Tichama Mobility
Tichama is a ride-sharing and delivery platform operated by Roydia Mobility Ltd, a company registered in Ghana with its registered office at Danfa, Accra, Ghana ("Tichama", "we", "us"). We are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
This one policy covers all of our services:
Where this policy treats passengers and drivers differently — drivers go through identity verification and share their live location during trips — the difference is called out explicitly.
We do not collect data from data brokers, social networks, or advertising networks, and the apps contain no third-party advertising or cross-app tracking technology.
Location is the most sensitive thing a mobility app handles, so here is exactly how we use it.
Act 843 requires that we process personal data lawfully and only for the purposes we collected it for. Our purposes, and the legal basis for each, are:
| Purpose | What it involves | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Providing the service | Creating your account, verifying your phone number by SMS code, matching passengers with drivers, showing trip progress, processing bookings and cancellations | Performance of our contract with you |
| Payments | Charging fares, crediting driver earnings, holding funds in escrow until a trip completes, processing refunds and withdrawals, managing wallets and passes | Performance of our contract; legal obligations (financial record-keeping) |
| Safety and trust | Verifying driver identity, responding to SOS alerts, investigating reports and disputes, ratings, blocking abusive accounts | Legitimate interest in a safe platform; legal obligations |
| Communications | SMS verification codes, push notifications about your trips and payments, responses to support requests | Performance of our contract |
| Improving the service | Diagnosing crashes and errors, monitoring that payments balance correctly, understanding aggregate usage | Legitimate interest in a reliable service |
| Legal compliance | Responding to lawful requests from authorities, keeping records required by tax and financial law, enforcing our terms | Legal obligations |
We do not use your personal data for automated decisions that produce legal effects about you, and we do not profile you for advertising.
When a booking is confirmed, the passenger and driver each see the information needed to complete the trip: first name, profile photo, rating, the trip's pickup and drop-off details, and a way to contact each other. Passengers additionally see the driver's vehicle details and, during the trip, the vehicle's live position. We share no more of your profile than the trip requires.
If you share a live trip-tracking link, the people you send it to can follow that trip's position until it ends. Choose carefully who you share the link with — anyone holding it can open it.
These companies process personal data on our behalf, under contract, only to provide their service to us:
| Provider | Service | Data involved |
|---|---|---|
| Paystack | Payment processing (cards, mobile money, bank transfers, payouts) | Payment details, transaction amounts, phone number, email |
| Twilio | SMS delivery, including verification codes | Phone number, message content |
| Google Cloud Platform | Hosting our servers and database | All service data (stored in Google's Johannesburg, South Africa region) |
| Google Maps Platform | Maps, address search, and geocoding | Location coordinates and the place names you search for |
| Google Firebase | Phone-number sign-in, push notifications, usage analytics, crash reporting and performance monitoring | Phone number (sign-in), device push token, notification content, usage and diagnostic data described in section 3.2 |
| Sentry | Crash and error monitoring | Technical error details and device information |
We never sell personal data, and we never share it with advertisers.
Card numbers and mobile money credentials are collected and processed by Paystack, our licensed payment processor — they never touch our servers. What we store is the transaction record: the amount, its status, a reference, and the payment method's masked details.
We also maintain your in-app wallet ledger (deposits, fare payments, refunds, withdrawals), commuter pass balances, and any pay-later balances, and for drivers the payout account you registered. Fares for active trips are held in escrow and released to the driver when the trip completes, and every money movement is recorded so accounts can be audited and disputes resolved.
Before a driver can carry passengers, we verify who they are. Drivers upload a government-issued identity document — a Ghana Card or other national ID, passport, or driver's licence — together with a selfie photo, and our verification team compares them. Passengers may also be asked to verify their identity in specific situations, such as high-value wallet activity.
We keep personal data only as long as it serves the purpose it was collected for or a legal duty requires. Our standard periods:
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Account profile | While your account is active, then deleted on request (section 14) |
| Financial records (payments, wallet ledger, earnings, fares) | 6 years, as required by Ghanaian tax and financial record-keeping law — even after account deletion |
| Trip records (route, times, participants) | While your account is active; retained up to 6 years where linked to financial records |
| Detailed GPS traces | Up to 12 months after the trip, then deleted or anonymised |
| Identity documents and selfies | While you remain a verified driver, then up to 6 years as fraud-prevention and legal evidence |
| In-app messages | Up to 24 months, to allow disputes to be investigated |
| SOS and safety reports | Up to 6 years, for investigations and legal claims |
| SMS verification codes | Never stored on our servers — codes are issued and checked by our SMS provider and expire within minutes |
| Technical server logs | 30–90 days |
| Trip-share links | Deactivated when the trip ends |
| Early-access list | Until you ask to be removed (section 17), or until the list has served its purpose after launch, whichever comes first |
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach occurs that puts your rights at risk, we will notify the Data Protection Commission and affected users as Act 843 requires.
Our servers and database run in Google Cloud's Johannesburg, South Africa region — the closest cloud region to Ghana. Some service providers listed in section 6.3 process data in other countries (for example, SMS delivery and error monitoring). Wherever your data goes, it remains protected by this policy and by contracts that hold our providers to safeguards consistent with the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843). We remain accountable for it.
The Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) gives you the right to:
To exercise any of these rights, contact us using section 17. We respond within 30 days and never charge for a first request. If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Data Protection Commission of Ghana (www.dataprotection.org.gh).
You can also ask us to delete some of your data while keeping your account: in either app, open Profile and choose Delete some of my data. Saved places, messages, location history, ride requests and your profile photo are removed at once; trip history and identity documents are reviewed by the Data Protection Officer within 30 days.
To delete your Tichama account and the personal data attached to it (step-by-step instructions are also on our account deletion page):
Before deleting, the app asks you to settle anything still in motion: an active booking must finish or be cancelled, any wallet balance must be withdrawn, and any pay-later balance must be paid — deletion cannot be used to walk away from a trip in progress or money owed. What we cannot delete immediately is data the law obliges us to keep — chiefly financial records, which are retained for the 6-year statutory period (section 10) and then destroyed.
Tichama is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account, whether as a passenger or a driver. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18; if we learn that we have, we delete the account. Parents or guardians who believe a minor has created an account should contact us (section 17).
When we change this policy, we update the effective date at the top and, for material changes — new categories of data, new purposes, or new sharing — we notify you in the app or by SMS before the change takes effect. Continuing to use Tichama after a change takes effect means the updated policy applies.
Questions, requests, and complaints about privacy go to our Data Protection Officer:
Supervisory authority: Data Protection Commission, Ghana — www.dataprotection.org.gh.
Tichama