Privacy Policy

Chipn is a group birthday gifting service operated by Chipn LLC, an Indiana limited liability company (“Chipn,” “we,” “us”). You can reach us any time at daniel@chipn.co.

We store the least we can: a name, a mobile number, and a birthday month and day. We never ask for or store a birth year, a full date of birth, a mailing address, or a card number. We do not sell your data, and we do not share your phone number or your messaging consent with anyone for their own marketing.

If a friend added you to Chipn and you never signed up, you can erase everything we hold about you by replying DELETE to any Chipn text. You do not need an account to do it.

This is the part most policies skip, so we’ll be direct about it. Chipn works because someone can add a friend’s birthday before that friend has an account. If you are that friend, we may hold:

• your name, as the person who added you typed it
• your mobile phone number
• your birthday month and day, without a year
• a time zone estimated from your area code, so a gift arrives in the evening rather than at 4 a.m.
• a log of texts we sent you or you sent us, which we keep to prove we honored your choices

We use it for one purpose: to let your friends chip in for your birthday and to deliver the gift to you by text. We do not build advertising profiles, we do not sell or rent this information, and we do not use it to find or contact anyone else.

Two separate controls are available to you, and they do different things. Replying STOP ends all Chipn text messages but leaves your record in place. Replying DELETEerases the record itself, as described under “Deleting your data” below.

• Your name and mobile number, which you give us, and which we verify with a one-time code.
• Your birthday month and day, and the month and day of the people you add.
• Payment details, held by Stripe, not by us. Your card number never reaches a Chipn server. Stripe stores the card and gives us a token; we can charge that token and see the card brand and last four digits, nothing more.
• Basic session datawhen you sign in: a session cookie, your browser’s user agent, and the IP address of the sign-in, which we use to spot suspicious logins.
• Gift records: which bags you chipped into, the amounts, any note you wrote, and the resulting payment records.

By signing up with your mobile number you agree to receive text messages from Chipn about birthdays you track and gifts you send or receive. Message frequency varies with how many birthdays you follow. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, HELP for help, or DELETE to erase your data.

We do not share mobile numbers or SMS consent with third parties or affiliates for their marketing purposes. Our messaging provider receives your number only to deliver our messages to you.

We use a small number of service providers, and only for the job named:

• Twilio sends and receives the text messages, and so receives your phone number and message content.
• Stripe stores payment methods and processes charges. Stripe receives your name, phone number, and card details directly from your browser.
• Reloadly issues the gift cards. It receives the order amount and brand, not your identity.
• Supabase hosts our database, and Vercel hosts and runs the application.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to investigate fraud or abuse. If Chipn is ever acquired, your information may transfer with the business, and we will say so here before it takes effect.

We do not sell personal information, and we never have.

People who chip into the same bag see each other’s first names and any notes they wrote. The recipient sees who chipped in and what they wrote. Nobody, at any point, sees anyone else’s full phone number: Chipn displays at most the last four digits, anywhere in the product.

A bag link can be opened by anyone holding it, since that is how a group chat coordinates. It shows the recipient’s first name, the chippers’ first names, and the amount. Treat the link the way you would treat the group chat it came from.

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Gift card codes carry an additional layer of application-level encryption, so that reading the database is not the same as spending the card. Access to the production database is limited to Chipn’s own server code; there is no path from a browser to your data that does not pass an ownership check first. One-time codes and session tokens are stored hashed, never in plain text. No system is perfectly secure, and we will not claim otherwise.

We keep your account information while your account is open. Records of completed gifts, including the associated payment records, are retained for as long as tax, accounting, and chargeback rules require, even after deletion. Text message logs are retained as proof that we obtained consent and honored opt-outs; after a deletion request we keep only the timestamps and message type, and erase the message content itself.

You can erase what we hold in either of two ways, and neither requires talking to us first:

• By text, with or without an account. Reply DELETE to any Chipn message. We will text back asking you to confirm, because this cannot be undone. Reply DELETE once more and it is done.
• In the app.Open your account page and choose “Delete my account and data.” We will text you a code to confirm it is really you.

Deletion erases your name, your phone number, your birthday, your saved card, your list of people, and your entry in everyone else’s list. Birthdays you contributed about other people are erased too. Bags that already delivered remain as payment records, with your identifying details stripped out of them.

You may also email daniel@chipn.co to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to request deletion, and we will respond within 45 days. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.

Chipn is not directed to children. You must be 18 or older to create an account or store a payment method. If you believe a child’s information is in Chipn, email us and we will remove it.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and for anything material we will tell you before it takes effect.

Chipn LLC
5534 Saint Joe Road, Fort Wayne, IN 46835
daniel@chipn.co