‹ Placemat
Privacy Policy
Last updated October 29, 2026
The short version
- Placemat reads your store data from your point of sale to build your buying plans. That’s what it’s for, and it’s the only reason we use it.
- We don’t collect your shoppers’ personal information. We use sales by product, store and day.
- The only personal information we keep is your team’s work emails, so they can sign in.
- Placemat staff can’t look inside your account unless you turn on support access, for a day or a week. You see each time they do.
- Your POS keys are encrypted. We never sell your data.
Who we are
Placemat is operated by Placemat Technologies Inc. in British Columbia, Canada (“Placemat”, “we”). This policy covers the Placemat app (app.placematai.com), this website, and the emails and notifications they send. Questions: john@placematai.com.
What we collect, and why
| What | Why |
|---|
| Store data from your POS (for example Cova): sales by product, store and day; stock on hand; deliveries, transfers and other inventory movements; your product list and prices; your store locations. | To build your buying plans, forecasts, price checks and the other features you use. Fields that identify your employees, users or shoppers are dropped as the data comes in and never stored. |
| Your team’s work emails and their role (owner or buyer), and the work emails you give for each store. | To sign people in, and to send Store Pulse links, purchase orders and reminders you turn on. |
| What you do in Placemat: approvals, changes, orders marked as sent, settings. | To keep your plan and orders as you left them, show your history, and improve suggestions over time. |
| Your POS connection keys. | To read your data each morning. They’re encrypted (AES-256), never shown back to anyone, and only opened by the morning update. |
| Billing details. | Cards are entered on Stripe’s own page. Placemat never sees or stores card numbers; we keep only whether billing is active. |
| Help chat messages. | To answer your question. If the assistant can’t fix something, a short summary goes to Placemat’s team. |
| Demo requests from this website: your name, company, work email, store count and POS. | To reply to you. We keep the company, work email and your first name to follow up. |
We don’t use advertising trackers, and we don’t sell, rent or trade your information.
What we write back to your POS
Only what you turn on in Settings, such as pending purchase orders, price and promotion changes, and new products. Placemat never receives stock, completes transfers or changes inventory counts in your POS.
Who can see your account
- The people on your team (Settings → Team). You can add or remove anyone; removal signs them out right away.
- Placemat staff only while you’ve turned on support access (Settings → Placemat support access), for 24 hours or 7 days, view only. Each view is listed for you.
- Placemat’s team sees account health (whether your morning update worked, your store count, billing status, and whether the app is being used), not your sales, budgets or orders.
Using data to make Placemat better
Placemat learns from how buying plans perform, for example how accurate forecasts were and which suggestions buyers changed, to improve the product for every retailer. We only do this with combined, de-identified information. We never share your identifiable data, your sales or your prices with another retailer.
Service providers
We use a small number of providers to run Placemat. They handle data only on our instructions.
| Provider | What for |
|---|
| Render | Hosting the app, database and morning update (servers in Oregon, USA) |
| Resend | Sending sign-in links, purchase orders and other emails |
| Anthropic | The Help chat assistant |
| Stripe | Card billing |
| Apple, Google | Delivering phone notifications you turn on |
Where your data is kept
Your data is stored in the United States (Oregon) by our hosting provider. It may be accessed from Canada by Placemat. Data held outside Canada may be subject to the laws of that country.
How long we keep it
While your account is active. If you cancel, we delete your account data within 30 days of your request, and it leaves backups on their normal cycle. We may keep billing records as the law requires.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit. POS keys are encrypted at rest. Sign-in uses one-time email links and codes, not passwords. Each retailer’s data is kept separate from every other retailer’s.
Your choices
You can ask to see, correct or delete your information, or ask a question about this policy, at john@placematai.com. We follow British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act and Canada’s PIPEDA. If you’re not satisfied with our answer, you can contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.
Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we’ll tell account owners by email before it takes effect.