Data Privacy
Shopping, selling or earning on AwaOwn means trusting us with real information about you - your contact details, your delivery address, sometimes an ID document to get verified as a Merchant or Partner. Here's a plain-language look at how we look after it.
What We Collect, and Why
We only collect what's actually needed to run the marketplace: account and contact details, delivery addresses, order and payment records, and - for Merchants and Partners - the identity-verification information Nigerian law and our own trust standards require before someone can sell or get paid on the platform. We don't collect information "just in case," and we don't sell your data to anyone.
How We Keep It Safe
A few of the specific safeguards behind the scenes:
Encrypted connections, always
Every page and every request between your device and AwaOwn - browsing, checking out, uploading a document - travels over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection. Nobody sitting on the network in between can read it.
ID and verification documents stay private
When a merchant or Partner submits an ID or business document to get verified, it's stored in a locked-down, private system - not a public web address anyone with a link could open. Our verification team can only view it through a secure link that's generated on demand and expires shortly after, so a document is never sitting out in the open.
We never see your card details
Payments are processed by Paystack, a licensed and PCI-compliant payment provider. Your card number, expiry and CVV go straight to them - AwaOwn's own systems never receive or store that information.
Your password can't be read - by anyone
Passwords are run through a one-way scrambling process before they're stored. That means even our own engineers can't look up what your password is - only you know it.
Staff access is limited and logged
Our team members can only see the information their role actually needs to do its job - Support doesn't see Finance data, and so on. Every sensitive action taken from our admin systems is recorded in an audit trail.
Built to fail safely
Where something can't be verified or a request looks unusual, our systems are built to deny access by default rather than quietly let it through.
Your Verification Documents, Specifically
ID documents and other verification files are treated with the highest level of protection we apply to any data on the platform. They're used only to confirm you are who you say you are, they're only ever viewed by our verification team when a review actually requires it, and they're never shared publicly or handed to another Merchant, Partner or Shopper.
You're Still in Control
You can ask us what information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and associated data, subject to what we're legally required to keep (like order records, for tax and dispute purposes). Reach out to hello@awaown.com for any of this.
This page explains our approach in plain language. For the full legal detail - what we collect, how long we keep it, and your rights under Nigerian data-protection law - see our Privacy Policy in the Legal section.