Fairsies Privacy Policy

1. Who this policy is for

This policy covers the Fairsies iPhone app. Our website is covered separately by the Mirentha privacy policy.

Fairsies is published by Mirentha Ltd (“Mirentha”, “we”, “us”), a company incorporated in England and Wales (company number 17207914), registered office 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ. For anything in this policy, contact [email protected].

2. What Fairsies collects

Nothing. Fairsies does not ask you to create an account, does not ask for your name, email address or phone number, and contains no analytics, attribution, advertising or crash-reporting SDK of any kind. No data reaches us from the app, so we process no personal data in connection with your use of it.

3. What happens to a bill

To do its job, Fairsies handles the following in memory, for the duration of one bill:

The receipt image. Photographed by the app's own camera when you tap Scan the receipt, or chosen from your photos through the system picker. Apple's Vision framework finds the edges of the receipt on the device and crops to them; it does not read the words. If it cannot find the paper, the whole photograph is read; if the cropped copy comes back looking as if part of the bill was cut off, the whole photograph is read too. The photograph is held in memory, is not written to your photo library and is not stored by the app. It is used for reading the receipt, described next, and for showing it back to you under See the original scan — nothing else.

What is read from it. The shop's name and date, item names, prices, discounts, service, tax and the total. The photograph is read by Apple Intelligence, Apple's foundation model, running on Apple's Private Cloud Compute, which works out which line is an item, what it cost, what is service and what is the total. Every scanned receipt is read there, so every scanned receipt goes to Apple. Section 6 says exactly what goes and on what terms. Nothing about the receipt is sent to us or to anyone else.

The names you type. First names, or whatever you choose to type, used to label the shares. They are held in memory only and are never saved: they stay for the next bill at the same table, and are cleared when the app is closed or has been in the background for an hour.

All of it is discarded when the app is closed. Fairsies keeps no history of your bills and writes no database. The arithmetic of the split itself is done on your iPhone, from the read receipt and the names you typed, and is never sent anywhere.

4. What the app does keep on your phone

Four things persist between sessions. The first is your preferences: whether the even-split button is shown, how service and tax start out on a fresh bill, whether haptics are on, and whether the first-launch instructions have already been shown. The second is a pay-me link, if you choose to type one in Settings — a Monzo.me or PayPal.Me address, say — which the app adds to the slips and share text so the table can pay you back. It is the one thing you might type that identifies you. The app never sends it anywhere itself; it travels only inside what you choose to share, as section 7 describes. The third is how many free scans you have left, together with the app's note of whether a subscription is running — which it learns from Apple rather than from anything about you. It is a yes or a no: the app is told that scanning is paid for, not who paid, what was paid, or how. The fourth is a count of the bills you have finished splitting, with the version of the app that last asked Apple to show its rating prompt, so that it asks no more than once a version and never before your third bill. It is a number and a version number; nothing about the bills is in it.

All four are held in the app's private storage on your device, are never sent anywhere by the app, and are removed when you delete the app. Your subscription itself is recorded by Apple against your Apple Account rather than by us, so it is not lost with them: on a new or reset iPhone, Restore purchase asks Apple and brings it back. We never see your payment details, and we hold no record of you as a subscriber — managing or cancelling happens in your iPhone's Settings, between you and Apple.

5. Permissions the app asks for

Camera. Requested the first time you scan, and used only to photograph a receipt inside the app. You can decline and use Type a total instead for the whole app. You can change your mind at any time in Settings › Fairsies.

Photos. Choosing an existing photograph of a receipt uses the system photo picker, which runs outside the app. Fairsies is handed only the one picture you choose and never gets access to your photo library, which is why iOS does not ask you for permission. If that picture is kept in iCloud Photos and its original isn't on your iPhone, the picker fetches the original from iCloud first, which needs a connection.

Fairsies asks for no other permissions. It does not request your contacts, location, microphone, health data or notifications.

6. Reading the receipt, and where it goes

Fairsies reads receipts with Apple Intelligence, which has to be switched on in your iPhone's settings for scanning to work. Apple provides its foundation model in two places: on the iPhone itself, and on Private Cloud Compute, Apple's own servers, which Apple says it built so that an app can use a larger model without giving up the privacy of the device. Fairsies uses Private Cloud Compute, and only that. So there is no version of a scan that stays on your phone: if you photograph a receipt, that receipt goes to Apple. We made that choice because the smaller model on the iPhone could not read real receipts accurately enough for us to stand behind the bill it produced, and a confidently wrong bill is worse than no bill at all. Typing a total instead involves no model, no Apple and no connection.

What is sent is a copy of the photograph of the receipt, at no more than 4 megapixels, with the app's own instructions for reading a receipt, which are fixed and the same for everyone. If the cropped photograph seems to have missed part of the bill (nothing found on it, no printed total, or items a long way short of the total), the whole, uncropped photograph is sent in a second request in the same way. The photograph carries whatever the receipt prints, which on some receipts includes the last digits of the card that paid. The names you type, the split, your pay-me link and anything else identifying you are not part of what is sent, and Fairsies adds nothing to the request that says whose bill it is. The request goes from your iPhone to Apple; Mirentha is not in the path and has no server that could be.

One thing to be straight about, because it involves your Apple Account: Apple allows each person a daily amount of Private Cloud Compute, shared across every app that uses it, and counts it against the Apple Account signed in on the iPhone. That accounting is between you and Apple — we are not billed for it, cannot see it, and cannot raise it. If you reach the limit, Fairsies tells you so and when it resets, and typing a total still works.

Apple states that Private Cloud Compute uses what it is sent only to answer that request; that the data is deleted as soon as the response is returned and is never retained in any form; that it is never available to Apple, even to staff with administrative access to the servers; and that the software running on those servers is published for independent inspection so that those claims can be checked. Apple describes the design in its Private Cloud Compute overview, and the exchange is governed by Apple's privacy policy. Because the reading happens on Apple's servers, scanning a receipt needs an internet connection; typing a total and splitting it does not, and works with no signal at all.

7. When you share a split

Tapping Send it to the group chat hands a summary (the merchant, the total and each person's share) to the iOS share sheet; One slip each does the same with each person's own slip, one at a time or all together. Tapping a person's row copies their name and amount to the clipboard, for you to paste wherever you like. If you have set a pay-me link, it goes along too. Nothing is sent until you choose a destination, and where it goes from there is governed by whichever app you pick (Messages, WhatsApp, Mail and so on) under that app's own privacy policy. Fairsies sees nothing of what happens next.

8. Third parties, and the app's other network traffic

Fairsies contains no third-party SDKs. The only party it ever connects to is Apple: for reading receipts, as section 6 describes; for Apple's StoreKit, which checks the price of the subscription and confirms whether one is running; and, when you choose a photo whose original is in iCloud Photos, for the picker to fetch it, as section 5 describes. The StoreKit exchange happens between your device and Apple and carries nothing about your bill.

Apple also processes your purchase or download as the operator of the App Store, and, if you have opted in to sharing analytics with developers, may give us statistics such as crash counts and device types. That data comes from Apple, which states that it collects it anonymously, and is governed by Apple's privacy policy.

9. Children

Fairsies is not directed at children and collects no data from anyone, including children.

10. Your rights

UK GDPR gives you rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection over personal data held about you. Because Fairsies sends us no personal data, we hold none in connection with the app, and there is nothing for you to access or erase with us. Apple states that what Private Cloud Compute handles is deleted once the request is answered. Deleting the app removes everything it ever held on your phone, including the preferences, the pay-me link, the free-scan count and the note of your subscription described in section 4. The subscription itself lives with Apple, so deleting the app does not cancel it — cancel in Settings › your name › Subscriptions.

If you write to us about Fairsies, with the support form or by email, we hold your message and email address in order to reply, on the basis of our legitimate interest in answering support enquiries; that is covered by the Mirentha privacy policy. You can ask us to delete the correspondence at any time at [email protected], and you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

11. Changes to this policy

If a future version of Fairsies ever collects anything, or changes where a receipt is read, this policy will be updated before that version ships and the change will be described here rather than buried in a version number. The date at the top always reflects the current text.

12. Contact

Mirentha Ltd, 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom. Privacy questions: [email protected]. For help using the app, write to us with the form on the Fairsies support page.