Privacy Policy

Spare Up exists to move a dollar or two to a nonprofit you chose. It needs remarkably little about you to do that, and this page says exactly what it takes and what it never touches. If you scan a receipt, the photo never leaves your phone.

01 Who we are

Spare Up is made by CauseLine Labs, Inc., a Delaware corporation based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and CauseLine Labs is the controller of the information described here. Spare Up is one of several CauseLine apps that share one account and one giving platform; where this policy says "your CauseLine account," it means that shared account.

This policy covers the Spare Up iOS app and this website. The CauseLine platform — your account, your payment settings, and the donations themselves — is also covered by the CauseLine Labs platform privacy policy, which applies in addition to this one. Where the two describe the same thing, this page is the more specific statement about Spare Up.

02 What Spare Up collects

All of it. Nothing is collected that is not in this table, and every row exists because a round up cannot happen without it.

Spare Up asks for camera access when you first scan a receipt, and for photo access if you pick an existing photo instead. Both are optional: you can type an amount and never grant either. Declining them does not limit anything else in the app.

What this website collects

Nothing, unless you fill in the beta signup form. If you do, we receive what you typed — your email address, and your name, a nonprofit and a note if you chose to give them — plus the page you sent it from, your browser's user-agent string and IP address, which come with any web request and which we keep as a record of the submission.

We use it to send you a TestFlight invite and to answer you. It is not a newsletter signup, and we will not add you to marketing email off the back of it. Ask us at support@causelinelabs.io and we will delete it. There are no analytics, no advertising tags and no third-party trackers on any page of this site — the only things it loads from elsewhere are the two fonts it is set in.

03 What Spare Up does not do

These are worth stating as plainly as the collection is, because in a giving app they are usually true in the other direction.

• Receipt photos never leave the phone. The image is read by iOS's own text recognition, on the device, and deleted once the round up is recorded. Nothing is uploaded — not to us, not to any other service. What is kept from it is the bill and the merchant name, on the gift.
• No location. Spare Up does not request location access and does not use location, coarse or precise, at any point.
• No card details. Spare Up never asks for a payment method and never sees one. Payment settings live in your CauseLine account, on the web, where our payment processor handles them.
• No tracking and no advertising. There is no advertising code, no analytics SDK, no third-party trackers, and no data sold or shared with data brokers. Nothing about you is used to track you across other companies' apps or websites.
• No contacts, microphone recordings, or health data. Spare Up reads one photo, only with your permission, and only as described in §04.
• If you use Siri to start a round up, Apple handles the speech and Spare Up receives only the amount — we never receive audio.

This matches what Spare Up declares to Apple in its privacy manifest and on its App Store privacy card. If you ever find the two disagreeing, that is a bug in this page — tell us and we will fix it.

04 Receipt scanning, in detail

Because it is the part people ask about, here is the whole sequence:

• You point the camera at a receipt or a register display. The photo is written to your iPhone's temporary storage.
• iOS's built-in text recognition reads the image on the device. There is no network request, no API key, and no server involved in reading it.
• Spare Up shows you what it read, on the photo, and you confirm the total or tap a different number. Spare Up never counts a total you did not confirm.
• When you submit the round up, the app deletes the image from temporary storage. What leaves your phone is the amount, the bill it was rounded up from, the nonprofit, the date, and the merchant name.
• If you cancel or leave, the image is deleted the same way and nothing is sent.

A receipt is a list of what someone bought, where, and when. We have no business holding that, so we do not.

Quick Spare — reading your newest screenshot. There is one path where Spare Up looks at a photo you did not hand it. If you screenshot a receipt, a checkout page or a Wallet transaction, Spare Up can read that screenshot and offer the round up already filled in. Everywhere else you pick a receipt yourself, the app uses iOS’s own picker, which runs outside the app and needs no photo permission at all.

Reading a screenshot you have not picked cannot be done through that picker, so Quick Spare needs “Allow Access to All Photos”. iOS has no per-album permission, so the system prompt says all photos even though the app reaches far less: the Screenshots album only, the newest item only, only if it was taken in the last two hours, and only if it has not been offered before. Not the camera roll.

The setting ships on, but nothing is read until you grant that permission — which the app asks for once, in its own words, never at launch. Decline it and Quick Spare stays inert, and there is a switch in Account either way. Your screenshot is never modified, moved or deleted; it stays in your photos where you put it, and what Spare Up read is deleted on the same terms as any other receipt.

05 How we use it

We use what we collect for these purposes and no others:

• To create and run your CauseLine account and keep it secure.
• To record your round ups, queue them by nonprofit, and settle them as donations.
• To show you your own queues, history, and receipts.
• To email you about your money — that a queue is ready, that a charge is coming, that a gift was delivered.
• To provide support when you ask for it, and to detect and prevent fraud and abuse.
• To count how much has been given, in aggregate, so we can report on the platform. Those counts do not identify you.

We do not build advertising profiles, we do not sell personal information, and we do not use your giving history to target you anywhere off the platform.

06 Who else sees it

The nonprofit you chose

You are the donor of record, so the nonprofit receiving your gift is told who gave it: your name as it appears on your CauseLine account, your email address, and the amount. They do not receive your payment details, and they do not receive the merchant name or anything else read off a receipt.

Service providers

We require each provider to use your information only for the purposes we authorise and to protect it at least as well as we do.

Law, safety, and change of control

We may disclose information where we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with the law or a lawful request, to enforce our terms, to prevent fraud, or to protect the rights or safety of any person. If CauseLine Labs is party to a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, account information may transfer as part of that transaction; this policy continues to apply to it until you are told otherwise.

07 How long we keep it

• Receipt images: deleted from your phone as soon as the round up is recorded, or when you cancel. Never held by us at all.
• Account information: kept while your account is open, then deleted or de-identified on request as described in §8.
• Donation records — the amount, the bill, the nonprofit, date, and merchant name — are financial records. We keep them for as long as tax, accounting, and anti-fraud obligations require, typically seven years, even after an account closes. A nonprofit's record of a gift it received is theirs and is not ours to delete.
• Aggregate, de-identified totals may be kept indefinitely. They do not identify you.

08 Access, correction, deletion

You can see your own round ups, queues, and receipts in the app at any time. For anything beyond that — a copy of what we hold, a correction, or deletion of your account and its personal information — email support@causelinelabs.io from the address on the account, or write to the address in §13. We will verify it is you and respond within 30 days.

Deleting your account removes your profile and cancels any round up that has not yet been charged. Donations already delivered stay in the financial record for the period described in §7 — we cannot unwind a gift a nonprofit has received.

Depending on where you live you may have additional rights — to know, to access, to correct, to delete, to port, and to be free from discrimination for exercising them. We honor those requests through the same address, and we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are used in US state privacy laws, so there is nothing to opt out of.

09 Email and notifications

Spare Up sends you email about your own money: that a queue has reached its threshold and a charge is scheduled, that a payment is due, that a gift was delivered. These are transactional — they are the notice that makes the three-day window meaningful, so you cannot unsubscribe from them while you have queued round ups. Marketing email, if we ever send any, is opt-in and unsubscribable in one click. Push notifications, if you enable them, are managed in iOS Settings.

10 Children

Spare Up is for adults. You must be 18 or older, or the age of majority where you live, to have a CauseLine account. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13, and children under 13 may not register. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email support@causelinelabs.io and we will delete it.

11 Where it is processed

CauseLine Labs is a US company and your information is collected and processed in the United States, whose data-protection laws differ from those where you live. By using Spare Up you understand that your information will be handled in the US under this policy.

12 Changes to this policy

We will update this page when Spare Up changes. Material changes will be announced in the app or by email before they take effect, with the date they take effect stated; changes are never applied retroactively. The "last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the current version. Continuing to use Spare Up after a change means you accept the updated policy.

13 Contact

Questions, requests, or a correction to this page: support@causelinelabs.io.

CauseLine Labs, Inc.
Attn: Data Protection
5232 Abbott Ave. South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55410
United States