Serene
Serene

Privacy Policy

What Serene collects about you, why, who receives it, where it is kept, and how to ask for it to be corrected or deleted.

Last updated

Who we are and how to reach us

Serene (سيرين in Arabic) is a booking platform for spas and salons, at the salon or at home, operated from Saudi Arabia. This page is Serene's own privacy policy and privacy notice: it tells you what Serene does with information about you today.

Serene is owned and operated by Data Engineering Establishment (مؤسسة هندسة البيانات), an establishment registered in Saudi Arabia, Unified National Number 7055292051, in Al Yasmin, Riyadh. Data Engineering Establishment is responsible for the processing described here, except where this page says otherwise (see Client records); where this page says "Serene", "we" or "us", it means Data Engineering Establishment.

To ask us anything about your data, message the Serene team on WhatsApp at +966 50 163 3399. Use it to see, correct or delete your data, to withdraw a consent, to complain, or to report a security problem. People from the Serene team answer that number; it is not the booking bot.

  • You do not need a Serene account to use it.
  • We answer within 30 days. If a request needs longer, we tell you before the 30 days are up and take at most 30 more.
  • Messages to this number travel through WhatsApp, under WhatsApp's privacy policy.

What this policy covers

This policy covers everything Serene runs:

  • the customer app, on the web at app.serene.salon today, with Android and iOS versions to follow;
  • the salon app for salon owners and staff, on the web at partner.serene.salon today, with Android and iOS versions to follow;
  • the admin console used by Serene's team;
  • the WhatsApp booking channel, which is in early access (see The WhatsApp channel);
  • this website, serene.salon.

The apps are not in the App Store or Google Play yet.

It covers everyone whose data Serene holds: customers; salon owners and staff; people a salon records as clients, who may never have used Serene; anyone who messages the WhatsApp channel; visitors to serene.salon; Serene's own administrators; and people whose records were in the earlier version of this platform (see How long we keep data).

Serene is for adults. You must be 18 or over to use it. We do not verify anyone's age.

Both sign-up screens carry a box about our privacy policy and terms that you must tick yourself before you can sign up; it starts unticked in both apps. When you sign up, the app tells us that you ticked it, and we keep a record of that: your account, the app you signed up in (customer or salon) and on what (web, Android or iPhone), the app's language, the dates of the terms and privacy policy you agreed to, and when. The box is not how we ask for your consent to use your data: what allows us to use your data is under Why we use your data.

What we collect from customers

What you give us

  • Your first name (required) and, if you choose, your last name.
  • Your mobile number with its country code (required). You sign in with it, and without it there is no account.
  • An e-mail address (optional). Without one, we do not e-mail you invoices or booking messages.
  • A profile photo (optional). Salons you book see it, and it appears beside your reviews that a salon publishes.
  • Home-visit addresses, only for a home visit: the address, a map pin, and a name, contact number and, if given, e-mail address for the visit. If these are someone else's details, let them know. Without an address there is no home visit.
  • Your bookings: the treatment, the person, the time, any note you add for the salon, and the reason you give if you cancel.
  • Ratings and reviews, chat messages and images you send a salon, and support messages you send Serene.
  • Payment details, and which of the details above Serene sends to HyperPay when it prepares a card or Apple Pay payment, or saves a card: see Payments.

From WhatsApp

Meta passes us your WhatsApp number, what you type and tap, and any location pin you share, and tells us whether the messages we send you there were delivered and read. It also sends the name on your WhatsApp profile, which we use only to suggest it as your booking name the first time you need an account. See The WhatsApp channel.

What we collect automatically

  • A push-notification token from your phone or browser, so notifications reach you; without it you get none. When you sign out of the app on a device, the app sends us that device's token so that it stops receiving your notifications. Your device's time-zone offset is stored with it; Serene does not use it today.
  • The language you use the app in.
  • On Android, a short code that identifies the Serene app (not you or your phone), sent with each sign-in request and used only for signing in.
  • Your device's location when a phone app starts, if you allow it (see Location).
  • The salons you recently viewed: a list kept on your device and sent to Serene's server so those salons can be shown to you again. On WhatsApp the list is kept in our record of the conversation, on Serene's server, until 24 hours after your last message (see The WhatsApp channel); otherwise the server does not keep it.
  • Technical logs and error reports: your IP address, browser, and what you asked for and when; and a report when an app fails (see Cookies, browser storage, logs and error reports).

Salons, their staff, and what is public

Salon owners

To register a salon you give your name, mobile number, e-mail address and a password, your company name, whether you are an individual or a business, and the service type (at the salon, at home, or both). Without them there is no salon account. You can add a profile photo and a social-media link, and we record your business category and time zone. Your password is stored as a hash. If Serene's team creates your salon account, a generated password is e-mailed to you.

Your name, business type and social-media link become public with your salon (see What is public, below).

Your salon's profile holds each branch's address and phone number, opening hours, treatments with durations and prices, photos, a description, and any extra e-mail addresses you add to receive its notifications. The salon app registers a push-notification token for your device, with its time-zone offset. For payouts we collect the account holder's name, address and city, the IBAN and the bank name; without them we cannot pay you out. Serene's team can read the support messages you send from the salon app.

Staff

A salon owner enters records about staff: name, phone number, e-mail, photo, role, employment dates, commission, notes and working hours. The owner sets each new staff member's first password, so the owner knows it until the staff member changes it. From the staff screen, the owner can also have a password-reset link sent to the staff member's own e-mail address.

If you are staff, your employer entered these details, not you, and this policy is your notice of what is held. To correct them, ask your employer or us.

Supporting documents

To list a salon you upload at least one supporting document. The upload screen asks for your business's supporting documents and gives a licence registration and an ID as examples. Serene's team looks at what you upload when it reviews your request to be listed. Supporting documents are stored like any other upload (see Who sees what).

Serene's decisions about a salon

Serene's team decides whether a salon is listed on the marketplace, and can switch a listing off. When it declines a listing, it records a reason; the salon's owner and staff can read it in the salon app, and it is not part of the public listing. Switching a listing off records no reason. The salon's owner and staff get a push notification when the listing is approved, declined, switched on or switched off. Serene's team can also deactivate or remove an account; that records no reason and sends no e-mail.

What is public

Anyone, with or without an account, can see or retrieve from Serene's marketplace:

  • a salon's name, branch addresses and phone numbers, photos, opening hours, treatments and prices, and its social-media link;
  • the salon owner's first and last name, and whether the salon is registered as an individual or a business;
  • the first and last name, photo and rating of each person customers can book, the owner included where the owner takes bookings;
  • the reviews the salon has published.

Bank details, uploaded documents and Serene's reasons are not part of it. Uploaded files are not private, though: see Who sees what.

Exports

A salon can export its appointments and its client list (both include clients' e-mail addresses and phone numbers; the client list also has birthdays and gender), invoices and sales. Those files belong to the salon, which decides where to share them. In the salon phone app every export is made on the phone. In the web app, the appointment spreadsheets and the daily sales report (as a spreadsheet or a PDF, including the spreadsheet offered on the invoices screen) are prepared on Serene's server. Each gets a web address that cannot be guessed; anyone who has it can open the report for 10 minutes after it is prepared, after which it no longer opens and is deleted from the server within about a minute; the web app's other exports (the client list, the appointment PDF, and the invoice CSV and PDF) are made in the browser.

Client records a salon keeps

A salon can type in, or import from a spreadsheet, records about its clients: first and last name, mobile number, e-mail (optional), gender, birthday, address and notes. Serene stores them for the salon. You may be on a salon's list without ever having used Serene, and Serene does not tell you when a salon adds you.

  • The salon that entered your record collected it. It can edit the record or hide it from its list. Hiding is not deleting: the record stays on Serene's servers until a deletion request is completed.
  • If the salon books you in, Serene e-mails you about the booking, for example when it is made, moved or cancelled, where your record has an e-mail address. The salon can switch off its reminder and thank-you messages, and decides whether its messages also come by text message; you are always told when a booking is made, accepted, cancelled, rejected, moved or marked as a no-show, and about any refund. When the salon completes a sale, you get the invoice (see Who sees what). The salon can see a log of these messages.
  • You have no login and no screen of your own. To find out what a salon holds about you, or to correct it or have it removed, use the contact in Who we are. We handle it with the salon and tell you what was done.
  • A salon may record a child as a client. Everything here applies to that record, and a parent or guardian can make requests about it.

Who is responsible in law for these records, the salon or Serene, and on what legal basis they are kept, is being confirmed and will be stated here. The same applies to staff records and to the staff a salon shows on the marketplace.

If you run a salon: do not type health information, or anything else sensitive, into client notes. Serene does not ask for it and has no field meant for it.

Location

On your phone

Both phone apps read your device's precise location when they start, if you allow it, and only while the app is open; never in the background. The customer app uses it to sort salons by distance and to place a home-visit address on the map; the salon app, to place your branch on the map. While location is off, both apps ask again each time they start. Once your phone stops showing that question, the salon app shows its own message offering to open Settings.

On phones, the operating system turns coordinates into an address, using Apple's or Google's services, and the apps send address searches straight to Google Maps Platform.

On the web, in searches and for home visits

The customer web app does not read your browser's location; it searches from the centre of Riyadh until you choose a place. The salon web app asks your browser for your position, and turning a pin into an address there goes through Serene's server to Google. On the web, address search also goes through Serene's server to Google. The web apps load Google's map script on every page, so Google receives your IP address and browser details whenever you use them.

When you search, your coordinates go to Serene's server only to sort salons by distance. Serene works out the distance itself, not Google, and the search does not store your coordinates.

A home-visit address you give over WhatsApp (the pin, its label and the details you type) is saved to your account and offered back on later WhatsApp bookings. One you give in the customer app is stored with that booking only. Either way, the salon that visits you sees it. You cannot remove a saved address in the app or the chat today; ask us and we will remove it.

Payments, saved cards, wallet and payouts

Paying by card

Customers pay by card or Apple Pay on Serene's own payment page. The customer app opens it when you choose to pay online: on the web in the same browser tab, and in the phone apps in a browser view inside the app. On WhatsApp it opens from a link Serene sends you, for example in reply to a booking. On that page you type your card into HyperPay's own form, which sends it straight to HyperPay. Serene's servers never receive your card number or security code. The customer app offers no card screen of its own and does not save cards. The phone apps contain HyperPay's payment software: the salon phone app takes a card with it (see below), and the customer phone app carries it but no longer uses it to take a card. That software may collect information about your phone itself; we are confirming with HyperPay what, and why, and will state it here.

When you choose how to pay on that page, it loads HyperPay's card form from HyperPay's servers, so HyperPay sees your IP address and browser details before you type anything into that form.

Whenever Serene asks HyperPay to prepare a card or Apple Pay payment, or to save a card, Serene's server sends HyperPay the payer's first name and mobile number from their Serene account, their last name and e-mail address from their account when it has them, or, for a card payment on the payment page, as typed there (see below), and Saudi Arabia as the billing country, unless HyperPay's card form on the payment page supplies the address, or the payment is made with Apple Pay on that page, which carries no billing address or country (see below). It sends them when the payment is prepared, before anything is paid, whether or not the payment then goes ahead. HyperPay uses these details in its checks on the payment, which can include passing them to the bank that issued the card for its security check (3-D Secure). For a booking paid on the payment page, the payer is the customer the booking is for, whether the page was opened from the customer app or from a link Serene sends: Serene's server reads their details from the booking, even if someone else opens the page and pays, and the payment page does not show them. If that account has no last name or no e-mail address, the payment page needs whoever pays to type what is missing before the card form opens; it goes to HyperPay with that payment only, together with the booking customer's first name and mobile number, and is not saved to the account.

On Serene's payment page, HyperPay's card form asks for a billing address with every card payment: street, city, region (chosen from a list of the Kingdom's regions), postcode, and the country, which is Saudi Arabia. Serene's page checks the region, postcode and street in your browser before the form sends them, with the card details, to HyperPay, and supplies the country itself if the form does not; the address itself is sent to HyperPay by the form, not by Serene's page. HyperPay's answer about the payment, which Serene's server reads to learn whether the payment went through, includes the address, and Serene does not keep it, write it to its logs or pass it on to anyone, including the salon. If Serene's payment page offers Apple Pay and you choose it, the page opens Apple Pay straight away: it asks for no last name, e-mail address or billing address, so Serene's server sends HyperPay only the payer details the account holds (see above), and no billing address or billing country is sent with that payment. Apple Pay itself works under your own terms with Apple.

When a salon pays its Serene fees by card from the partner web app, the payment goes through the same payment page: the card details are entered into HyperPay's own form and never reach us, and the name, e-mail address and mobile number of the salon user who is paying, together with the amount owed, are sent to HyperPay with that payment.

For a card saved in the salon phone app, Serene keeps the brand, the first digits and the last four digits, the holder's name, the expiry date, and a HyperPay token that lets the card be used again without typing it. A card saved earlier in the customer app is kept the same way until the account is deleted; the app no longer shows it or uses it. For each payment Serene keeps the amount, the status, HyperPay's references, fees and the salon's share. If a saved card is removed in the salon phone app, its registration at HyperPay is cancelled; Serene's own record is marked removed but keeps the token until the account is deleted.

Wallet and payouts

  • STC Pay is no longer offered as a way to pay, and nothing is sent to it.
  • Your account has a wallet balance for deposits, refunds and credits. A wallet balance cannot be withdrawn in the app. A refund of a booking you paid by card goes back to that card (see the refund and cancellation policy); if one went to your wallet instead and is still there, you can ask us to return it to that card.
  • Salon owners pay Serene's fees by card: in the salon phone app in Serene's own card screen, from which HyperPay's payment software on the phone sends the card straight to HyperPay, and from the partner web app on the payment page (see above). When Serene pays a salon what it is owed through HyperPay's payout service, it sends that service the amount and the account holder's name, IBAN, address, city and bank code, and the service sends the results back to Serene.

Who sees what

The salon you book

The salon sees:

  • your name, phone number, e-mail address and profile photo, and any birthday or gender recorded on your account;
  • your home-visit address, if you booked a home visit;
  • your booking history with that salon, and any note you added;
  • the chat messages you send it, and your ratings and reviews;
  • a log of the messages Serene sent you for it: where each went, what it said and what became of it, which for a WhatsApp message includes whether it was delivered and read.

Its staff see the diary. When a booking is made, moved or cancelled, the salon's owner and staff get a push notification with your first name, how many treatments, the staff member and the time. If the salon has switched its booking e-mails on, an e-mail also goes to the address the salon chose and to the staff member booked, with your full name, the booking's number and time, the treatments and their prices and the staff member; e-mails about a refund or a fee on the booking go there too, with the amount. When you ask to move a booking at a salon that confirms bookings by hand, the salon's owner and staff get a push notification with your full name, the staff member, the booking's time, the time you asked for and the time by which the salon has to answer, and another if the salon does not answer in time; where the salon has switched its booking e-mails on, each new request is e-mailed there too, with what a booking e-mail carries, the time you asked for and that deadline.

Serene's team

Serene's team can see account, booking and payment records, and can read the messages customers and salons exchange through the app and the support messages you send. It can also send you messages of its own (see Notifications).

Chat

You can message a salon from its page without booking; that salon then sees your name, profile photo and e-mail address with your messages. Chat messages between you and a salon are stored with Google (Firestore), and each message you send a salon is also sent, as a push notification carrying your name, to the salon owner's device when the owner has one registered (see Where your data is). Images sent in chat are stored with Amazon Web Services.

Uploaded files

Everything uploaded to Serene, from profile photos and salon photos to documents and chat images, is stored with Amazon Web Services in Germany. Anyone who has a file's web address can open it, so treat an upload as something others could see. Serene does not alter uploaded files, so details your phone saves inside a photo, such as where and when it was taken, may stay in it. Taking a file off your account, such as your photo, unlinks it; the stored file stays with Amazon.

Reviews

A review you write goes to the salon, which can reply to it and may publish it on its public page. A published review shows your first name, last name and profile photo beside the stars. A review left over WhatsApp appears under the name on your account. If you do not want a review shown, ask us and we will take it down.

Invoices

Once a salon completes a sale, Serene sends the invoice to the e-mail address on your record, where there is one, and may also text a short summary (the salon, the invoice number and the total) to your mobile number. Neither your notification settings nor the salon's switch this off. The salon can also send your invoice to an e-mail address or phone number it types in. A salon setting decides whether your contact details are printed on the invoice. Anyone who has an invoice's link can open it.

The WhatsApp channel

The WhatsApp channel is in early access. It runs on the number +966 53 380 8108, anyone with WhatsApp can message it, and it only writes to you within 24 hours of your last message to it: it answers the conversations you start and, in that time, tells you what happens to a booking you made there and what became of a request you made there to move a booking.

What we receive

Meta passes us your WhatsApp number, the text you type, the options you tap and any location pin you share. When we send you a message there, Meta also tells us whether it was delivered and whether it was read. Meta also sends the name on your WhatsApp profile with each message. We use it only to suggest it as your booking name the first time you need an account (see below): it becomes your account's name only if you accept it, and it is used for nothing else. We do not keep it with the conversation or write it to a log. We refuse photos, voice notes and documents: we reply that we only read text and menu choices, and we do not download or keep the file.

Your number is your account

WhatsApp has already confirmed your number, so we send no code. You can look at salons, treatments and free times without an account. The first time you do something that needs one (save a home-visit address, confirm a booking or rate a visit), we ask you, once, for the name the salon will see. We suggest the name on your WhatsApp profile: accept it to use it, or type another name instead. If your profile has no name we can use, we ask you to type one. An account is then created under your WhatsApp number and that name. If your number already has a Serene account, that account is used and its name is not changed.

That name is the one the salon sees on your booking and the one a published review of yours shows. If you also use the Serene app with the same number, it is the same account: your bookings and reviews appear in both. Addresses saved in the chat are offered back only in the chat.

What goes to the salon

When you confirm a booking, the salon receives your name, your number, the booking and, for a home visit, your address. A review you send later goes to it too. If the same number has an app account, the salon also sees the e-mail and photo on it, and any birthday or gender recorded there. The salon's push notifications are under Who sees what.

A location you share to find salons nearby goes to Serene's server to sort salons by distance. It is kept only for the conversation, unless you choose it as your home-visit address.

What we keep

  • The conversation: your WhatsApp number in full, where you are in the conversation, the choices you made and what you typed for them (such as a search, a name or an address), any location you shared, the name we use for you (the name on your WhatsApp profile is not kept here unless you accepted it as that name), your saved home-visit addresses with their places on the map, the salons, treatments, prices, staff members' names and free times we last showed you, the salons you recently viewed, the bookings we last showed you (with their times, prices, salon and staff member and, for a home visit, its address), when you last messaged us, and the language of the conversation. It is kept on the server's disk, so it is still there if the service restarts: so that you can carry on where you left off, and so that what we tell you about a booking you made in the chat, or about a request you made there to move a booking, reaches you inside WhatsApp's 24-hour window and in your language. It is kept until 24 hours after your last message, then deleted at a clean-up that runs every 10 minutes and when the service starts. So that it does not send you the same message about a booking twice, the service also keeps a note on the server's disk, for about 7 days, of which of those messages it has sent; the note holds codes derived from your number instead of the number itself, and not the message.
  • No transcript of what you typed. The WhatsApp service's troubleshooting logs record your number in masked form, the step you were on, the kind of message you sent (text, a tap or a location) or that we sent you about a booking, and identifiers, such as those of the salons, branches, treatments, staff members and times we offered you, a booking's number or record number, the record number of a saved address or of a request to move a booking, and the place of a salon whose map we sent you. They never record the text of a message, a name, an address or a sign-in. When a request to Serene's server fails, that server's log can hold the whole request, including your full number, name, address or review. How long logs are kept is under How long we keep data.
  • Bookings, addresses and reviews made in the chat, stored like any other. A booking also records whether it was made on WhatsApp or in the Serene app, which is how we know to tell you about it on WhatsApp, and your Serene account records whether you have turned those messages off. We also keep a record, by your number, of your choices about those messages (see How long we keep data).
  • For each conversation, a sign-in record that expires after 30 days; for each booking, notification and message-log records. A deletion request covers these.

When we message you

Serene never starts a conversation. We write to you on WhatsApp only inside WhatsApp's 24-hour service window, which your last message to us opens: we answer the conversations you start, and we never message you first on WhatsApp. Inside that window we also send you, without your asking, two kinds of message that can come later. About a booking you made in the chat (not one made in the Serene app), we tell you there when a payment for it is received; when a refund for it is made, to your card or to your Serene wallet; when a salon that confirms bookings by hand accepts it (with a link to pay the deposit, if one is still to be paid online), declines it, or does not answer in time; when the salon cancels it; and when it is cancelled because the deposit was not paid in time. When you confirm a booking in the chat, we tell you there that we will message you about it. And when you ask in the chat to move a booking at a salon that confirms bookings by hand, we tell you there what became of your request (the salon accepted it, declined it, did not answer in time, or changed the booking itself). We send these only while the 24-hour window your last message to us opened is still open; after that we do not send them, and My bookings shows where your booking stands. We send nothing else there: no reminders, no marketing and no other notifications. To turn both kinds of message off, type "stop" in the chat; to turn them back on, type "resume". We keep that choice on your Serene account and, by your number, in a record of its own, so that another account on the same number stays stopped too. You can also block the number, or ask us to turn them off through the contact in Who we are; we honour either, on or off WhatsApp. Blocking stops WhatsApp only: to stop text messages, ask us.

Outside WhatsApp, a booking made in the chat is treated like any other: the salon is notified in its app, and if the salon has switched text messages on, Serene may text the number you booked with to confirm the booking and remind you. For invoices, see Who sees what.

Payment

We never ask for card details in the chat. When a salon needs payment in advance, we send a link to Serene's own payment page (see Payments).

Meta's part

Messages travel through Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform. Meta Platforms Ireland Limited processes them on Serene's behalf, with data centres run by its sub-processors in the United States, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland. Meta keeps copies of messages for up to 30 days, encrypted at rest. It may scan them under its own policies and share them with Meta companies or with authorities. It may also use message data for its own purposes, such as keeping WhatsApp safe and, in aggregated form, improving its services, under its own terms. WhatsApp does not treat chats with businesses that use Meta's hosting, as this channel does, as end-to-end encrypted, and labels them so. For what WhatsApp itself does with your data, see WhatsApp's privacy policy.

Reaching a person

The booking bot cannot pass you on to a person. To reach one, message the Serene team on the number in Who we are.

Why we use your data, and what allows us to

We use your data for these reasons:

  • To take and carry out bookings: making, moving and cancelling bookings, notifying you and the salon, and handling deposits, payments, refunds, cancellation fees, invoices and payouts. This rests on the booking you ask us to make and, for a salon, on its arrangement with Serene to be listed. The rules for bookings, payments and refunds are in Serene's terms and conditions and its refund and cancellation policy.
  • To show you salons, treatments and free times, and the salons you recently viewed, using what you choose to send: a place, a pin you share, or your device's location if you allow it. This rests on your consent: you choose what to send, and location is read only if you allow it.
  • To pass your details to the salon you book, as listed under Who sees what, so that it can serve you. We pass them on when you confirm a booking, and only to the salon you chose. If you message a salon through the app without booking, that salon also sees your name, profile photo and e-mail address with your messages. Its legal basis is being confirmed (see below).
  • To let a salon run its business on Serene: keeping its client list, staff records and diary, showing its listing and bookable staff on the marketplace, sending its booking messages and invoices to its clients, and preparing its exports. For the salon, this rests on its arrangement with Serene. For the clients and staff in those records, see below.
  • To answer support messages and to review salons before they are listed, as part of Serene's arrangement with you or with your salon.
  • To show reviews: a review you write goes to the salon, which may publish it with your name and photo. Its legal basis is being confirmed (see below).
  • Optional things for customers: an e-mail address, a profile photo, and location or notification permission. These rest on your consent. You can withdraw it at any time: change your profile or your device's permissions or, to take your photo off your account, which the app cannot do, ask us. Withdrawing does not undo what happened before.
  • To keep Serene working and safe: security, throttling repeated failed sign-ins, preventing abuse, diagnosing errors, keeping technical logs and backups, and letting Serene's team look at account, booking and chat records and send you messages about your account, a booking, a payment or the service. This rests on Serene's legitimate interest in running a service that works and is not misused.
  • To keep the financial records that tax and accounting rules require: bookings, payments and invoices. This is a legal obligation.

Still being confirmed. The legal basis for three things is being confirmed and will be stated here: passing your details to the salon you book; a salon publishing a review under the reviewer's name; and the client and staff records a salon keeps, including the staff it shows on the marketplace.

We will not use your data in a way that is incompatible with these purposes. If we add a purpose, we will say so here before it starts, and where it needs your consent we will ask for it first.

We do not ask for health information, religion, ethnicity or anything of that kind. Please do not put it in booking notes or client notes.

Where your data is, and who receives it

Serene's own data (the database of accounts, bookings, payments and addresses, the files you upload, the WhatsApp conversations we keep for 24 hours after your last message, our server logs and the backups on the server) is stored with Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt, Germany. That is outside Saudi Arabia. Chat messages are stored with Google. An archived copy of an older database is also kept on a Serene team computer (see How long we keep data).

Who receives your data, and what:

  • Amazon Web Services (Frankfurt, Germany; outside the Kingdom) — hosts Serene's servers and stores every uploaded file. A copy of each nightly backup is also kept for 30 days in a separate Amazon storage bucket, whose region is being confirmed.
  • Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google's data centres outside the Kingdom, including in the United States and Europe) — your push-notification token and the text of each notification, which can include a customer's name, a staff member's name, the treatment, times and amounts, and the text of a chat message. Google keeps the installation identifiers it creates until they are deleted.
  • Google Cloud Firestore (location being confirmed) — chat messages: the text, who sent and received it, times, and links to chat images. It is where chat conversations are kept. The text of each message a customer sends a salon (for an image, its web address) also passes through Serene's server; when the salon owner has a device registered for notifications, it goes on through Firebase Cloud Messaging as a push notification to that device carrying the customer's name, and is then written to our application logs.
  • Google Firebase Crashlytics (outside the Kingdom) — once the customer phone app is released, its crash reports: crash traces, device and system details and installation identifiers, kept by Google for 90 days.
  • Google Maps Platform (outside the Kingdom) — addresses you type and map coordinates and, on the web apps, your IP address and browser details on every page.
  • Google, through Gmail (outside the Kingdom) — every e-mail we send, from Serene's address on Google Workspace: the recipient's address and name, and the message.
  • Apple or Google, through your phone's operating system (on their own servers, which Serene does not choose) — the map coordinates the phone apps turn into an address.
  • Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (Ireland, with sub-processors in the United States, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland; outside the Kingdom) — everything on the WhatsApp channel.
  • HyperPay (processing location being confirmed) — card details, straight from your phone or its own form and never through Serene; for each card or Apple Pay payment Serene prepares, and each card it saves, the payer's first name and mobile number from Serene's server, and their last name and e-mail address from the account when it has them, or, on the payment page, typed there; the billing address entered in its card form on the payment page (the country is Saudi Arabia), and Saudi Arabia as the billing country on the payments the salon phone app prepares; amounts, references and saved-card tokens; the IP address and browser details of anyone who chooses a payment method on Serene's payment page; and, for payouts made through it, the salon's bank details.
  • Saudi National Bank (SNB) (Saudi Arabia) — the salon's account holder's name and IBAN, and the amount, when Serene pays a salon what it is owed by bank transfer from Serene's own bank account rather than through HyperPay's payout service.
  • msegat (Saudi Arabia) — mobile numbers and the text of each text message we send.
  • The salon you book (where the salon is) — see Who sees what.

In what capacity. Amazon, Google (for Firebase Cloud Messaging, Firestore and Crashlytics), Meta and msegat process this data for Serene, to provide their service. Whether HyperPay acts only for Serene or also in its own right for card data, and whether Google handles map searches and e-mail only for Serene or also in its own right, is being confirmed. Your phone's operating system works under your own terms with Apple or Google. Saudi National Bank acts in its own right, as Serene's bank. The salon is a business in its own right. Google's privacy policy describes Google's own processing.

Serene relies on the terms of its agreement with each provider; for WhatsApp, those include Meta's processor terms.

Cookies, browser storage, logs and error reports

This website

serene.salon sets no cookies, runs no analytics and loads nothing from anyone else's servers. It keeps one thing in your browser: the language you chose.

The web apps and the admin console

The customer and salon web apps use no analytics and no advertising. To keep you signed in, they store in your browser's local storage (not in cookies) your session token, name, phone number, e-mail, profile-photo link, push-notification token and language. They load Google's map script from Google on every page. They load Google's Firebase software from Serene's own servers; if that copy fails to load, they fetch it from Google, which then also sees your IP address and browser details. The phone apps keep the same sign-in details on your phone and exclude them from Android's cloud backup.

The admin console sets two cookies on admin.serene.salon to keep an administrator signed in, one holding the sign-in token and one the administrator's profile; the console's own JavaScript sets them in the browser; Serene's server does not. It keeps the chosen language and theme in the browser and runs no analytics.

Serene's server

Serene's server sets no cookies, whether you reach it at api.serene.salon or through one of the web apps.

Logs

Our web servers log each request: IP address, browser, what was requested, when, the result, and the page you came from.

Our application logs record what the system did, for troubleshooting. They can include:

  • the text of notifications and messages we send;
  • details of payments and payouts, including a salon's bank details, and responses from our payment and text-message providers;
  • the address a failed e-mail was meant for;
  • what was entered in the past when a staff member was created or edited, such as their name, e-mail address, phone number, the notes about them and their commission (the passwords in it have been blanked out);
  • when something fails, the data in the failed request, a phone number among it.

How long logs are kept is under How long we keep data.

Error reports

When one of the web apps hits an error, it sends Serene a report: the error message and a redacted stack trace, the build version, the page path without any query, your browser details, the time, and a salted one-way hash of your IP address rather than the address itself. No name, phone number or account id is included. Once released, the customer phone app will use Google's Firebase Crashlytics instead.

Security

What is in place:

  • Every serene.salon address uses TLS (https).
  • Serene's database, API and WhatsApp service cannot be reached from the internet directly; the API and the WhatsApp service only through our web addresses.
  • In our database, passwords for salon and administrator accounts are stored only as hashes. However, a password Serene's team generates for a new salon account is sent by e-mail, a copy of which stays in our e-mail account.
  • Repeated failed sign-ins are throttled.
  • Card numbers and security codes go to HyperPay and never reach Serene's servers.
  • Error reports keep IP addresses only as a salted hash.

What else you should know:

  • Customers have no password: they sign in with their mobile number and a code. While Serene is in early access, that code is not sent to your phone and is the same for every account, so anyone who knows your mobile number can sign in to your Serene account.
  • A sign-in lasts 30 days. Signing out ends that session and stops push notifications until you sign in again. Signing in on another device does not end your other sessions, and neither does changing a password; to end every session, for example after losing a phone, ask us. Push notifications go to one device per account, the last one to register.
  • Uploaded files and invoices can be opened by anyone who has their web address (see Who sees what).
  • Web-server logs keep IP addresses in full.
  • The same apps can also be reached at older numeric addresses without https; use the serene.salon ones.

No method of sending or storing data is completely secure, and we do not promise that it is.

Found a security problem? Tell the Serene team on the number in Who we are.

How long we keep data

How long something works is not how long it is stored. A sign-in code works for 2 minutes, a password-reset link for 30 minutes, and a sign-in for 30 days.

Apart from the automatic expiries and clean-ups below, Serene deletes nothing on a schedule today. Records stay until you ask us to delete them (see Deleting your account or data).

  • Until a deletion request is completed: your account (profile, saved addresses and cards); the log of where each notification went and what it said; client and staff records a salon entered (hiding a record does not delete it); and a salon's profile and bank details.
  • With no end date today, and not reached by a deletion request yet: support messages; chat messages and images; uploaded files, including salons' supporting documents; records of scheduled reminders and of password-reset requests, which include a copy of the reset code; and copies of the e-mails we send, kept in our Gmail account.
  • Bookings, payments and invoices: kept after an account is deleted, as the salon's and Serene's financial records, for as long as tax rules require. That period is being confirmed and will be stated here. An invoice keeps the name, e-mail and phone number recorded on it.
  • Reviews: kept. Your name and photo are removed from them when your account is deleted.
  • Sign-in codes: an unused code can stay stored until you next sign in or ask for a new one.
  • Expired sign-ins: removed automatically; a reference to each stays on your account until the account is deleted.
  • Reports prepared on Serene's server (see Salons, their staff, and what is public): they no longer open 10 minutes after they are prepared, and are deleted from the server within about a minute after that.
  • A WhatsApp conversation, including when you last messaged us and its language: kept on the server's disk until 24 hours after your last message, then deleted at a clean-up that runs every 10 minutes and when the service starts.
  • A record of each notification we send you: what it was about, the booking and account it belongs to, which channel it used, and whether it was sent, arrived and was read. It shows only the last four digits of your number or a masked e-mail address, holds no message text once the message has gone, and is deleted 180 days after it was written. It is separate from the log of where each notification went and what it said, named above.
  • Your WhatsApp choices: the first time you confirm a booking in the WhatsApp chat, where we tell you that we will message you about it, and each time you type "stop" or "resume" or ask us to stop those messages, we keep a record of that: your number, what you said, where and when, its language and your account, if you have one. We keep it, with no end date today, so that we can show your choice and keep to it (see Deleting your account or data for what a deletion request does to it).
  • A note of the WhatsApp messages we sent about a booking: kept on the server's disk for 7 days, then removed the next time the note is written. It holds codes derived from your number instead of the number itself, and not the message.
  • Web-server logs and API log files: about 14 days. Other application logs are rotated by size; their period is being confirmed.
  • Error reports: until the fixed-size store they sit in overwrites them.
  • Backups: a copy of the database every night. The last 14 are kept on the server, and a copy of each is kept for 30 days in a separate Amazon storage bucket.
  • Your requests to us: kept by the Serene team as a record of how we handled them; the period is being confirmed.
  • Older copies: an archived copy of the database as it stood on 6 September 2026 is kept on Serene's server in Frankfurt and on a Serene team computer, with no deletion date set yet. It includes records of people who used the earlier version of this platform. A second database on that server, whose contents we are reviewing, is also kept.

Your rights

You can:

  • know what we hold about you, why, and on what basis;
  • get a copy of it in a clear, readable form;
  • correct, complete or update it;
  • have it deleted (see Deleting your account or data);
  • withdraw a consent you gave, at any time (Why we use your data says how);
  • switch off booking notifications for each channel in your account settings or, if you have no app account, ask us to switch them off for you (see Notifications for what the switches do not cover).

To use any of these rights, use the contact in Who we are, with or without an account. We may ask you to show that the request comes from you, for example by writing from the mobile number on the account, and no more than the request needs. We answer within the time given there.

When you correct, withdraw or delete something, we also tell the salons that received it. For a request about your WhatsApp data, we also pass it to Meta in writing, because Meta may hold copies for up to 30 days.

Complaints. You can complain to us through the same contact. Independently, and without contacting us first, you can complain to the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) through its National Data Governance Platform, dgp.sdaia.gov.sa, within 90 days of the incident or of becoming aware of it. If a breach of the data protection law harms you, you may also seek compensation through the courts.

Deleting your account or data

There is no delete-my-account button in the apps or the chat today. Deletion is by request, and a member of the Serene team carries it out by hand.

How to ask: message the Serene team on WhatsApp at +966 50 163 3399 and say you want your account or your data deleted. Say which account, by its mobile number, or by the salon and your role there. Customers, people who only used WhatsApp, salon owners, salon staff and people a salon recorded as a client can all ask this way. You need no account and no app.

What happens:

  • We check that the request comes from you.
  • We carry it out within 30 days. If we need up to 30 more days, we tell you before the first 30 are up.
  • We confirm to you when it is done, tell you what was removed, and tell the salons that received your data.

What is deleted:

  • your name, contact details and addresses on your account;
  • your saved cards and your sign-in sessions;
  • your notifications, and the records of where they went and what they said;
  • your WhatsApp choices, unless the last thing you told us was to stop (see below);
  • if a salon recorded you as a client or as staff, your details in that record.

What is kept, and why:

  • bookings, payments and invoices, as financial records, for as long as tax rules require; an invoice keeps the name, e-mail and phone number recorded on it;
  • the salon's record of the bookings it served, which the salon needs for its own accounts;
  • your reviews, with your name and photo removed;
  • if the last thing you told us was to stop WhatsApp messages, that one record, with your number and without your account, so that a new account on that number stays stopped; if another Serene account uses the same number, that number's record stays, without your account;
  • the record of what became of each notification, with your number and address removed, until it is deleted 180 days after it was written;
  • reports a salon has downloaded, which are the salon's own files.

What deletion does not reach today:

  • chat messages and images, stored with Google and Amazon;
  • files you uploaded, such as a profile photo, which stay stored with Amazon, where anyone who has a file's address can open them;
  • support messages, and records of scheduled reminders and password-reset requests;
  • technical logs and error reports, until they rotate out (see How long we keep data);
  • backups taken before the deletion, until they rotate out, at most 30 days later;
  • copies of the e-mails we sent you, such as booking messages and invoices, which our Gmail account keeps in its Sent folder;
  • copies Meta keeps of WhatsApp messages, for up to 30 days;
  • the archived copy from 6 September 2026, and the second database on Serene's server that we are reviewing (see How long we keep data).

If you have an upcoming booking or a wallet balance, say so in your request. A wallet balance cannot be withdrawn in the app today; we will agree with you what happens to it, and to the booking, before we delete anything.

If you are a salon owner, deleting your account means closing the salon on Serene. Tell us and we will arrange it with you, including what happens to your client and staff records, your bank details and your documents. The salon's bookings, invoices and payout records are kept as financial records.

Notifications and marketing

Booking notifications tell you when a booking is made, changed, cancelled or completed, remind you before it, tell you when you are marked as not having shown up, tell you when a request you made to move a booking is declined or goes unanswered, and cover payments, refunds and credits. They go by:

  • push notification, through Google Firebase;
  • e-mail, through Gmail;
  • text message, through msegat, only where the salon you booked has switched text messages on.

You can switch each channel off in your account settings. The salon you booked can switch off its reminder and thank-you messages, and decides whether its messages also come by text; you are always told when a booking is made, accepted, cancelled, rejected, moved or marked as a no-show, when a request you made to move it is declined or goes unanswered, and about refunds.

Other messages:

  • the invoice, when a sale is completed (see Who sees what);
  • e-mails with password-reset links, including one a salon owner sends a staff member from the staff screen, and a generated password when Serene's team creates a salon account;
  • for salons, a push notification when your listing is approved, declined, switched on or off, or when fees are due, and an e-mail when a payout is submitted;
  • messages from Serene's team about your account, a booking, a payment or the service, by push notification, e-mail or text.

Your settings do not stop the invoice or password e-mails. If you are a customer, messages from Serene's team respect your settings: we do not send one on a channel you have switched off. If you have no app account, ask us to switch booking messages off for you. Salons have their own notification settings. Serene keeps a log of each notification it sends: where it went and what it said. It also keeps a record of what became of each one (see How long we keep data).

On WhatsApp, Serene never starts a conversation: it writes to you only within 24 hours of your last message to it. In that time it answers you; about a booking you made in the chat, it tells you when a payment for it is received, when a refund is made, when the salon accepts, declines or cancels it, and when it is cancelled because the deposit was not paid in time; and it tells you what became of a request you made in the chat to move a booking. Type "stop" in the chat to turn these messages off, and "resume" to turn them back on (see The WhatsApp channel).

Marketing. Serene sends no promotional or awareness messages today, on any channel. Before we ever did, we would:

  • ask for your consent first;
  • name Serene as the sender;
  • use only details you gave us yourself, and never sensitive information;
  • give you a free way to opt out that is at least as easy as opting in;
  • stop at once when you asked;
  • keep a record of your consent.

Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, the new version is posted on this page with a new date at the top, and the change is listed below. If we add a purpose, we say so here before it starts, and where it needs your consent we ask for it first.

Change record

  • 2026-09-30: first version.
  • 2026-09-30: the earlier privacy policy page at api.serene.salon/policy, still linked from the apps, now forwards here, and no longer sets a cookie.
  • 2026-10-01: reports a salon prepares in the web app on Serene's server now stop opening 10 minutes after they are prepared and are then deleted, where before they were kept with no end date and anyone who had a report's web address, or guessed it from the date and time the report was prepared, could open it; the reports prepared before this change were taken off the web; and downloading a report no longer sets a cookie.
  • 2026-10-02: the reports prepared on Serene's server before 1 October 2026 have been deleted; since 1 October 2026, what a salon enters when it creates or edits a staff member, including a new staff member's password, is no longer written to our application logs; and the staff passwords already written to our server logs have been blanked out.
  • 2026-10-05: Serene's terms and conditions and its refund and cancellation policy are published, and this page links to them; and a refund still in your wallet for a booking you paid by card can be returned to that card if you ask us.
  • 2026-10-11: Serene's server no longer sets any cookie. The functional cookie called connect.sid, which some of its addresses set and which was never used to sign anyone in, is gone.
  • 2026-10-12: The salon you booked can switch off its messages about a new booking, an accepted booking, a reminder and a thank-you; you are always told when a booking is cancelled, rejected, moved or marked as a no-show, and about refunds. If you are a customer, messages from Serene's team respect your settings. The booking e-mails a salon can switch on, which go to the address the salon chose and to the staff member booked, now carry your full name, the booking's number and time, the treatments and their prices and the staff member; e-mails about a refund or a fee on the booking go there too, with the amount.
  • 2026-10-13: the operator's registered details are added: Data Engineering Establishment (مؤسسة هندسة البيانات), Unified National Number 7055292051, Al Yasmin, Riyadh.
  • 2026-10-15: a salon can no longer switch off the message that tells you a booking has been made for you; it can still switch off its messages about an accepted booking, a reminder and a thank-you.
  • 2026-10-20: at a salon that confirms bookings by hand, moving a booking the salon has accepted is now a request that the salon accepts or declines. The salon is told of each request, with your full name and the time you asked for, and you are always told when your request is declined or goes unanswered. If you made the request on WhatsApp, we tell you there what became of it, inside the 24-hour window your last message opened; for that, the WhatsApp service keeps in its memory when you last messaged us and the language of the conversation.
  • 2026-10-23: since 21 October 2026, a salon owner's e-mail address and mobile number are no longer part of the salon's public listing; the owner's name, and whether the salon is registered as an individual or a business, still are.
  • 2026-10-24: when Serene asks HyperPay to prepare a card or Apple Pay payment, or to save a card, its server now also sends HyperPay the payer's first name and mobile number, their last name and e-mail address from the account, or typed on the payment page when the account has none, and Saudi Arabia as the billing country, unless HyperPay's form, or Apple Pay, on the payment page supplies the address; for a payment through a link Serene sends, the payer is the customer the booking is for. HyperPay's card form on the payment page asks for a billing address with every card payment (country Saudi Arabia, the region from a list), and where the payment page offers Apple Pay, Apple Pay sends HyperPay the billing contact of the card you choose. A salon's bank details go to HyperPay's payout service only when Serene pays the salon through it.
  • 2026-10-30: when Serene pays a salon what it is owed by bank transfer from Serene's own bank account rather than through HyperPay's payout service, the salon's account holder's name and IBAN, and the amount, go to Saudi National Bank (SNB), which makes the transfer. STC Pay is no longer offered as a way to pay: nothing is sent to it, and it is no longer listed among the recipients. A refund of a booking you paid by card now goes back to that card through HyperPay; for that, Serene sends HyperPay only the payment's reference and the amount, and keeps HyperPay's refund reference.
  • 2026-10-31: a WhatsApp conversation, including when you last messaged us and its language, is now kept on the server's disk until 24 hours after your last message and then deleted, instead of in the server's memory, where the conversation was used for an hour; so it is still there if you come back within 24 hours of your last message, or if the service restarts.
  • 2026-11-01: if you make a booking on WhatsApp from now on, we also tell you there, within 24 hours of your last message to us, when a payment for it is received, when a refund is made (to your card or to your Serene wallet), when the salon accepts or declines it, when the salon cancels it, and when it is cancelled because the deposit was not paid in time; for that, each new booking records whether it was made on WhatsApp or in the app. The booking confirmation in the chat tells you that we will message you about the booking. Typing "stop" in the chat turns these messages, and the answers about a request to move a booking, off; typing "resume" turns them back on; your account keeps the choice. This replaces our earlier statement that we would first ask for a separate opt-in before sending you other notifications on WhatsApp. And the first time you need an account on WhatsApp, we now ask you for the name the salon will see and suggest the name on your WhatsApp profile, instead of using that name without asking: it becomes your account's name only if you accept it, we use it for nothing else, and we no longer keep it.
  • 2026-11-02: the WhatsApp channel now runs on the number +966 53 380 8108, which anyone with WhatsApp can message, instead of a Meta test number that only pre-approved phones could reach.
  • 2026-11-03: since 2 November 2026, choosing Apple Pay on Serene's payment page opens Apple Pay straight away: the page no longer asks for a last name or an e-mail address first, Apple Pay no longer sends HyperPay a billing contact, and no billing address or billing country is sent with an Apple Pay payment. Customers now pay by card or Apple Pay on Serene's payment page from the customer app too, on the web and on phones, and type a card only into HyperPay's own form there; the customer app no longer offers a card screen of its own and no longer saves cards, and it no longer shows or uses a card saved in it earlier.
  • 2026-11-06: Serene now keeps a record of each notification it sends: what it was about, the booking and account it belongs to, which channel it used and what became of it, including, for a WhatsApp message, whether it was delivered and read, which the salon can also see in its log. The record shows only the last four digits of your number or a masked e-mail address, holds no message text once the message has gone, and is deleted after 180 days. We also keep a record, by number, of who confirmed a booking in the WhatsApp chat and of who typed "stop" or "resume", and we added one for those who had already done so; a stop stays even after the account is deleted, so that a new account on that number stays stopped. The note the WhatsApp service keeps of the messages it has sent about a booking is now on the server's disk for about 7 days, instead of in its memory for 24 hours. And a salon can no longer switch off the message that tells you a booking has been accepted.
  • 2026-11-06: Serene's e-mails now come from Serene's address on Google Workspace, instead of an ordinary Gmail account.