Privacy policy

Card names, numbers, PINs, balances, spending you log, and photos you add are stored on your phone. Beep has no server that holds them and no way to read them. The one exception is a card you choose to add to Google Wallet, described below.

If Android’s backup is on, it can copy Beep’s data — your cards, their history and Beep’s settings, not the photos — to your Google account, so that a new phone can restore it. The photos stay out because Android stops backing up an app altogether once its data passes 25 MB. Moving straight to a new phone brings them along when the old one runs Android 12 or later; an export file always does. That backup is between you and Google; Beep neither runs nor can read it.

“Export cards” in Settings writes a file wherever you choose. Anyone who has that file can read the cards in it, PINs included.

The camera is used to read a card — its barcode, and the text printed on it, such as the store’s name and a gift card’s PIN — and only while the scanner or the camera for card photos is open. Frames and photos are read on the phone, by barcode and text recognition built into Beep; nothing is sent to Google, to Beep or to anyone else. When a card is added, the photo it was read from is kept as that card’s first photo, stored with your cards on your phone. Other frames are never recorded, stored or sent anywhere.

If you use “Choose photo” instead, Beep reads only the photo you pick, on the phone, and keeps it as the card’s first photo in the same way. Photos you take or choose for a card later are kept with it too. Deleting a card deletes its photos.

If a card has an expiry date, Beep can remind you before it runs out. The reminders are scheduled on your phone and shown by Android; nothing about the card is sent to Beep or anyone else. You can turn them off in Settings, or turn off notifications for Beep in Android’s settings.

Home screen widgets show each card’s name, colour, logo and, for gift cards, balance — never its number, PIN or photos. They are drawn on your phone and sent nowhere.

Touch and hold Beep’s icon and your first cards appear there as shortcuts, with their name and logo. Android keeps them on your phone to show them, and Beep passes them to nothing else.

If you add Beep to Quick Settings, it shows the name of the card it opens, and nothing else about the card. The name can be seen there while your phone is locked; the card itself opens only once you unlock it.

The store list and every logo are bundled inside the app. Beep never asks a server which store a card belongs to, because that question would reveal which cards you hold.

“Suggest a store” in Settings opens a store-suggestion form in your browser. The form is hosted by Google and its own terms apply there, the same as any web page you open. Beep sends nothing with the tap: no card, no wallet contents, and no identifier. Nothing on that form asks about your cards, and you never have to open it.

Once you have used a few cards, Beep may ask Google Play to show its rating dialog — at most once per version, and never over a barcode. The dialog is Google Play’s, through Google’s in-app review library: Beep isn’t told whether you rate, and nothing about your cards is involved.

Adding a card to Google Wallet is up to you, one card at a time. When you add one, its name, programme, number and expiry date, and a gift card’s PIN, are sent to Google, which keeps the pass in Google Wallet under Beep’s issuer account (TIT B.V.). Its balance, the spending you log and your notes are not sent. Google’s privacy policy applies to the pass there.

The card itself never passes through a Beep server. To show the store’s logo on the pass, Google fetches that logo from titdev.nl when you add the card, so the site can see which store’s logo was asked for, though not by whom. Beep does not read the passes back, although as the issuer TIT B.V. could look them up through Google’s interface. Removing a pass in Google Wallet takes it off your phone and out of your Google account, but Google gives issuers no way to delete a pass, so its record stays under Beep’s issuer account.

Beep includes Google’s Wallet library for this. It talks to Google Play services on your phone, to check whether Google Wallet can be used and to add a card when you ask. Google documents that this library collects your Google account’s ID and email address (to keep passes in your account), the phone’s Android ID, which of Google Wallet’s screens you view and tap, and crash reports. That is Google collecting, for Google and under Google’s privacy policy, not Beep; Beep receives none of it.

Deleting a card removes it, with its photos and history, from your phone. Deleting the app removes everything stored on the phone. A shortcut you dragged to the home screen stays there, greyed out, until you remove it, and a copy in Android’s backup stays in your Google account until you delete it there. Neither touches a card you added to Google Wallet: remove that in Google Wallet, and see above for what Google keeps. Apart from that, Beep keeps nothing of yours on a server to request or delete, because none is ever created.

Beep uses no tracking or advertising identifiers and has no analytics or crash-reporting SDKs. The one library in Beep that collects anything is Google’s Wallet library, and it collects for Google, as described above. No data sold or shared with third parties — a card you add to Google Wallet goes to Google because you asked for it. Nothing that would let Beep, or anyone else, build a picture of where you shop.

Beep collects nothing from anyone, children included. The one exception, for anyone, is a card added to Google Wallet; what Google’s Wallet library collects is collected by Google, not Beep (both described above).

If this policy ever changes, the new version ships in an app update and is shown here.