Privacy policy

Website demo and email sign-ups

The demo on this website runs in your browser. The names, messages and amounts you type are kept in your browser's local storage so the demo can carry on between pages; they are not sent to us. No payment is taken and no email is sent: demo emails are shown on screen.

If you tick "Email me Gift Union news and tips", we keep your email address, the name you entered and the time you signed up, so we can send you occasional updates about Gift Union. We store them with our hosting provider, Cloudflare. You can unsubscribe at any time from any email, or ask us to delete your details by emailing support@giftunion.app.

Last Updated: March 4, 2026

Gift Union ("we", "us", "our") operates this application and website, including all related information, content, features, tools, products and services, in order to provide you, the customer, with a group gifting experience (the "Services"). Gift Union is powered by Shopify, which enables us to provide the Services to you. This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, and disclose your personal information when you visit, use, or make a purchase or other transaction using the Services or otherwise communicate with us. If there is a conflict between our Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy, this Privacy Policy controls with respect to the collection, processing, and disclosure of your personal information.

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. By using and accessing any of the Services, you acknowledge that you have read this Privacy Policy and understand the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.

Personal Information We Collect or Process

When we use the term "personal information," we are referring to information that identifies or can reasonably be linked to you or another person. Personal information does not include information that is collected anonymously or that has been de-identified, so that it cannot identify or be reasonably linked to you. We may collect or process the following categories of personal information, including inferences drawn from this personal information, depending on how you interact with the Services, where you live, and as permitted or required by applicable law:

  • Contact details including your name, email address, and billing address.
  • Financial information including payment card information, transaction details, form of payment, payment confirmation and other payment details. All payment processing is handled by Shopify — we do not directly collect or store payment card numbers.
  • Account information including your preferences and settings.
  • Transaction information including contribution amounts, gift card collections you create, contribute to, or manage, and your past transactions.
  • Gift collection information including organizer name and email, recipient name and email, personal messages, contribution amounts, and collection details (such as deadlines and goals).
  • Communications with us including the information you include in communications with us, for example, when sending a customer support inquiry.
  • Device information including information about your device, browser, or network connection, your IP address, and other unique identifiers.
  • Usage information including information regarding your interaction with the Services, including how and when you interact with or navigate the Services.

Personal Information Sources

We may collect personal information from the following sources:

  • Directly from you including when you create a gift card collection, make a contribution, visit or use the Services, communicate with us, or otherwise provide us with your personal information.
  • Automatically through the Services including from your device when you use our products or services or visit our websites. If the merchant has configured optional analytics (Google Analytics 4 or Google Tag Manager), page view and event data may be collected and sent directly to the merchant's own analytics account.
  • From Shopify including through Shopify's APIs when merchants install and use our App. We access store information, orders, draft orders, gift cards, metaobjects, and theme data to provide the Services.
  • From our service providers including when we engage them to enable certain technology and when they collect or process your personal information on our behalf.

How We Use Your Personal Information

Depending on how you interact with us or which of the Services you use, we may use personal information for the following purposes:

  • Provide, Tailor, and Improve the Services. We use your personal information to provide you with the Services, including to process contributions via Shopify Draft Orders, generate gift cards upon collection completion, deliver the interactive gift reveal experience, enforce collection deadlines and grace periods, send transactional lifecycle emails (collection created, contribution received, collection completed), manage merchant app settings and branding, and to create a customized experience for you. This may include using your personal information to better tailor and improve the Services.
  • Security and Fraud Prevention. We use your personal information to authenticate accounts, verify Shopify App Proxy request signatures, provide secure token-based access to collections (using separate share, manage, and reveal tokens), detect, investigate or take action regarding possible fraudulent, illegal, unsafe, or malicious activity, and to secure our Services.
  • Communicating with You. We use your personal information to provide you with customer support, send transactional emails via our email service provider (Resend), and to maintain our business relationship with you.
  • Internal Analytics and Reporting. We use aggregated, anonymized collection and contribution data for internal business metrics and reporting. This data is associated with the merchant's store, not individual customers.
  • Legal Reasons. We use your personal information to comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including requests from law enforcement or government agencies, to investigate or participate in civil discovery, potential or actual litigation, or other adversarial legal proceedings, and to enforce or investigate potential violations of our terms or policies.

We do not sell personal data to third parties. We do not use personal data for advertising or marketing purposes.

How We Disclose Personal Information

In certain circumstances, we may disclose your personal information to third parties for legitimate purposes subject to this Privacy Policy. Such circumstances may include:

  • With Shopify, who hosts our Services and processes personal information about your access to and use of the Services. Information including orders, draft orders, gift cards, and metaobjects is transmitted to and shared with Shopify to provide the Services.
  • With Resend (our email service provider), who receives organizer, contributor, and recipient email addresses and names to deliver transactional lifecycle emails on our behalf.
  • With Neon (our database hosting provider), who hosts our application database containing session data and anonymized reporting data.
  • With Google (optional, merchant-configured), if the merchant enables GA4 or GTM analytics. In this case, page view and event data is sent directly from your browser to the merchant's Google Analytics property — we do not receive or store this data.
  • When you direct, request us or otherwise consent to our disclosure of certain information to third parties.
  • With our affiliates or otherwise within our corporate group.
  • In connection with a business transaction such as a merger or bankruptcy, to comply with any applicable legal obligations (including to respond to subpoenas, search warrants and similar requests), to enforce any applicable terms of service or policies, and to protect or defend the Services, our rights, and the rights of our users or others.

Data Storage and Retention

Where We Store Data

The majority of app data — collections, contributions, recipient details, and app settings — is stored as Shopify Metaobjects within the merchant's own Shopify admin. This means the merchant retains direct access to and control over this data.

We also maintain a PostgreSQL database (hosted on Neon) that stores:

  • Session data: Shopify authentication sessions.
  • Shop records: Installation status, subscription plan, and billing cycle information.
  • Reporting snapshots: Anonymized copies of collection and contribution data for internal business analytics.

How Long We Retain Data

How long we retain your personal information depends on different factors, such as whether we need the information to maintain your account, to provide you with Services, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes or enforce other applicable contracts and policies.

  • Shopify Metaobjects are retained in the merchant's Shopify admin until the merchant deletes them or uninstalls the App.
  • Session and shop data is deleted upon App uninstall (via Shopify's app/uninstalled webhook) or within 48 hours of uninstall (via the shop/redact compliance webhook).
  • Server logs are retained for a limited operational period (typically 30 days), then automatically purged.

Relationship with Shopify

The Services are hosted by Shopify, which collects and processes personal information about your access to and use of the Services in order to provide and improve the Services for you. Information you submit to the Services will be transmitted to and shared with Shopify as well as third parties that may be located in countries other than where you reside, in order to provide and improve the Services for you. To learn more about how Shopify uses your personal information and any rights you may have, you can visit the Shopify Consumer Privacy Policy. Depending on where you live, you may exercise certain rights with respect to your personal information via the Shopify Privacy Portal.

Cookies and Tracking Technologies

Our App does not place cookies on your customers' devices. We do not use any tracking technologies for advertising or cross-site tracking.

If the merchant configures optional analytics (GA4 or GTM) in the App settings, the corresponding tracking scripts will be loaded on the App's customer-facing pages. These scripts are controlled by the merchant's own Google Analytics or GTM configuration and are subject to the merchant's own privacy policy and cookie consent practices.

The Services may provide links to websites or other online platforms operated by third parties. If you follow links to sites not affiliated or controlled by us, you should review their privacy and security policies and other terms and conditions. We do not guarantee and are not responsible for the privacy or security of such sites, including the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of information found on these sites. Our inclusion of such links does not, by itself, imply any endorsement of the content on such platforms or of their owners or operators, except as disclosed on the Services.

Children's Data

The Services are not intended to be used by children, and we do not knowingly collect any personal information about children under the age of majority in your jurisdiction. If you are the parent or guardian of a child who has provided us with their personal information, you may contact us using the contact details set out below to request that it be deleted. As of the Effective Date of this Privacy Policy, we do not have actual knowledge that we "share" or "sell" (as those terms are defined in applicable law) personal information of individuals under 16 years of age.

Security of Your Information

Please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable, and we cannot guarantee "perfect security." We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data, including:

  • Signature verification of all App Proxy requests against Shopify's HMAC signature.
  • Token-based access control using separate share, manage, and reveal tokens for collections.
  • Encrypted connections (TLS) for all data transmitted between the App, Shopify, and third-party services.
  • Secure authentication via Shopify's OAuth-based authentication.
  • Database encryption at rest and in transit via our hosting provider (Neon).

We recommend that you do not use unsecure channels to communicate sensitive or confidential information to us.

Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the rights listed below in relation to your personal information. However, these rights are not absolute, may apply only in certain circumstances and, in certain cases, we may decline your request as permitted by law.

  • Right to Access / Know. You may have a right to request access to personal information that we hold about you.
  • Right to Delete. You may have a right to request that we delete personal information we maintain about you.
  • Right to Correct. You may have a right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information we maintain about you.
  • Right of Portability. You may have a right to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to request that we transfer it to a third party, in certain circumstances and with certain exceptions.

If you reside in the UK or European Economic Area, and subject to exceptions and limitations provided by local law, you may exercise the following rights in addition to the rights outlined above:

  • Objection to Processing and Restriction of Processing: You may have the right to ask us to stop or restrict our processing of personal information for certain purposes.
  • Withdrawal of Consent: Where we rely on consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw this consent. If you withdraw your consent, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing based on your consent before its withdrawal.

How We Process Data Rights Requests

We subscribe to Shopify's mandatory compliance webhooks to process data rights requests:

  • Customer Data Request (customers/data_request): We identify and provide data held about the customer. Since contribution data is stored in Shopify Metaobjects (accessible to the merchant), merchants can also review and export this data directly from their Shopify admin.
  • Customer Redact (customers/redact): We review and remove any personal data associated with the identified customer from our application database.
  • Shop Redact (shop/redact): Upon receiving this webhook (48 hours after uninstall), we delete all shop data and sessions from our application database.

You may also exercise any of these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided below. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights. We may need to verify your identity before we can process your requests. We will respond to your request in a timely manner as required under applicable law.

To learn more about how Shopify uses your personal information and any rights you may have, including rights related to data processed by Shopify, you can visit https://privacy.shopify.com/en.

Complaints

If you have complaints about how we process your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided below. Depending on where you live, you may have the right to appeal our decision by contacting us using the contact details set out below, or lodge your complaint with your local data protection authority. For the EEA, you can find a list of the responsible data protection supervisory authorities here.

International Transfers

Please note that we may transfer, store and process your personal information outside the country you live in.

If we transfer your personal information out of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we will rely on recognized transfer mechanisms like the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, or any equivalent contracts issued by the relevant competent authority of the UK, as relevant, unless the data transfer is to a country that has been determined to provide an adequate level of protection.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, including to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. We will post the revised Privacy Policy on this website, update the "Last updated" date and provide notice as required by applicable law.

Contact

Should you have any questions about our privacy practices or this Privacy Policy, or if you would like to exercise any of the rights available to you, please email us at chris@onstate.co.uk. For the purpose of applicable data protection laws, we are the data controller of your personal information.

This Privacy Policy is intended to comply with Shopify's privacy requirements for apps and applicable privacy regulations. It is not a substitute for legal advice. We recommend consulting with a qualified legal professional for your specific compliance needs.