Privacy notice
Who we are
Merido is operated by Merido Technologies Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company no. 17323079, registered office 66 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NA. We are the data controller for the information described here. To reach us about privacy, email privacy@merido.co.uk, or write to us at the address above.
What this notice covers
This notice covers two things: the merido.co.uk website, and the Merido app used by our early-access users. The short version is the same for both. We collect the minimum we need, we never sell your data, and we never share it for anyone else's marketing or advertising.
The website
Apart from the early-access waitlist described below, this website asks you for no personal details. We use a privacy-friendly analytics tool (Cloudflare Web Analytics) to understand how the site is used, such as how many people visit and which pages they read. It sets no cookies, does not track you across other sites, and does not collect personal data. Because it sets no cookies and collects no personal data, it needs neither a lawful basis under data protection law nor your consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
Separately from that, the service that delivers this website to your browser (Amazon CloudFront) keeps a record of the requests it serves: the page asked for, any campaign tags on the link that was followed, the site that linked to it, and whether the request succeeded. We use this to see how many people the places we share Merido actually reach. We have configured it not to record your IP address, and it records nothing about your browser or your device. This is our server noting what was asked for, rather than analytics software running inside your browser: nothing is stored on or read from your device for it, so it needs no cookie banner and this site stays cookieless. We keep these records for 13 months and then delete them.
When you log in, or when you take up an early-access invitation, we take you to the Merido app, where creating an account is handled by our sign-in provider. Everything from that point on is described below.
The early-access waitlist
If you ask for early access, the only personal detail we ask you for is your email address. We use it for one purpose — to email you when your early access opens — and for nothing else. There is no newsletter, no product updates, and we never share the list or sell it. We also keep a record of the wording you agreed to and when, so we can show what you were asked.
We also record where you came to us from: the campaign tags on the link you followed, if it carried any, and the address of the site that linked to you. These tell us which post or message brought someone here, so we know where to keep sharing Merido. They do not identify you, and they are not used to track you across other sites. We deliberately do not record your IP address or your browser details.
Our lawful basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), given by ticking the box on the form. You can withdraw at any time, and withdrawing is as easy as joining: reply to any email we send you, or write to privacy@merido.co.uk. Withdrawing does not affect anything we did while your consent stood. Joining the waitlist does not create an account and does not sign you up to anything.
The address is stored in our database on Amazon Web Services in London, and a copy reaches our own inbox in Google Workspace, because joining sends you a confirmation and sends us a notification. How long we keep it is set out under "How long we keep it" below.
The Merido app: what we collect, and why
Your account
We collect the email address you sign up with and the sign-in identity our authentication provider (Auth0) creates for it. We use these to sign you in, to decide access while Merido is in early access, and to contact you about your account. This is necessary to provide the service (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(b)).
Your financial information
Merido works on the bank statement files you choose to import and the details you choose to add. That includes your accounts, transactions (dates, amounts and descriptions), balances, and any savings, pensions, mortgages, assets or income details you enter. We use this information for one purpose only: showing your own finances back to you, such as what you saved, what you spent, and what is coming up for renewal. Processing it is necessary to provide the service (Article 6(1)(b)). We never use it for advertising, never sell it, and never share it for marketing.
Feedback
If you send feedback from the app, we keep your message and your email address so we can read it, act on it, and reply. Feedback is stored in our database and forwarded to our team inbox. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in improving Merido and responding to you (Article 6(1)(f)).
Service logs, diagnostics, and how we improve Merido
To keep Merido reliable we record technical traces of requests the app makes, such as which kind of page was loaded and whether it succeeded. Traces reference your account by an internal identifier and are designed to leave out the contents of your finances, so no transaction descriptions and no real amounts.
We also use these same traces, looked at in aggregate, to understand which parts of Merido are actually used and to decide what to build and fix next. This happens on our servers, from records the app already produces in order to run. There is no tracking code in your browser, nothing is stored on your device for it, and no analytics company receives your data. Our lawful basis for both uses is our legitimate interest in running a secure, working service and in improving it (Article 6(1)(f)). You can object to this at any time — see Your rights.
We also measure how the app is used from inside your browser: which pages you open, and where you click. This runs for everyone, including anyone trying the demo — the figures in the demo are made up, but how people move around it still tells us what needs work. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. The way it counts browsers is reset every day, so it cannot recognise you from one visit to the next. Every piece of text is hidden before anything is sent, so we see that a button was pressed, not what it said. We use PostHog for this, on servers in the European Union. Our lawful basis is again our legitimate interest in improving Merido, and you can object at any time — see Your rights.
Help improve Merido (optional, off by default)
This setting covers one specific thing, not product improvement in general. Improving Merido mostly relies on the aggregate service diagnostics described above, which do not depend on this setting.
What it does cover: if you turn it on, you consent (Article 6(1)(a)) to our team reviewing, during early access, the short descriptions your bank attaches to payments — only the ones Merido could not recognise, together with how often each occurs. This helps us teach Merido to recognise more of the businesses people pay. We never see amounts, dates, balances or account details in this review, and anything that looks personal, such as names or account numbers, is filtered out before anyone sees it. The setting is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings.
We also keep a running count of how often each unrecognised description appears across everyone who has turned this on. That count is stored without anything identifying you: the tally itself carries no link to your account, and the record that lets us undo your contribution holds no description text. Anything that looks personal is replaced before it is written down, not after.
We use this to improve how payments appear in Merido, with a clear business name and logo instead of the bank's raw text. Nothing we keep from it, such as business names, logos and spending categories, is linked to you or your account. If you turn the setting off, we stop collecting and delete what we have collected — your contribution to those counts is removed, and a count that no longer comes from anyone is deleted outright. The business names and logos we have already added to Merido contain nothing personal and remain.
Turning the setting on changes the everyday measurement described above in two ways. Merido remembers your browser between visits, so we can see whether people come back. It also records how you move around the app, so we can see where people get stuck. All text stays hidden in both cases, so we never see your financial information, your personal details, or anything you type. Recordings are not linked to your account, are stored by PostHog on servers in the European Union, and are deleted after 30 days. Turning the setting off stops both and puts you back to the everyday measurement, which has no cookies and no memory between visits.
Because recordings are not linked to your account, we cannot find one person's recordings on request, so we cannot show you or delete an individual recording. This is a deliberate trade: the recordings are more private for it, and they are deleted after 30 days either way. Turning the setting off stops any new ones immediately.
Where your data lives, and who helps us run Merido
Merido runs on Amazon Web Services in London (eu-west-2), which is where your data is stored. A small number of providers process limited data on our behalf, under contract with us: Auth0 handles sign-in (our tenant is in Auth0's UK region), Honeycomb stores our technical diagnostics (hosted in the EU, in Ireland), Cloudflare provides the website's cookieless analytics, PostHog stores the optional in-app recordings described above (hosted in the EU, in Germany), and Google Workspace handles our email, including feedback you send us and the waitlist confirmation. None of them may use your personal data for their own purposes. Some reserve the right to use anonymised, aggregated information about how their own service performs, in order to improve it. That carries nothing that identifies you. We will update this notice before adding any new provider that handles your personal data.
Your account and financial information stay in the United Kingdom. Our monitoring provider processes limited technical data in Ireland, and the optional in-app recordings are stored in Germany; the UK government has decided that the EEA offers adequate protection, so no additional safeguards are needed for either. Email correspondence in Google Workspace, the website's cookieless analytics, and support for the in-app recordings may involve limited processing in the United States — all three providers are certified under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which the UK government recognises as providing adequate protection. If we ever use a provider outside the UK or EEA on any other footing, we will put appropriate safeguards in place and name it here.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and financial information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, or ask us to, we complete the erasure within one month — in practice immediately. Deleting your account is irreversible: there is no recovery period, and we cannot restore your data afterwards. Any backup copies expire automatically within 24 hours. Feedback you send from the app is deleted with your account; the copy that reaches us by email, like any other correspondence with us, is kept for up to 24 months after the matter is closed. If you asked for access and we were not able to offer it, we keep that request for up to 12 months. If you are on the early-access waitlist, we keep your address until you ask to come off, and we clear the whole list — and the email copies in our own inbox — no later than 12 months after Merido opens to everyone. If you ask to come off sooner, we stop using your address immediately and delete it at the next scheduled clear-out. Two things worth knowing: accepting an invitation does not remove your waitlist entry, and nor does deleting your Merido account afterwards, because the two are kept separately. If you want the waitlist entry gone as well, tell us and we will remove it. The counts kept under Help improve Merido have no time limit — they are cumulative and carry nothing identifying you — but your contribution to them is deleted as soon as you turn the setting off, and it goes with your account if you delete that.
The demo
The public Merido demo shows a fictional user's finances with made-up data. Browsing it does not create an account and does not collect any personal information about you.
Automated decisions
Merido automatically suggests labels for your transactions, such as the name of the business you paid or a spending category, and you can change any of them. We do not make automated decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects.
Your rights
You have the right to access, correct, or delete your data, to object to or restrict its use, to withdraw consent where consent is our basis, and to data portability. To exercise any of these, email privacy@merido.co.uk. We will respond without undue delay and in any event within one month. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Changes to this notice
When we change this notice we update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how the app handles your data, the app will show you the updated information and, where consent is involved, ask you again.