Privacy policy

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

booqwell is a trading name of Axccelerate Pte. Ltd. (“booqwell”, “we”). booqwell provides online booking, a front-desk console, checkout and client messages to salons and spas in the United States.

This policy covers:

• Salon owners and staff who use booqwell, and the salon’s account with us. For this information booqwell decides how it is used.
• Salons’ clients whose details a salon keeps in booqwell, and who book on a salon’s booking page or sign in to its client account. For this information the salon decides how it is used, and booqwell handles it on the salon’s behalf and on its instructions. Each salon’s own privacy policy explains what it does with it.
• Visitors to booqwell.com and to salons’ booking pages.

2. What we collect

booqwell does not collect dates of birth. booqwell itself runs no advertising trackers. To see how its pages are used and how fast they load, booqwell uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies and does not identify or follow visitors across sites: it counts page views, the referring site, the browser and device type, the country and page speed. It does not run on the page where you enter your details or card. A salon can choose to add its own Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel or TikTok Pixel to its booking pages (see “A salon’s own analytics and advertising tags” in section 8). Unless it does, the note of how a visitor arrived is not shared with Google, Meta, TikTok or anyone else.

Contact details typed on a booking page are saved when the client moves past the details step, before the booking is finished. The salon can use them for one follow-up about the unfinished booking (see section 5).

3. How we use it

We use personal information only to run booqwell for salons and their clients:

• to let salons take bookings, run their calendar, check clients out and pay staff;
• to send the messages a salon has switched on, such as booking confirmations, reminders, receipts and replies from the front desk;
• to let clients sign in, see and change their bookings, and manage their message choices;
• to bill salons for their booqwell subscription;
• to keep the service secure, prevent abuse, and fix problems;
• to meet legal obligations, such as tax records and responding to lawful requests.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use salons’ client data for advertising or to build profiles for anyone else. We do not use salons’ client data to train AI models.

4. Salons’ clients: the salon decides, booqwell processes

If you are a client of a salon that uses booqwell, the salon is responsible for your information. booqwell stores and processes it for the salon, on its instructions, and does not use it for its own purposes.

• Each salon’s data is kept apart. The database enforces that one salon’s staff can never read another salon’s clients.
• booqwell staff look at salon data only to provide support, keep the service running, or when the law requires it. When a booqwell support person opens a salon’s console to help, the session and every change made in it are recorded in a log that cannot be edited. booqwell reads a conversation with the console’s AI assistant only if the salon reports it to us.
• Questions or requests about your information (to see it, correct it, or delete it) should go to the salon first. booqwell will help the salon answer them.

If you have a client account with a salon, you can do two things yourself from it: download a copy of your record, and delete it (see section 11).

5. Text messages and email

Salons use booqwell to send texts and emails about clients’ own bookings. The messages come from the salon, under its name; booqwell sends them on its behalf.

• Booking messages. A confirmation when you book and a reminder about 24 hours before. When booking online you choose whether to receive them; the salon may also send them when it books you at the desk.
• Offers and news are sent only if you tick the separate box for them, which is never ticked for you and is not needed to book.
• Unfinished bookings. If a salon has switched this on and you leave a booking unfinished, it may send one email about it, with a link to stop. A text about it is sent only if you agreed to offers and news.
• Stopping texts. Reply STOP (or STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END or QUIT) and that salon sends you no more texts, at any of its locations. Reply START to receive booking texts again.
• Quiet hours. booqwell’s automatic texts are not sent before 8am or after 9pm in the salon’s time zone; one due at night waits until morning.
• Replies. If you reply to a text with a question, the salon’s front desk sees it and may answer. Nothing replies automatically.
• Email. Booking emails are service messages about your appointment. You can change your message choices at any time from your client account, or by asking the salon.

6. Payments

booqwell never receives or stores a full card number.

• Salons’ clients. When a salon asks for a card to hold a booking, the card is typed into a form served by the salon’s card processor (today, Clover), not by booqwell. The processor keeps the card. booqwell keeps only the card’s brand, last four digits and expiry, the processor’s reference to it, and the exact permission you agreed to, with its date. To set this up, the processor also receives your name and email.
• Charges. A saved card is charged only as you agreed when you left it: for your appointments when you check out, and for a late cancellation or a missed appointment as the salon’s cancellation policy, shown to you then, allows — a fee only after someone at the salon approves it. Each charge and refund is recorded.
• Salons paying booqwell. Salons pay their subscription through Stripe. Stripe holds the card and the tax ID; booqwell keeps the card’s brand, last four digits and expiry, and the billing name, email and address.

The card processor’s own privacy policy also applies to card details; the card form links to it.

7. AI features

The only AI feature today is an assistant inside the salon’s console, for the salon’s own staff. Clients do not talk to an AI, and no AI reads or answers clients’ texts.

• What it sees. When staff ask it a question, it looks things up with fixed tools and sends the results to our AI provider, Anthropic, to write the answer. Depending on the question that can include clients’ names, contact details, notes and booking history, sales and staff schedules. Specialists only see their own appointments through it.
• What it can change. It can only propose a change to a salon’s settings or bookings; a person has to confirm it before anything happens.
• What it never touches. It has no access to card processors: it cannot read cards, payments or refunds held by Clover or any other processor, and it cannot charge or refund anyone.
• What we keep. Questions, answers and short notes of what was looked up are stored in the salon’s account for as long as the salon uses booqwell. booqwell reads a conversation only if the salon reports it to us.
• Training. booqwell does not use this data to train AI models, and Anthropic does not train its models on data sent through its commercial API.

8. Who we share it with

We share personal information only with the service providers that run booqwell, each for its one job, and with nobody for their own marketing.

A salon’s own analytics and advertising tags

A salon can add its own Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager container, Meta Pixel or TikTok Pixel to its booking pages. These are the salon’s own accounts, and the salon is responsible for them. If it does:

• They load on that salon’s booking pages only, and never where you type about yourself. Your name, mobile number, email, notes, a gift certificate’s details and your card are entered on a separate page with no tags at all. On that page, the browser is told to run only booqwell’s own code and the card processor’s form. So a tag cannot read what you type, even with features like Meta’s and TikTok’s “automatic advanced matching”. booqwell also switches it off for the Meta Pixel it loads.
• What booqwell sends them. Which services were looked at and chosen, with their prices; the location; whether a particular specialist was asked for. When a booking is made: its reference, its value, the appointment date, and whether the client is new to the salon. booqwell never sends a name, email address, phone number or notes. It checks every event before it is sent and blocks any that contains something that looks like an email address or phone number.
• What Google, Meta and TikTok receive anyway. Their tags send the visitor’s IP address and browser details to them with every request. They also set their own cookies on that salon’s booking site (such as _ga, _fbp and _ttp). booqwell stores the IDs from those cookies with the booking, so that a later change, such as a cancellation, can be matched to it.
• Later, from booqwell’s server. If the salon has connected them, booqwell keeps the salon’s figures true after you have left the page. If a booking is cancelled, the salon’s Google Analytics is sent a refund, but only if the booking was reported to it when it was made and you allowed analytics. When a visit is completed, Meta is sent the purchase (booking a visit only tells Meta it was scheduled), but only if you allowed advertising and your browser did not send Global Privacy Control. What is sent: the booking’s reference, its value and services, the cookie IDs above, and for Meta the type of browser you booked with. No name, email address, phone number or IP address.
• Global Privacy Control. If your browser sends it, advertising signals are turned off: Google’s ad storage and ad personalization are denied, Meta’s pixel does not send, and TikTok’s pixel is not loaded at all. Analytics still runs.
• A Tag Manager container runs whatever the salon puts in it. The salon chooses what that is.
• booqwell’s own record. booqwell keeps a copy of the same events on that salon’s booking site for the salon, linked to the client once they book.

A salon may also choose to subscribe a calendar app (such as Google, Apple or Outlook) to its booqwell calendar link; that app then receives appointment times and client names.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect people’s safety, or as part of a sale or merger of booqwell’s business, in which case this policy continues to apply.

9. Where it is stored and how we protect it

booqwell’s database and files are stored on a server in the United States. Encrypted backups are copied every hour to a second server, in Malaysia, operated for booqwell by the same hosting company. The backups are encrypted before they leave the United States server.

How we protect it:

• all connections use HTTPS;
• the database itself stops one salon from reading another salon’s data;
• passwords, sign-in codes and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes;
• keys that let booqwell act for a salon at its card processor are encrypted;
• backups are encrypted before they leave the server;
• support access to a salon’s console, payment actions and changes made by the AI assistant are written to logs that cannot be edited.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will tell the affected salons, and you where the law requires it.

10. How long we keep it

booqwell keeps a salon’s data for as long as the salon uses booqwell. Nothing is deleted automatically while it does. Backups are kept on a rolling schedule, and the oldest copy is about two months old.

When a salon stops using booqwell, it can ask us for a copy of its data and to delete it. We will delete it, apart from what the law requires us to keep; copies in backups expire within about two months.

11. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to know what information we hold about you, to get a copy, to have it corrected or deleted, and not to be treated differently for asking. booqwell does not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising. If a salon has added its own advertising tags (section 8), sending Global Privacy Control turns their advertising signals off.

Salons’ clients with a client account can, from that account:

• download a copy of their record: details, sign-in, bookings, message consents and signed-in devices;
• change their message choices for texts and email;
• delete their record. Your name, phone, email and notes are removed, every consent is withdrawn and queued messages are cancelled. Your visits and payments stay in the salon’s books, because they are its business and tax records, but no longer say who you were.

Deleting your record does not today remove the text messages already exchanged with the salon, details of a booking you left unfinished, gift certificates, or the brand and last four digits of a card you saved, and the card itself stays with the salon’s card processor under its own customer record. Ask the salon if you want those removed too, and booqwell will help it.

Without an account, ask the salon; booqwell will help it respond.

Salon owners and staff can ask us through booqwell.com/support for a copy of their information, or to correct or delete it. A staff member who leaves is deactivated by the salon.

We will confirm who is asking before acting, and answer within the time the law requires.

12. Children, changes and contact

Children. booqwell is not meant for children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their information. A salon may book an appointment for a child, using a parent’s or guardian’s contact details.

Changes. If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top and tell salons before the change takes effect.

Contact. Questions or requests about privacy: booqwell.com/support. booqwell is a trading name of Axccelerate Pte. Ltd. See also our terms of service.