Splitwise Privacy Policy

Last updated: February 8th, 2024

Scope

Welcome to Splitwise’s Privacy Statement. Your right to privacy and online security is important. This Privacy Statement describes Splitwise Inc.’s collection, protection, disclosure, and use of your information. This Privacy Statement applies to all of Splitwise’s websites, mobile applications, and/or online services, that link to or reference this Privacy Statement. It covers your personal information that is provided or collected through the use of our services and how we use that information in connection with our services.

By using Splitwise, you agree to this Privacy Statement. If you do not agree with any term in this Privacy Statement, please do not use our services.
Here's a quick overview:

Splitwise is a shared ledger for friends. Expenses you add in Splitwise are not public. Friends who are included on an expense can view that expense, and, if an expense is added in a group, other group members can view expenses shared on Splitwise. You choose who you share your expenses with and what kind of expenses you want to share. Anyone shared on an expense or in a shared group has the ability to edit, delete, and undelete the expenses that have been shared with them.

In order to use Splitwise, we ask that you create an account. When you sign up we'll ask for some registration information such as name, email address and phone number. We need this information to create an account so that we can contact you about your account, so that your friends can find you, and so you can access your account from anywhere.

In addition to sharing your registration information to set up your account, we collect some other information about you, such as the type of device you use and your IP address. We may also collect information about the type of expenses you add, or the groups you create. We use this information to help improve and secure our service and to show ads based on your usage of our services.

You have control over the type of information you provide and how we use it. We don’t share your registration or personal information for marketing purposes. We will never share your information with other parties for use other than what’s laid out in this policy without your consent. You can view your Privacy and Notification Settings from your Account Settings page. If you have any questions please contact us at support@splitwise.com.

Splitwise or its partners or service providers may maintain operations in the United States or any other country, and therefore your personal information may be processed outside the country where you are located. By using and providing information to us, you agree and consent to the transfer, storage, and processing of your information in other countries, including for example outside the European Economic Area. Countries that we transfer your information to may not have data protection laws similar to those of where you are located.

Splitwise is not intended for use by children under 13 years of age or minors. We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that their child has provided us with Personal Information without their consent, they should contact us at support@splitwise.com. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with Personal Information, we will delete such information from our files immediately.

DATA WE COLLECT

When you use Splitwise, we may collect the following information about you:

Information you provide to us:

HOW WE USE DATA

WE WILL NOT PROVIDE ANY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO ANY THIRD PARTY EXCEPT AS OUTLINED IN THIS POLICY OR WITH YOUR CONSENT.

We use your information for the following purposes:

To Provide the Splitwise Service:

Splitwise is designed to help people share expenses and informal IOUs with friends. We process your information to provide, support, and secure our service (both automatically and manually). For example, we may use your information in some of the following ways:
To allow other users to find you

Friends can find your account on Splitwise by conducting a search via your email address or phone number. When friends add you on Splitwise they’re only able to see what you’ve shared with them. You can manage your preference for this setting from your Account Settings page.

With Third Party Services

We may receive and collect information about you from Third Parties and affiliates that help us provide, support, and secure our services. In general, data shared with Splitwise in this manner will be treated under the same privacy restrictions as any other data shared with Splitwise. For example: To Provide Personalized Advertisements

Where permitted by Applicable Law, we may use your email/phone, location, usage and expense information to show you specific advertisements or offers on our own site that we believe may be of interest to you. For instance, we may show ads for apartments cheaper than your current apartment based on the rent expense you share on our system.

HOW WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION

We will not, without your permission, sell, publish, or share your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes. We will not sell, publish or share the personal information you provided for the purpose of sending user-generated invitations to third parties for their marketing purposes.

No SMS mobile information will be shared with third parties/affiliates for marketing/promotional purposes and this includes your text messaging originator opt-in data and consent and personal information.

We help you track and manage shared expenses with your friends by sharing your information in the following ways:

To Provide the Splitwise Service

Splitwise is designed to help you track and share expenses with your friends. We share some of your personal information (name, email address, phone number, user avatar) with your friends and groupmates on Splitwise. Someone who knows your email address and/or phone number will be able to add you as a friend and see your name, email address, and user avatar. They will not be able to see expenses that you’ve added with other friends unless you include them on those expenses or in a group. With third parties, affiliates, subsidiaries, and service providers:

We employ third party agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or service providers to enable them to help support and improve our services. For example, maintenance services, database management, cloud hosting, web and mobile analytics, receipt scanning services and OCR. Third parties acting on our behalf that are given access to your personal information are contractually obligated to abide by our privacy practices and are not allowed to use the information for any other purposes. We may share your personal information with other third parties with your consent or instructions to do so.
For legal matters

We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to share or disclose your personal information with law enforcement, government officials, and other third parties:
Business Transfer

If our company or our assets are acquired by another company, or in the event of a merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of substantial assets, reorganization, or liquidation, we may transfer, sell, or assign to third parties, information concerning your relationship with us, including, without limitation, personal information that you provide and other information concerning your relationship with us. Such third parties will assume responsibility for the personal information collected by us in connection with our business operations or through our Sites and such third parties will assume the rights and obligations regarding such information as described in this Privacy Statement and according to applicable regulations.

API Usage

Splitwise provides a third party API which allows other applications which you sign up for to have access to the data you have provided Splitwise. You are in control of this process - we do not disclose any data to these third parties unless you specifically authorize your account with their application by using the Splitwise username and password prompt provided. We do not control these third parties and do not warrant that they are safe or non-fraudulent, and you agree that Splitwise is not responsible, liable for anything which occurs on these services. You indemnify Splitwise Inc. from all damages if you authorize your Splitwise account with one of these 3rd party applications.

Non-identifiable information

We may disclose information that does not personally identify you in any other manner that we deem appropriate, including to third parties for their research, marketing, and promotional purposes and to help us determine how we can improve our Sites. We will also disclose non-personal information to our service providers and other third parties about how our users collectively use the Sites.

SECURITY

How we protect the information we collect

We take the security of your information seriously. We use technical and administrative security measures such as but not limited to encryption techniques and authentication procedures, among others, to maintain the security of your online session. Please understand, however, that while we try our best to safeguard your personal information once we receive it, no transmission of data over the Internet or any other public network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure.

You can help protect the privacy of your own information by using encryption and other techniques to prevent unauthorized interception of your personal information. You are responsible for the security of your information when using unencrypted, public or otherwise unsecured networks.

We will contact you regarding any breach of the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your unencrypted electronically stored personal information to you via email or conspicuous posting on our Site in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, insofar as consistent with (i) the legitimate needs of law enforcement or (ii) any measures necessary to determine the scope of the breach and restore the reasonable integrity of the data system.

Phishing:

Identity theft and the practice currently known as "phishing" are of great concern to Splitwise®. Safeguarding information to help protect you from identity theft is a top priority. We do not and will not, at any time, request your credit card information, your account ID, login password, or national identification numbers in a non-secure or unsolicited e-mail or telephone communication. For more information about phishing, visit the Federal Trade Commission's website at http://www.ftc.gov.

COOKIES

How we use cookies and similar technologies:

Like many websites, we use tracking technologies such as cookies, web beacons and similar technologies to record your preferences, track the use of Splitwise and exposure to our online advertisements. We may also use these technologies to monitor traffic, improve Splitwise, and make it easier to use and more relevant.

We partner with third party advertising companies who also use these tracking tools to provide advertisements on our Websites or other websites. These third parties may use these technologies to collect information about you when you use our services. They may collect information about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may also use persistent identifiers to track your Internet usage across other websites in their networks beyond the Websites. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based advertising or other targeted content. While we do not knowingly provide these entities with information that personally identifies you such third parties may, with sufficient data from other sources, be able to personally identify you, unknown to us. To learn more about the third-party collection and use of your information, please visit the Digital Advertising Alliance and/or the Network Advertising Initiative.

Some content or applications on our Sites, including advertisements, are served by unaffiliated third parties. We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement, you should contact the responsible advertiser directly.

Your browser or device may include “Do Not Track” functionality. Splitwise’s information collection and disclosure practices, and the choices that we provide to customers, will continue to operate as described in this Privacy Policy, whether or not a Do Not Track signal is received. To learn more about how Do Not Track works, please visit http://allaboutdnt.com/.

Online Tracking and Interest-Based Advertising

You also have choices to limit some tracking mechanisms that collect information when you use our Services. Many web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser’s setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, certain features of our Services, including the Service itself may not function properly or remain accessible to you. For example, you cannot log into splitwise.com if you've disabled all cookie use.In addition, you may also render some web beacons unusable by rejecting or removing their associated cookies. Note that if you choose to remove cookies, you may remove opt-out cookies that affect your advertising preferences.

You may opt out of tracking of analytics data by Google Analytics, one of our customer usage analytics providers, by clicking here.

Many of the third parties advertisers that place tracking tools on our Sites are members of programs that offer you additional choices regarding the collection and use of your information. You can learn more about the options available to limit these third parties’ collection and use of your information by visiting the websites for the Network Advertising Initiative and the Digital Advertising Alliance, as well as the webpages for Facebook’s ad preferences tool and privacy policy.

Similarly, you can learn about your options to opt-out of mobile app tracking by certain advertising networks through your device settings. For more information about how to change these settings for Apple, Android or Windows devices, see:

Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4228

Android: http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/ads/

Windows: http://choice.microsoft.com/en-US/opt-out

Please note that opting-out of advertising networks services does not mean that you will not receive advertising while using our Sites or on other websites, nor will it prevent the receipt of interest-based advertising from third parties that do not participate in these programs. It will, however, exclude you from interest-based advertising conducted through participating networks, as provided by their policies and choice mechanisms.

CHOICE AND ACCESS; DELETING YOUR ACCOUNT; DATA RETENTION

Choice and Access to your personal information:

You may access, review, and update the personal information you have submitted to us at any time. You can make changes to your personal information from your Account Settings page. If you need help updating or correcting your information please contact us at support@splitwise.com.

Users can export data from their groups and friendships by following the instructions found here. We’re happy to help provide exports from your account. You can request exports by contacting us at support@splitwise.com.

Your choices regarding the data we Collect and Process

In many instances, you have choices about the information you provide and limiting how we use your information. These choices, and any related consequences, are described in detail below:
Deleting your account:

You may choose to close your account at any time. You can close your account from your Account Settings page, or request that we close it for you by writing to us at support@splitwise.com. When you close your account in this way, we may allow you to reactivate it by writing to us at support@splitwise.com.

Data Retention

In accordance with and as permitted by applicable law and regulations, we will retain your information as long as necessary to serve you, to maintain your account for as long as your account is active, or as otherwise needed to operate our business. We may also retain personal information to comply with law, prevent fraud, resolve disputes, enforce our Terms of Service, and as permitted by applicable law.

If you would like to fully delete your account and the information in it, you can write to us at support@splitwise.com. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to remove your personal information from our services so long as we do not have any legal reason or obligation to retain the record. It may take up to 90 days for your information to be cleared from our servers.

When you change or delete personal information, or close your account from your Account Settings page, expenses involving you (either that you have shared or that have been shared with you) and your name may remain visible to people with whom they have been shared as part of their records (just as deleting an email account does not unsend emails that have already been sent).

EU-US-SWISS PRIVACY SHIELD FRAMEWORK

Splitwise complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework as set forth by the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information transferred from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States.

Splitwise has certified to the Department of Commerce that we adhere to the Privacy Shield Principles, including those relating to Notice, Choice, Accountability for Onward Transfer, Security, Data Integrity and Purpose Limitation, Access, and Recourse, Enforcement and Liability. We commit to subject to the Principles all personal data received from the EEA in reliance on the Privacy Shield. These Principles include without limitation (i) the possibility for the individual to invoke binding arbitration and (ii) our liability in the case of onward transfer to third parties. If there is any conflict between the policies in this privacy policy and the Privacy Shield Principles, the Privacy Shield Principles shall govern. To learn more about the Privacy Shield program, any rights an individual may have to binding arbitration before a Privacy Shield Panel, and to view our certification page, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov

Splitwise commits to resolve complaints about privacy and our collection or use of personal information in compliance with Privacy Shield Principles. European Union and Swiss individuals with inquiries or complaints regarding this privacy policy should first contact Splitwise at support@splitwise.com. Splitwise further has committed to refer unresolved privacy complaints to JAMS (Judicial Arbitration & Mediation Services), an independent alternative dispute resolution provider located in the United States and recognized for this purpose by the US Department of Commerce. If you do not receive timely acknowledgment of your complaint, or if your complaint is not satisfactorily addressed, please visit https://www.jamsadr.com/eu-us-privacy-shield for more information, and to file a complaint. The services of JAMS are provided at no cost to the individual.

The Federal Trade Commission has enforcement authority regarding Splitwise’s compliance with the Privacy Shield Principles.

CHANGES

Changes to this Privacy Statement

We may update this Privacy Statement periodically. Changes are effective immediately upon posting. The date last revised appears at the top of this Statement.

CONTACT US

Got Questions?

If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Statement, our security practices, or our information handling practices please contact Splitwise in writing: