Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Pay4books collects, uses, stores, discloses, and protects personal data when you visit the platform, create an account, buy or access books, fund a wallet, submit content, publish books, receive royalties, contact support, or otherwise use Pay4books services.

1. Who we are

Pay4books is a Nigerian digital reading, publishing, and book-commerce platform operated by Pathwalker Publishing Limited. The platform connects readers, authors, publishers, institutions, and other knowledge creators.

For the purposes of applicable data-protection law, Pay4books may act as a data controller for account, marketplace, support, publishing, analytics, and operational data. In some institutional or partnership arrangements, Pay4books may also process data on documented instructions from another organisation.

2. The personal data we collect

Account and identity information

We may collect your name, username, email address, phone number, profile photograph, country, city, address, authentication provider, account role, verification status, and account preferences.

Transaction and payment information

We may collect order references, transaction references, amounts, currency, payment status, wallet activity, billing information, refund information, subscription records, royalty records, payout instructions, and limited payment metadata supplied by payment processors. Pay4books does not need to store your complete card number, card PIN, CVV, or banking password to process ordinary card payments.

Publishing and content information

Authors and publishers may provide manuscripts, book files, covers, metadata, biographies, photographs, publishing agreements, copyright information, bank or payout information, tax-related information where required, and communications relating to review, approval, sales, royalties, and content protection.

Reading and usage information

We may collect information about books viewed, previews opened, purchases, library access, reading progress, bookmarks, subscription usage, searches, device type, browser, pages visited, approximate location derived from an IP address, access time, referral source, and technical logs.

Support and communication information

When you contact us, we may collect your message, ticket history, attachments, email address, telephone number, order or payment reference, and any information you choose to provide while seeking support.

Cookies and similar technologies

We may use cookies, local storage, session identifiers, analytics tags, and similar technologies to keep you signed in, maintain carts and preferences, understand platform use, improve performance, prevent abuse, and measure marketing effectiveness.

3. How we collect personal data

We collect personal data directly from you, automatically from your device and use of the platform, from payment and authentication providers, from authors or publishers who lawfully submit information, from institutional partners, and from publicly available sources where lawful and relevant.

4. Why we use personal data

We may use personal data to:

• Create, verify, secure, and manage user accounts.
• Process orders, payments, wallet funding, subscriptions, refunds, royalties, and payouts.
• Provide purchased, subscribed, preview, or institutionally assigned reading access.
• Review, publish, promote, protect, and distribute books and related content.
• Respond to support requests, complaints, copyright notices, and enquiries.
• Detect fraud, unauthorised access, account abuse, piracy, and security incidents.
• Operate analytics, improve user experience, test features, and maintain platform reliability.
• Send essential service notices and, where permitted, relevant marketing communications.
• Comply with legal, regulatory, accounting, tax, audit, and law-enforcement obligations.
• Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims and enforce platform agreements.

5. Lawful bases for processing

Depending on the activity and applicable law, we process personal data because it is necessary to perform a contract with you, comply with a legal obligation, pursue a legitimate interest that does not override your rights, protect vital interests, perform a task recognised by law, or because you have given valid consent. Where processing relies on consent, you may withdraw that consent without affecting processing already carried out lawfully.

6. Payment processors and financial information

Payments may be processed by third-party payment providers such as Paystack, Flutterwave, banks, or other approved providers. These providers may collect and process payment information under their own terms and privacy notices. Pay4books receives transaction status, references, amounts, limited customer data, and other metadata needed to confirm, reconcile, support, refund, or investigate transactions.

7. Google and other sign-in providers

Where you choose Google or another supported sign-in provider, we may receive your provider identifier, name, email address, profile image, and authentication confirmation. We do not receive your provider password.

8. When we share personal data

We may share personal data with:

• Payment processors, banks, and financial-service providers.
• Hosting, cloud, email, analytics, security, customer-support, and technology vendors.
• Authors, publishers, or institutions where necessary to fulfil an order, resolve a dispute, administer access, or comply with a valid agreement.
• Professional advisers, auditors, insurers, and contractors bound by appropriate duties.
• Regulators, courts, law-enforcement agencies, or public authorities where disclosure is required or permitted by law.
• A successor or transaction party in a lawful merger, restructuring, financing, acquisition, or transfer of business assets.

We do not sell personal data to advertisers. Where service providers process personal data for us, we expect them to use it only for authorised purposes and apply appropriate safeguards.

9. Public information

Author names, publisher names, biographies, profile photographs, book descriptions, covers, reviews, and other information deliberately published on the marketplace may be visible to the public and indexed by search engines. Do not submit information for public display that you do not have the right to publish.

10. International data transfers

Some service providers may process or store data outside Nigeria. Where personal data is transferred across borders, we take reasonable steps to use a legally recognised transfer mechanism, contractual safeguards, adequacy basis, consent where appropriate, or another lawful basis required by applicable data-protection law.

11. Data retention

We retain personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to provide services, maintain transaction and publishing records, comply with legal and accounting duties, resolve disputes, prevent fraud, enforce agreements, and protect platform integrity. Retention periods vary by record type. We may anonymise data that is no longer required in identifiable form.

12. Security

We use administrative, technical, and organisational safeguards designed to protect personal data. These may include access controls, password hashing, role-based permissions, logging, secure connections, restricted file storage, backups, monitoring, and incident-response procedures. No internet service can guarantee absolute security, so users must also protect passwords, devices, email accounts, OTPs, and wallet credentials.

13. Your data-protection rights

Subject to applicable law and valid limitations, you may have the right to request access to personal data, correction of inaccurate data, deletion, restriction, objection, portability, information about processing, withdrawal of consent, and review of certain automated decisions. You may also lodge a complaint with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

We may need to verify your identity before completing a request. Some records may be retained where required for legal, fraud-prevention, transaction, publishing, or dispute-resolution purposes.

14. Marketing communications

We may send service messages necessary for your account or transactions. Marketing messages will be sent where permitted by law. You can unsubscribe from non-essential email marketing by using the unsubscribe link or contacting us. You may still receive important account, security, payment, order, publishing, or policy notices.

15. Artificial intelligence and automated tools

Pay4books may offer AI-assisted features for book metadata, descriptions, categorisation, content support, moderation, search, or administrative workflows. Information submitted to an AI feature may be processed to provide the requested result, monitor misuse, improve reliability, and maintain records. Do not submit confidential, unlawful, or third-party personal data unless you have authority to do so.

16. Children and minors

Pay4books is not designed for unsupervised use by children who cannot lawfully consent to data processing or enter binding agreements. Where a minor uses the platform, a parent, guardian, school, or authorised institution should provide any consent or supervision required by law.

17. Cookies and browser controls

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Blocking essential cookies may prevent login, cart, checkout, reading, wallet, or security functions from working correctly. Where required, we will request consent for non-essential cookies or similar tracking technologies.

18. Links to other services

The platform may link to author websites, publisher sites, payment pages, social networks, or third-party services. Their privacy practices are governed by their own notices. Review those notices before providing information.

19. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in law, technology, services, or business operations. The current version and effective date will be published on this page. Where a change materially affects your rights or the way we use personal data, we may provide additional notice.

20. Contact and complaints

For privacy questions, data-rights requests, or complaints, contact Pay4books through the email address or support channels shown on this page. Please describe the request clearly and provide enough information for us to verify and respond to it.