TradeFlip operates the TradeFlip platform connecting customers with tradespeople in the United Kingdom. TradeFlip is the data controller responsible for your personal data. You can contact us at support@trade-flip.com. You must be at least 18 years old to use TradeFlip.
2. The data we process
We process the following personal data, depending on how you use TradeFlip:
Account and contact details: your name, email address, role, profile photo, notification preferences and account mode. If you sign in with Google, Google shares the details needed to create your account.
Trade profiles: business name, owner name, bio, telephone, email, postcode and the approximate location derived from it, trade categories, service areas, profile and cover images, verification status and average rating.
Customer profiles: display name, postcode and approximate location, short bio, optional public telephone, feed radius and messaging preference.
Posts, comments and likes: captions, category, area, images and videos you upload, and your interactions with other members' posts.
Reviews: ratings and review text you leave about tradespeople, and any business response.
Messages: the content of conversations between customers and tradespeople, plus contact details you choose to share (name, email, telephone, postcode) and read status.
Local Ads: advert title, description, category, media, postcode area and location, search radius, and likes/comments.
Community (TradeChat) posts and replies: your name, the text you post, category and area.
Trade application evidence: your company logo and one piece of supplier evidence (a supplier invoice or written supplier confirmation). This is a manual business review — we do not request or store passports, driving licences, identity cards, selfies or biometric data.
Gas Safe details: if you carry out gas work, your Gas Safe registration number for manual verification.
Merchant details: for merchant organisations and branches, legal and trading name, business email and telephone, website, logo, verification document, address, postcode and opening information.
Offers and conversions: offer details, click counts, tracking references and commission records for TradeBuy.
Trade account records: whether your trade account is open, its start and end dates, whether it is set to close automatically at the end of the current period, and the reference identifier of each billing message we receive about it.
Billing and subscription records: the subscription record we hold for you — your billing status, whether billing is set to stop at the end of the current period, the dates that matter to that subscription (when the period started or is due to end, and when a charge is next due), and the payment reference identifiers the billing website supplies us, such as your Stripe customer reference. We do not hold your card details.
Notifications: in-app notification type, title and read state.
Moderation reports and audit records: reports you submit, their status and resolution, and audit logs of admin actions.
Other records: blocked users, saved items, website links you submit, security rate-limit counters and data-subject requests you make.
3. How we use your data and why
We use your data to:
create and run your account, profile and the TradeFlip service;
show tradespeople, posts, ads and offers to nearby customers using the location derived from your postcode;
enable messaging, reviews, comments and community posts;
manually review trade applications and Gas Safe registration before approval;
check whether your trade account is open before opening the trade tools;
keep your trade account access in step with the billing you arrange on the external TradeFlip billing website;
moderate content, investigate reports and keep the platform safe; and
meet legal and tax record-keeping obligations.
We rely on these lawful reasons to use your data:
Contract: to run the TradeFlip service you signed up for — your account, profile, posts, messages, reviews and your trade account.
Consent: for things you opt into, such as notification preferences, an optional public telephone number, whether you accept messages, and built-in analytics. You can withdraw these in your account settings at any time.
Legitimate interests: to keep the platform safe and working — moderating content, handling reports, audit logs, security limits and showing nearby trades, ads and offers.
Legal obligation: keeping commission, billing reference and audit records for tax and legal compliance.
4. Billing and payments
Trade account billing is not handled inside the TradeFlip app. The app contains no payment pages and no payment buttons, and it takes no payments. Billing is completed separately on the external TradeFlip billing website, which is a separate service from this app, and the payment there is processed by Stripe, our payment provider.
The TradeFlip mobile app does not collect, see or store full card details. Card details are entered only on the external billing website and are handled by Stripe under their own privacy notice. Nothing in the app ever asks you for card details.
What we receive back from the billing website, and keep, is limited to your trade account access status, the access and billing dates described in section 2, and a reference identifier for each billing message, so that the trade tools in the app match the billing you have arranged.
5. What we share and with whom
We do not sell your personal data. We share it as follows:
Other members: your trade profile, posts, reviews, community posts and the contact details you choose to share in messages.
Base44: our hosting and platform provider, which stores your account, data and files and delivers email and authentication.
postcodes.io: a UK postcode lookup service used to turn your postcode into an approximate location.
Google: only if you choose Google sign-in, to verify your identity to create your account.
Stripe and the TradeFlip billing website: payments for a tradesperson account are made on the external billing website and processed there by Stripe, our payment provider. Stripe receives the payment details you enter on that website; we receive and keep only your access status, the dates described in section 2 and a reference identifier for each billing message, never your card details.
Authorities: where required by law, such as tax or law-enforcement requests.
6. International transfers
Base44 is a cloud service that may process data outside the United Kingdom.
7. How long we keep your data
We keep your account and profile data while your account is active. After you delete your account, we delete or anonymise it where possible. Some records may be kept where needed for legal, tax, security or dispute reasons, and are not deleted immediately. Access and billing records fall into that group: deleting your account removes the identifiers that link them to you, and we keep the rest only for as long as those reasons require.
8. Security
We restrict access to your data and store private files securely. Whether your trade account is open is only ever changed by a signed message from our server, never by anything sent from a browser.
9. Your rights
You have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, port or object to the use of your personal data, and to withdraw consent where we rely on it. You can request account deletion in your account settings or by emailing us. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
10. Automated decisions
Trade applications are reviewed manually by our team — a logo or document never automatically approves an account. We do not carry out solely-automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. Trade account setup is controlled by rules-based checks (application approval and a confirmed account state); these are not automated profiling decisions.
11. Cookies and analytics
We use only essential cookies needed for the platform to work and to keep you signed in. We do not use analytics cookies or advertising cookies.
12. Changes to this policy
When this policy is updated we will change the date below and notify you of significant changes through the app or by email.