Scale Partner — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 7 October 2026 · Applies to the Scale Partner Android app (com.rohansurve.scale.partner), version 1.6.0, to the payment pages it links to, and to the message channels you connect to it.

In short: Scale Partner is a record book for your business that helps you get paid. It holds the customer and payment records you enter, sends WhatsApp reminders when you ask it to, and gives your customer a page to pay you by UPI. It never holds or moves anyone's money, and it sells nothing to anybody. No ads. Your customers' data is never sold or used for ads. We use Meta only to measure installs from our own ads.

We identify you by your mobile number. You sign in with a 6-digit code sent to you on WhatsApp. There is no password. See section 2.
Your app PIN never leaves your phone. It is not stored on our servers in any form. See section 4.
Scale sends WhatsApp messages when you tap to send one, and on a schedule through automatic reminders. Automatic reminders are on unless you switch them off, for your whole business or for one customer. Reminders and receipts go through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform. See section 5.
Scale never touches the money. The payment page opens your customer's own UPI app, which pays your UPI ID directly. See section 6.
Instagram auto-reply is coming, and isn't in the app yet. Once it is, connecting will be your choice and off until you do it: we will receive the direct messages people send to that account so Scale can answer them with your reply, and we will not store the message text. See section 5c.
No ads. Your customers' data is never sold or used for ads. We use Meta only to measure installs from our own ads. See sections 10a and 11.

Scale Partner ("Scale Partner", "Scale", "the app", "we", "us") is a customer- and payment-record app for small business owners, published by Rohan Surve. This policy explains what information the app and its payment pages handle, why, where it goes, and the choices you have. By using Scale Partner you agree to this policy.

Your customers do not need an app. They receive WhatsApp messages you choose to send and can open a payment page in a browser, without signing in. An earlier companion app for customers, called Scale, has been retired; see section 9 for what that means for anyone who still has it installed.

1. Who is responsible for the data

Your own account information — your mobile number, and your name if you add it. We are responsible for this.
Your customers' information — the names, numbers and payment records you enter about the people who pay you. You decide what to collect and why, and whether to send them a message; we store and process it on your behalf to provide the service. You are responsible for having a lawful basis for entering someone else's details and for messaging them, and for what you write in the free-text fields (see section 3).

2. Signing in — your mobile number

Scale Partner signs you in with your Indian mobile number and a 6-digit code that we send to that number on WhatsApp, through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform (section 10).

Your mobile number is sent to Meta so that the code can be delivered to your WhatsApp. The message comes from Scale's WhatsApp Business number.
The code expires after 10 minutes and allows 5 attempts. We store a hash of the code, never the code itself, together with your number, the time and the attempt count.
To limit abuse we count sign-in requests per network address. The address is stored only as a one-way hash for that purpose.
Once the code checks out, you are signed in through Firebase Authentication (section 10). Your number is stored on your account and shown to you in the app, so you always know which account you are using.
There is no password. A different mobile number is a different account.

In Settings → Profile you may optionally add your name. It is free text, set only by you.

3. The business records you enter

Everything in this section is information you type in or import. It is stored in Cloud Firestore (section 10) under your account, and cached on your own phone (section 7).

3a. Your business

Business name; business category; business phone number; WhatsApp number; address; timezone; and your UPI ID, if you add one. Your UPI ID and business name are shown on the payment pages you send to customers (section 6). We also keep a count of your customers and the plan you are on (section 8).

3b. Your customers

For each customer you add: name and mobile number (both required), and optionally a WhatsApp number, email, gender, date of birth, address, joining date, an emergency contact, and free-text notes. You also set a status (for example active or paused).

Please note what the free-text fields mean. "Notes" is a plain text box. Whatever you type there is stored as you typed it. If you write something sensitive about a person there — a health condition, for example — you have chosen to store sensitive information about them, and you are responsible for that choice. The app neither asks for nor requires any special category of personal data.

3c. Payments

For each payment record: amount, currency, due date, status (due, paid, cancelled and so on), when it was marked paid, the method you choose (cash, UPI, bank transfer or other), an optional note, and — if you set one — a repeat schedule. The note is shown to your customer on the payment page and is passed to their UPI app as the payment description, so do not write anything there you would not want them to read.

Scale Partner is a record of money owed and received. It does not process your customers' payments and never receives their card, bank or UPI details (section 6).

3d. Change history

When a customer or payment is changed, Scale keeps a history entry of what changed, from what to what, and when. This keeps your books consistent and lets a mistake be traced.

3e. Importing from your phone's contacts

Android asks your permission first. You can refuse, and adding customers by hand always works.
The permission is read-only. Scale never edits, adds or deletes anything in your contacts. It reads names and phone numbers, not photos.
Contacts are read only while the import screen is open. The check for numbers you already have runs on your phone.
Only the contacts you select are saved as customers. The rest are never uploaded.
You can withdraw the permission at any time in Android Settings.

4. Your app PIN and biometric unlock

The WhatsApp code proves who you are. A separate 4-digit PIN controls access to the app on this phone, because a small-business phone is often shared.

The PIN is never sent to us and never stored on our servers, in any form.
On your device it is stored as a PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 hash with a random salt, inside Android's Keystore-backed secure storage.
After 5 wrong attempts the PIN is erased and you are signed out; getting back in needs a fresh code. That is also the "forgot PIN" route.
The PIN and your signed-in session are excluded from Android cloud backup and device-to-device transfer.

Biometric unlock is optional and off until you turn it on. Android's own prompt checks your fingerprint or face in secure hardware and tells Scale only yes or no. Scale never sees, receives or stores biometric data.

5. Message channels

Scale Partner connects to the places your customers already message you. There are three, they handle data differently, and each is described separately below:

5a — reminders and receipts Scale sends on WhatsApp;
5b — messages you send yourself, from your own WhatsApp;
5c — direct messages people send to your Instagram account, once Instagram auto-reply is in the app (coming, not available yet).

5a. Reminders and receipts sent by Scale

When you tap to send a payment reminder, an overdue reminder or a receipt, Scale sends it to your customer from Scale's WhatsApp Business number through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform.

Scale also sends automatic reminders the same way, on a schedule: a reminder before the due date if you choose one, one on the due date, and one at 3, 7 and 14 days overdue, each sent once, never during the quiet hours you set, and within daily and monthly limits.

Automatic reminders are on unless you switch them off. Since 4 October 2026 Scale switches them on for your business once you have recorded a payment with a due date, unless you have switched them off before. You can switch them off at any time in Settings → Automatic WhatsApp reminders, for your whole business, or on a customer's page for that one customer; switching them off stops them, and Scale never switches them back on for you. Payments that were already overdue when they came on are never chased automatically. So Scale only ever messages your customers about payments you have recorded.

What goes to Meta: your customer's mobile number, their name, your business name, the amount, and — for reminders — a link to the payment page (section 6).
What we keep: a record of each send — which message, those same details, a partly hidden copy of the number, Meta's message reference, and whether Meta reports it as sent, delivered or failed. We do not record whether it was read.
Replies: if a customer replies to a message Scale sent them, Scale keeps the reply and shows it to you — in a notification, and on that customer (and that payment) in the app. We keep the words they typed, including a photo's caption, or only what kind of thing they sent ("a photo", "a voice note"). We do not download or keep the photo, voice note, file, location or contact card itself. Scale does not answer replies or act on them: a reply never marks a payment as paid. A reply is matched to the business that most recently messaged that customer; if more than one business has, and the reply does not say which message it answers, it is not kept. A message from someone Scale has never written to is not kept. To match replies, we keep a scrambled (hashed) form of the number each message reached, with which business and message it was. This is being switched on business by business; until it is on for your business, a reply reaches our server as part of Meta's notifications but its content is not stored.
Once a message is on your customer's phone, WhatsApp's own privacy policy governs it.

5b. Messages you send from your own WhatsApp

Scale Partner can also open your WhatsApp with a message already written. You press send, inside WhatsApp. Scale cannot read your WhatsApp — not your chats, not your contacts, not whether that message was delivered. It records the text it prepared and when WhatsApp was opened, and never claims the message was sent.

5c. Instagram direct messages

If you connect your business's Instagram professional account to Scale, Meta sends our server a copy of the direct messages people send to that account, so that Scale can answer them with a reply you wrote. Connecting is entirely your choice, nothing happens until you do it, and you can disconnect at any time.

Coming: not available yet. Instagram auto-reply is still being built and is not in the app yet, so nothing is received from Instagram for your business. The rest of this section describes the feature as it will work, so that it is published before the feature is rather than after it. The date at the top of this page changes when it goes live.

What Meta sends us. When someone messages your connected account, we receive a notification containing:

the Instagram account it was sent to — yours;
an Instagram-scoped ID for the sender. This is an opaque code Meta issues for that person in relation to this app only. It is not their username, real name, email or phone number, and it cannot be used to find them anywhere outside Scale;
Meta's reference for the message, and the time it was sent;
the message itself, including its text.

What we store, and why.

The message text is not stored in our database. It is read in memory to decide what to do, and then dropped.
Our server's technical logs record the account, the sender's Instagram-scoped ID, Meta's message reference, what kind of message it was, and how many characters it contained — not the text. These exist so we can prove the connection works, avoid answering the same message twice, and investigate a fault or abuse.
While a connection is being set up, or while we are fixing a specific fault, we may switch on fuller logging that does include the message text. It is off by default, it is turned on deliberately and briefly, and it is turned off again.
Once the automatic reply is running we will also keep a record of the reply we sent — which account, which sender, when, and whether Meta accepted it — so you can see it worked and so one person is not answered over and over.
The access token Meta issues for your connected account is held on our server only. It is never sent to the app on your phone and is never shown to you or to anyone else.
The reply text and your WhatsApp number, which you set in the app, are stored with your business record (section 3a).

How long we keep it. Technical logs are kept for up to 30 days and then deleted. Reply records are kept while your account exists and are removed when you delete it (section 12). The access token and the connection settings are deleted as soon as you disconnect the account or delete your Scale account.

What we never do. We do not read your Instagram account's past message history, post anything, comment, follow anyone, or look at your followers. We do not use anybody's Instagram message to advertise to them, we do not build a profile of them, and we do not sell or share any of it. The reply is the one you wrote; we do not write it for you and we do not add anything to it.

If you are the person who messaged a business. You are not a Scale user and you do not have a Scale account. What we hold about you is the opaque code described above, and — briefly — the message you sent. You can ask us what we hold and ask us to delete it: see rohansurve.in/scale/delete-account, or email rohan.surve5@gmail.com.

How to disconnect. The route that always works is Instagram's own, and it takes effect immediately:

In the Instagram app, turn off Settings → Messages and story replies → Message controls → Connected tools → Allow access to messages. Meta then stops sending us anything at all.
Or remove Scale's access entirely under Settings → Website permissions → Apps and websites.

Disconnecting from inside Scale will also be possible once that screen ships. However you disconnect, we stop receiving messages straight away and delete the stored token and settings.

6. The payment page

A reminder sent by Scale carries a link to a payment page on api.rohansurve.in. Anyone who has the link can open it in a browser, without signing in.

What the page shows: your business name, what the payment is for (your note, or its due date), the amount and whether it is due or overdue, and your UPI ID. It does not show your customer's name or number.
The link: each link contains a long random code, works for 14 days, and is stored on our side only as a hash. Treat a link like the reminder it came in: whoever holds it can see that page.
Paying: "Pay via UPI" opens the customer's own UPI app with your UPI ID, business name, amount and note filled in. The payment happens between their UPI app and your account. Scale does not see, hold or move the money, and is not told whether the payment succeeded.
"I have paid": if the customer taps it, we record that a payment was reported through the link, for which payment, and when. We do not store their network address or device details. You receive a notification (section 7) and decide whether to confirm. Nothing is marked paid until you do.
The page loads nothing from third parties and contains no analytics. Like any website, our hosting provider (section 10) keeps standard request logs, which can include the network address and browser type; our own logs record the page address with the link code removed.

7. What is stored on your phone, and notifications

An offline copy of your business data, so the app works with no signal and a payment you mark paid offline syncs later. It lives in the app's private storage.
Your app language (English, हिन्दी or मराठी).
Your PIN hash, biometric preference and signed-in session — section 4.

Notifications. If you allow notifications, your phone registers with Firebase Cloud Messaging and we store that device's notification token, which app it is for, its language and that it is Android. Scale Partner uses it to tell you when a customer taps "I have paid", and when a customer replies to a message Scale sent them (section 5a) — the notification shows the start of their reply. You can turn notifications off in Android Settings; tokens for a device are removed when you delete your account.

Days you open the app. The first time you open Scale Partner on a given day, we record that day against your business, with the time, whether you came in from your home screen, from the background or from one of our notifications, the app version, your app language and how many customers you had. It is one record a day, whatever you do in the app. We use it to see whether Scale is useful enough to come back to. We do not record which screens you look at or what you tap. It is deleted with your account.

Uninstalling the app clears the phone. It does not delete your records from our servers — see section 12.

8. Plans and purchases

Scale Partner is free for up to five customers. Paid plans are monthly subscriptions, and extra WhatsApp credits are one-off packs. Both are bought inside the app through Google Play. A subscription renews every month until you cancel it in Google Play → Payments & subscriptions → Subscriptions.

Google Play takes the payment, under your Google account and Google's terms. We never receive your card, UPI or bank details.
When you buy, the app passes Google Play's purchase to our server, which checks it with Google and then turns on your plan or adds your credits.
We keep a record of each purchase: the product and plan, its state (for example active, cancelled or expired), whether it renews and when it ends, Google's order number, the country Google reports, a one-way fingerprint of Google's purchase token (not the token itself), and which business it is for.
As for every app on Google Play, Google also gives us order records for sales (such as the order number, product, price, date, and the buyer's country and state for tax). We use them only for our accounts and to help you if you contact us about a purchase.

9. Who can see what you enter

You — everything in your own business.
Your customer — the WhatsApp messages you choose to send them, and the payment page for that payment (section 6).
People who still have the retired Scale app. When you add a customer, our servers create an internal account entry for the mobile number you entered, so that records reach the right person. Someone who installed the old Scale customer app before it was retired and signs in there with that number can still see their own record with you: your business name and details, the name you gave them, and their own payments. They cannot see your other customers. This is why the number you type matters.
Us — only what is genuinely needed to run and support the service, for example investigating a fault you report.
Nobody else, unless we are legally required to disclose something, or you ask us to.

10. Service providers

These providers process data on our behalf, under their own terms:

Google Firebase — Authentication (your signed-in session), Cloud Firestore (the records in sections 3, 5, 6 and 8), Cloud Functions (server routines, such as sending you the "I have paid" notification) and Cloud Messaging (notifications). Firestore and Cloud Functions are hosted in Google's asia-south1 (Mumbai, India) region.
Vercel — hosts the Scale API and the payment pages at api.rohansurve.in. Requests enter Vercel's network near the user, and the API itself currently runs in Vercel's United States region, so sign-in, WhatsApp and payment-page requests are processed there.
Meta — the WhatsApp Business Platform delivers sign-in codes, reminders and receipts (sections 2, 5a); once Instagram auto-reply is available, the Instagram Platform will deliver the direct messages sent to a connected Instagram account, and the replies Scale sends back (section 5c). Meta is the source of that data as well as a processor of it, and its own terms and privacy policy govern anything that happens inside WhatsApp or Instagram themselves.
Google Play — sells plans and credit packs and takes the payment (section 8).

Google, Vercel and Meta may process some operational data outside India; see their own privacy documentation.

We do not sell your data. Your records and your customers' data are never shared with advertisers, data brokers or any third party for their own purposes. The only thing that goes to Meta for advertising is the install measurement in section 10a, and it contains none of your records.

10a. Measuring installs from our own ads (Meta)

We advertise Scale Partner on Facebook and Instagram. To learn which of those ads lead to installs, the app includes Meta's software (the Meta SDK). It tells Meta when the app is installed, and each time it is opened and closed. With these events the Meta SDK collects and sends to Meta:

your device's advertising ID;
your IP address, from which Meta may estimate an approximate location (city or region, not GPS);
device information: model, Android version, language, time zone, mobile network and the app's version;
the install referrer from Google Play: which ad or link, if any, led to the install;
when the app was opened and closed;
diagnostics about the Meta SDK itself, such as its own crashes.

The app sends Meta nothing else through the SDK. Your customers, their numbers and balances, payments, reminders, messages, plans and purchases, and anything you type never go to Meta this way, and the app logs no other events. (WhatsApp and Instagram messages travel through Meta's messaging platforms as described in section 5; that is separate and unchanged.) Meta may combine this information with other information it has, and use it to measure and improve our ads, to show ads (including on Facebook and Instagram) and to keep its services secure, as described in Meta's Privacy Policy (facebook.com/privacy/policy). We see only totals in Meta's ads tools. Install measurement runs on every plan, because it measures our own advertising; the app shows no ads.

To limit it: reset or delete your advertising ID in your phone's Settings → Google → Ads, so Meta can't link the app to it. If you use Facebook or Instagram, you can see and disconnect what Meta receives from apps in Accounts Centre → Your information and permissions → Your activity off Meta technologies.

11. What Scale Partner does not do

No ads. The app shows no advertising and contains no ad SDK, and it never will.
No analytics library, and no record of what you do inside the app. There is no Firebase Analytics, no Crashlytics and no analytics library. The one measurement SDK in the app is Meta's, and it only measures installs and app opens (section 10a). Scale itself records only which days you open the app (section 7), never which screens you look at or what you tap.
No location. The app requests no location permission.
No camera, microphone, photos, files or calendar permissions. The permissions it asks for are contacts (optional, section 3e), notifications (optional, section 7) and biometrics (optional, section 4). The Meta SDK adds the advertising ID and Google Play's install referrer, which Android grants without asking (section 10a).
No messages about anything you have not recorded. Scale messages your customers only when you tap to send, or through automatic reminders about payments you have recorded, which you can switch off at any time (section 5a). Once Instagram auto-reply is available, the other case will be the Instagram reply in section 5c: it will be sent only to someone who has just messaged your connected account, it will say only what you wrote, and it will exist only while you have switched it on.
No reading of your social accounts. Once Instagram auto-reply is available, connecting Instagram will let Scale receive new direct messages to that account and reply to them. It will not let Scale read your message history, your followers, your posts or your comments (section 5c).
No handling of your customers' money (section 6).

12. Keeping and deleting data

12a. While you use the app

Your records are kept for as long as your account exists, because a ledger is only useful as a history.

When you delete a customer in the app, it is archived rather than erased immediately: the record is marked deleted and disappears from your lists. A cancelled payment stays in your history, marked cancelled. If you need such a record permanently erased, use the request route below.

A sign-in code stops working after 10 minutes; the record of the request (your number, a hash of the code and the times) is kept to limit abuse. Payment links stop working after 14 days, and their records are removed automatically after they expire. Server technical logs are kept for up to 30 days, and so will be the Instagram logs described in section 5c, once Instagram auto-reply is available.

12b. Deleting your account

You can delete your account inside the app. Open Settings → Delete my account. The screen lists what goes, asks you to confirm, and then asks for your app PIN. Deletion runs immediately and cannot be undone.

If you cannot sign in, or no longer have the app, use rohansurve.in/scale/delete-account, or email rohan.surve5@gmail.com from a message that identifies the mobile number on the account. We may need to verify that you control that number first. By email we aim to finish within 30 days.

Deletion removes your sign-in account, your account record and registered devices, your business, your customers, your payment records, your change history, your prepared-message records, your WhatsApp send records and your customers' WhatsApp replies, with the scrambled numbers kept to match them — including anything that was only archived. Once Instagram auto-reply is available, it will also remove any connected Instagram account: the access token, the reply you wrote and the record of replies sent (section 5c).

Some records are kept separately and are not removed by the in-app deletion:

Plan purchase orders (section 8), which we keep as financial records.
"I have paid" reports made through payment links, which say only which payment was reported and when. Ask us by email and we will erase them.
The internal account entries created for your customers' mobile numbers (section 9), which hold no information you entered beyond the number.
Sign-in code records (section 2). Ask us by email and we will erase them.

Records may also persist for a short further period in routine encrypted backups before those expire. Uninstalling the app is not a deletion request.

13. Security

All traffic between the app, the payment pages and our services is encrypted in transit (TLS/HTTPS). Data is encrypted at rest by our providers.
Access to records is enforced server-side by Firestore security rules and by our API, so an owner cannot read another owner's business, regardless of what any app requests.
Sign-in codes and payment-link codes are stored only as hashes.
No system is perfectly secure. Please keep your phone locked and do not share your sign-in code with anyone. We will never ask you for your code or your PIN.

14. Children

Scale Partner is a tool for running a business and is not directed at children. It is intended for people aged 18 or over, and we do not knowingly collect information from children.

15. Your rights

You may ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, or to delete it. Most correction can be done directly in the app. For access or deletion, contact us using section 17. We may need to confirm that you control the mobile number on the account first.

If your customers exercise their rights against you regarding data you entered about them, we will help you respond.

16. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and publish the new version at this address before the change takes effect. 3 October 2026 (version 1.6.0): install measurement with Meta (section 10a), automatic reminders described (sections 5a and 11), plans and credits sold through Google Play (section 8; Cashfree no longer sells them), and Instagram auto-reply described as coming, not yet in the app (summary and section 5c). 7 October 2026: automatic reminders are on unless you switch them off (summary, sections 5a and 11), and Scale records the days you open the app (sections 7 and 11).

17. Contact

Rohan Surve
Email: rohan.surve5@gmail.com
Deletion requests: rohansurve.in/scale/delete-account