, IP address, device), failed login attempts, password or email changes, and sensitive actions taken in the dashboard.
• “Support access” logs: when the MonEtalo team opens your dashboard to help you (sessions limited to 30 minutes), the access is recorded.

5.6 Domain name owners#

If you buy a domain name from MonEtalo, we collect the owner’s details: first and last name, business if any, email, phone, postal address and country. ICANN rules require us to pass this information to the registrar and to the extension’s registry, which keep it for the whole life of the domain. Where the extension allows it, it is hidden in the public domain name directory (WHOIS). The owner’s email receives a mandatory confirmation message. See our Domain Name Terms of Sale.

5.7 What we do not collect#

We never ask for “sensitive” data (health, religion, political opinions, ethnic origin, sex life, biometrics). We never send you text messages (SMS) and we never use your phone number to identify you.

6. Where does this data come from?#

• From you, when you create your account, fill in your store, subscribe, apply or write to us.
• From your device, automatically, when you use the site (technical data and necessary cookies).
• From the seller, for team members they invite (name, email, role).
• From our payment partners, who confirm the outcome of a payment (status, amount, reference).
• From public sources, for ambassador applicants: we look at the networks they give us to check they own them and to assess their audience.

7. Why we use your data, on what basis and for how long#

Every processing activity has a legal basis. We rely on four:

• contract: the processing is needed to provide the service you asked for;
• legal obligation: the law requires it (accounting, tax, requests from authorities);
• legitimate interest: we have a legitimate reason (security, improving the service, marketing to existing customers) and we make sure it does not unduly affect your rights;
• consent: you agreed, and you can withdraw at any time.

When these periods end, data is deleted or anonymized. Backups erase them in turn: 14 days on the server, 30 days in the encrypted off-site copy.

8. Who receives your data?#

8.1 Within MonEtalo#

Only team members who need it for their job (support, billing, security, engineering) can access your data, with rights limited to that need. They are bound by confidentiality.

8.2 The seller and their team#

If you are a team member, the seller can see your name, email, role and the history of your actions in their store. If you are an ambassador, we do not share your contact details with stores created through your link.

8.3 Our processors#

We use providers chosen for their reliability. They act only on our instructions, are contractually bound to confidentiality and security, and may not use your data for their own purposes.

The platform’s automatic emails (confirmation, invoices, orders) are sent from our own server. Exchanges with support go through Google’s email service.

When a payment partner processes your payment, it also acts on its own behalf (fraud prevention, financial obligations): its own privacy policy then applies.

8.4 Other recipients#

• Authorities: government bodies, courts or regulators, only on a request based on the law.
• Advisers: lawyers, accountants or auditors bound by professional secrecy.
• Potential acquirer: in a merger, sale or restructuring, your data could be passed to the new entity, which would be bound by this policy. We would tell you beforehand.

Key point: we never sell your data, never rent it out and never share it with advertisers.

9. Transfers outside your country#

Our servers are in France. Some providers (Cloudflare, Meta, Anthropic, and for domain names our registrar in Türkiye and the extension registries) process data in the United States or other countries. Using MonEtalo from Africa therefore means your data is transferred outside your country.

Every transfer is covered by appropriate safeguards: standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission, the provider’s certification under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where available, and contractual security and confidentiality commitments. Where your country’s law requires a specific formality with the data protection authority (for example ARTCI authorization for certain transfers), we complete it.

You can get a copy of the applicable safeguards by writing to support@monetalo.com.

10. How we protect your data#

We apply technical and organizational measures suited to the risks, including:

• encryption in transit: every page and exchange uses a secure connection (HTTPS);
• hashed passwords with a modern algorithm (Argon2id), never stored in plain text;
• encrypted secrets: payment partner credentials are encrypted;
• store isolation: each store can only access its own data;
• restricted, logged access: our team only accesses the data its job requires, support access is time-limited and recorded, and administration is protected by enhanced verification;
• rate limits on login and code attempts, and protection of forms against forged requests;
• checked files: uploaded files are checked for type and size, renamed and stored separately from the code;
• regular backups and restore procedures;
• regular security updates to servers and software.

No system is foolproof. If a data breach puts you at risk, we tell you as soon as possible and notify the relevant authority where the law requires.

On your side, choose a strong, unique password, never share it, and give each team member their own access rather than your login.

11. Automated decisions and artificial intelligence#

MonEtalo makes no fully automated decision that produces legal effects for you or significantly affects you.

Some rules apply automatically because you accepted them in the terms: for example, your store moves back to the free plan at the end of the grace period if the subscription is not renewed, or an unpaid order is cancelled after the delay set by the seller. You can always write to us to challenge a situation: a member of our team will review it.

AI is only used to suggest text (product descriptions, for example) when you ask. You are free to use, edit or ignore the suggestion. Ambassador program applications are reviewed by a member of our team.

12. Your rights#

Depending on the applicable law, you have the following rights over your data:

• Access: find out whether we process your data and get a copy.
• Rectification: have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected. Most of it can be changed directly in your account.
• Erasure: ask us to delete your data, unless we must keep it (invoices, for example, to comply with the law).
• Restriction: ask us to freeze your data while we check a dispute.
• Objection: object to processing based on our legitimate interest, and to marketing at any time.
• Portability: receive the data you gave us in a common, machine-readable format, or have it sent to another provider.
• Withdrawing consent: withdraw your consent at any time (WhatsApp alerts, news), without affecting what was done before.
• Instructions after death: where the applicable law provides for it, you can tell us what you want to happen to your data after your death. Otherwise, your heirs can ask for the account to be closed.

12.1 How to exercise your rights#

• Write to support@monetalo.com from your account’s email address, explaining your request.
• If we have reasonable doubts about your identity, we may ask for additional information. We will never ask for your password.
• We reply within one month of receiving your request. For a complex request this can be extended by two months; we will let you know within the first month.
• Exercising your rights is free. For a clearly unfounded or repetitive request, we may refuse or charge a reasonable fee, explaining why.

12.2 Unsubscribing made easy#

• News emails: click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email, or turn off “News and tips” in “My account”. These emails contain a small image and personalised links that tell us whether they were opened and clicked, only to improve our messages. Service emails (account, sales, subscription) do not.
• WhatsApp alerts: reply “STOP” or turn them off in your settings.
• Service emails (security, invoices, orders) keep coming while your account exists, because the service needs them.

12.3 Closing your account#

You can close your store or delete your account at any time from your back-office, and download all your data beforehand from Settings › My data. You then have 30 days to change your mind. After closure, we delete or anonymize your data according to the periods in section 7, except what the law requires us to keep.

13. Complaints to an authority#

If, after contacting us, you feel your rights are not being respected, you can complain to:

• in Côte d’Ivoire, ARTCI (Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunications/TIC de Côte d’Ivoire);
• in Senegal, the CDP (Commission de Protection des Données Personnelles);
• the data protection authority of your country of residence;
• if you are in the European Union, the data protection authority of your country of residence, place of work or where the issue occurred (in France, the CNIL).

We encourage you to write to us first: most questions are resolved quickly.

14. Minors#

MonEtalo is only for people who are adults or who have the legal capacity to do business under the law of their country. The Ambassador program is for adults only. We do not knowingly collect data about minors on our own behalf. If you believe a minor has given us data, write to support@monetalo.com and we will delete it.

15. Cookies#

MonEtalo only sets cookies that are necessary for the service to work or that remember your preferences: login, form security, language, cart, referrals. MonEtalo sets no advertising cookies of its own. On stores whose seller has turned on a Meta or TikTok pixel, these trackers only load with your consent (see the cookie policy). Store statistics are calculated without advertising tracking cookies.

Sellers can add their own analytics tools or advertising pixels to their store: they are responsible for them toward their visitors. Full details are in the cookie policy.

16. Changes to this policy#

We may update this policy, for example to add a feature, change providers or reflect a new law. The date of the current version is shown on this page. For a significant change, we will let you know by email or in your account at least 15 days before it takes effect, unless the law requires it to apply immediately.

17. Contact us#

For any question about this policy or your data:

• Email: support@monetalo.com
• Post: Cowa Services SARL-U, ANGRE PETRO IVOIRE PRES DE L'EGLISE St AMBROISE DU JUBILE, Côte d’Ivoire

We reply in French or English.