Privacy Policy

This explains what personal information Khaya4Rent collects when you enquire about a rental property through Penny on WhatsApp, or when you use the Khaya4Rent agent portal, and what we do with it.

Khaya4Rent is built and operated by Trieva Technologies (Pty) Ltd (CIPC reg. no. 2026/654106/07), a South African company. This policy is written to comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

1. Who we are

Khaya4Rent is a WhatsApp-based service that helps tenants find rental properties and helps real estate agents qualify and manage rental leads. When you message our WhatsApp number, you're talking to Penny, our AI rental assistant — not a human, unless an agent has stepped in directly.

For the purposes of POPIA, Trieva Technologies (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party for the personal information described in this policy.

2. What we collect

We collect different information depending on whether you're a prospective tenant messaging Penny, or an agent using the portal.

From tenants, via WhatsApp

From agents, via the portal

3. How we collect it

Directly from you — either typed into a WhatsApp conversation with Penny, or entered into the agent portal. We don't buy tenant or agent data from third parties, and we don't scrape it from other sources.

4. Why we process it

We process personal information for these purposes:

• To have a conversation with you about a rental property and answer your questions
• To match you with listings that fit what you're looking for
• To assess and score a lead's fit for a property, so agents can prioritise their time
• To schedule and confirm property viewings
• To pass a qualified lead's details to the relevant listing agent
• To operate, secure, and improve the Khaya4Rent service itself

Our lawful basis for processing a tenant's information is your consent, given by choosing to message Penny and continue the conversation. You can withdraw that consent at any time — see Your rights below.

5. Penny, our AI assistant

Penny is an AI assistant. Your messages are sent to Google's Gemini API to generate a conversational reply and to extract the details listed in section 2 (name, budget, dates, and so on). Google processes this text to return a response to us — it is not used by Google to train their models on our behalf, and we don't send it to Google for any purpose beyond generating that reply.

If at any point you'd rather speak with a human agent instead of Penny, just ask — Penny will flag this to the agent while continuing to assist in the meantime.

6. Who we share it with

We share personal information with:

• The listing agent or agency you're enquiring with — this is the whole point of the service, so they can follow up with you.
• Twilio Inc., who provide the WhatsApp Business messaging infrastructure we send and receive messages through.
• Google LLC, whose Gemini API processes your conversation with Penny, as described above.
• Supabase, our database provider, who store the information described in section 2 on our behalf.
• Vercel Inc., who host the systems that run Khaya4Rent.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

7. Cross-border transfers

Twilio and Google operate infrastructure outside South Africa, including in the United States. Where your personal information is processed by these providers, POPIA requires that it receive an adequate level of protection. We rely on [TO CONFIRM: e.g. Twilio's and Google's standard contractual data processing terms] as the safeguard for these transfers. If you'd like more detail on this, contact us using the details in section 13.

8. How long we keep it

We keep conversation and lead information for [TO CONFIRM: retention period, e.g. 12 months from last activity], after which it is deleted or anonymised, unless we're required to keep it longer for a legal reason, or you ask us to delete it sooner.

Agent portal account information is kept for as long as your agency's account with us is active, plus a reasonable period afterward for accounting and legal purposes.

9. Your rights

Under POPIA, you have the right to:

• Ask us what personal information we hold about you
• Ask us to correct information that's wrong or out of date
• Ask us to delete your information
• Object to us processing your information, or withdraw consent at any time
• Complain to the Information Regulator if you believe we've mishandled your information (see section 13)

To exercise any of these, message "delete my info" to Penny on WhatsApp, or contact us using the details in section 13. We'll respond within a reasonable time.

10. Keeping it secure

We apply reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including access controls that restrict data to the specific agent and agency it belongs to, encrypted connections between our systems, and verification of incoming messages to prevent impersonation of our WhatsApp service. No system is completely secure, but we take reasonable steps appropriate to the sensitivity of the information involved.

11. Minors

Khaya4Rent is intended for use by adults arranging their own rental housing. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we'll remove it.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time as the service changes. We'll update the effective date at the top of this page when we do. If a change is significant, we'll aim to let agents know directly.

13. Contact & complaints

To ask a question, request access to your information, or raise a concern, contact us at:

If you're not satisfied with our response, you can lodge a complaint with South Africa's Information Regulator: