Privacy policy

1. The short version

The detail is below, and it matters — but if you only read one part, read this.

• We collect what a regulated money transfer needs: who you are, proof of it, and the bank account to pay.
• Your ID and face images are used to check that the transfer is claimed by the right person — nothing else.
• We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising. There is no advertising in the app.
• The app carries no analytics, tracking or advertising software. This website sets no cookies.
• We never hold a balance for you, so we hold no funds of yours to lose.
• You can ask us for a copy of what we hold, or a correction, at any time — see your choices.

2. Who this policy is from

Somchit is operated by Somchit Trading, a company registered in the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the business that handles the transfers claimed in the app. Where this policy says we, us or Somchit, that is who it means. We decide what is collected and why, and we are responsible for looking after it.

You can reach us about anything on this page by email at info@somchit.la, by phone or WhatsApp on +856 20 5209 6396, or through the chat inside the app.

3. What it covers

This policy applies to:

• the Somchit app at app.somchit.la, including identity verification, claims and the in-app support chat;
• this website, www.somchit.la;
• the phone, WhatsApp and email conversations you have with our team about a claim.

It does not cover your bank, the person who sent you the money, the transfer network they paid at, or anything else you reach by leaving our app or this site. Those organisations handle your information under their own policies.

4. What we collect

Almost all of it comes from you, typed or photographed in the app. Some of it reaches us from the transfer itself — the sender named you and an amount when they paid, and that record is what your reference code unlocks.

Your account

• your name, date of birth, phone number and country, given when you sign up. The date of birth is also what you enter alongside a reference code, and the app will not create an account for anyone under 18;
• an email address, if you give one;
• the password or PIN you set to get into the app, kept in a form we cannot read back;
• a profile photo, if you choose to add one — this is optional, and you can change or remove it at any time;
• sign-in activity — when you last signed in, and failed attempts, so an account can be locked after repeated wrong guesses.

Your identity check

This is the part with the most in it, and it happens once. To satisfy the rules that apply to money transfers in Laos, we collect:

• your full name, date of birth and nationality;
• your identity document — its type, number and expiry date, plus a photograph of the front and, where the document has one, the back;
• a selfie, which is matched against the photograph on your document;
• a short guided sequence of live camera frames — looking straight ahead, then left, right, up and down — which proves that a real person was in front of the camera and not a printed photo or a screen;
• your address, if you choose to give it. This is optional.

Family members you claim for

If you collect money on behalf of a parent or another family member, we need the same identity details for that person — their name, date of birth, identity document and photographs, and your relationship to them. The claim stays in their name.

Only add someone with their knowledge and agreement. You are telling us that you have it.

Claims and payments

• the reference code you enter, and the transfer record it matches;
• the sender's name and the country the money was sent from;
• the amount, the currency you chose, the exchange rate applied and the fee;
• the bank account to be paid — bank name, account number and account name;
• the status history of each claim, the slip, and the dates it moved between stages.

Support conversations

Messages you send in the in-app chat, any files or screenshots you attach, and when they were read. Support needs the history to answer a question about a claim from last month, so conversations are kept rather than discarded when you close the chat.

Technical records

• the app version you are running;
• the IP address and browser or device description recorded against sensitive actions — signing in, submitting an identity check, making a claim, a reviewer approving one;
• the date and time of those actions, and which account or staff member performed them.

These records exist so that a disputed payout can be reconstructed and so that we can tell a genuine sign-in from a suspicious one. They are audit records, not a profile of your browsing.

6. Why we need each part

Each thing we collect is tied to one of these reasons:

• To do what you asked — matching your reference code, working out the amount and the fee, and instructing your bank to be paid. Without the account details there is nowhere to send the money.
• Because the law requires it. Money transfer businesses in Laos must establish and record who their customers are, keep records of transactions, and report certain activity. The identity check, and keeping it on file, is that obligation — not a preference of ours.
• To stop the wrong person collecting. A reference code on its own could be overheard or forwarded. The date of birth, the document and the face check are what make a stolen code useless.
• To answer you. Support cannot help with a claim it cannot see.
• To keep the service standing up — investigating errors and failed payouts, and reconstructing what happened when a payout is disputed.

We do not use your information for anything unrelated to these. If that ever changes, this page changes first — see section 14.

7. Automated checks and human review

When you submit an identity check, it can be examined in two ways, and which one applies is fixed at the moment you press submit.

• Review by our team. A member of staff opens your documents and images and decides.
• An automated check. Your document images, document type, identity number and face images are sent to a specialist verification partner, which reads the document, compares the selfie to the photograph on it, and tests the live frames for signs that they were faked. It returns a result: verified, failed, or refer to a person.

An automated result can approve or decline a check without a person looking at it. If that happens and you believe it is wrong, you can say so — ask us in the app chat or by email and a member of our team will look at your submission themselves. Tell us what you think went wrong, and send a clearer photograph if the problem was the image. A declined check is not a permanent refusal; it usually means a photograph was unreadable, a document had expired, or the details did not match the transfer.

Claims themselves are checked against the transfer record. A claim is never paid out on an automatic match alone.

8. Who else sees your information

Only these, and only what each one needs:

• Our own team. Reviewers and support staff, limited to the records their role requires, with each access recorded.
• The transfer network the sender used. To confirm that the reference belongs to you and that the transfer has not already been collected, your name, date of birth and the reference are matched against the record the sender created. Your name has to match it — that is why we ask for the name exactly as it appears on your document.
• Identity verification partners. Where an automated check applies, they receive your document images, document type, identity number and face images for that check, and are permitted to use them only for it.
• Banks and payment partners in Laos. To make the payout, the receiving bank is given the account number, the account name and the amount. The bank then applies its own rules and its own privacy policy.
• Regulators, and law enforcement or courts. Where we are required to report or produce records under Lao law — including anti-money-laundering reporting and lawful orders — we comply. We provide what is asked for, not more.
• Suppliers who run parts of our systems, such as hosting and messaging, under contracts that bind them to use the information only to provide that service.

Some of these organisations operate outside Laos, so your information may be handled abroad when it is sent to them. We share it only where the partner is contractually held to protect it and to use it solely for the purpose it was sent for.

If Somchit is ever sold or merged, customer records may pass to the acquiring business. It would take on the commitments in this policy, and we would tell you before anything changed.

9. How it is protected

• Encrypted where it is stored. Sensitive personal details are encrypted field by field in our database with AES-256-GCM, so the stored value is unreadable without a key held separately from the data.
• Encrypted in transit. Everything between the app and our servers, and between us and our partners, travels over TLS.
• Locked to your phone. The app sits behind a PIN you choose, and behind Face ID or your fingerprint if the device offers it. Credentials held on the device are kept in the platform's secure storage — the keychain on iOS, the keystore on Android.
• Seen by few people. Documents and face images are visible only to the reviewers whose job is to check them, and every view and decision is logged against a named account.
• Recorded. Sign-ins, submissions, approvals and payouts are written to audit records that staff cannot quietly alter.

No system is beyond reach, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects your information, we will tell you and the relevant authorities what happened, what was involved and what to do about it — without waiting to be asked. Two things you can do: keep your PIN to yourself, and tell us straight away on +856 20 5209 6396 if you lose your phone or think someone else has been in your account.

10. How long we keep it

• While your account is open — your account, identity check and claim history stay available to you in the app.
• After that, we still have to keep the records. Anti-money-laundering rules require a money transfer business to retain customer identification and transaction records after the relationship ends. We keep them for at least five years from your last transaction, or longer where a law, a regulator or an unresolved dispute requires it.
• Support conversations are kept while your account is open and for the same records period afterwards, because they are often the explanation behind a transaction.
• Audit records follow the same period as the transactions they describe.

When a retention period ends, records are deleted or stripped of anything that identifies you. This is why closing your account does not erase everything at once: we can stop using your information and shut off access to it, but we cannot delete records we are required to hold. That limit is the law's, not our preference.

11. Your choices and requests

You can ask us to:

• show you what we hold about you, and where it came from;
• correct it if something is wrong — a misspelled name, an old document, the wrong date of birth;
• give you a copy of the details you provided;
• have a person review an automated decision on your identity check;
• close your account and stop using your information for anything beyond the records we must keep;
• stop contacting you about anything other than your claims and your account. Messages about a claim in progress are part of the service and cannot be switched off while it is running.

Ask through the chat in the app, by email to info@somchit.la, or by phone on +856 20 5209 6396. Because these requests concern money and identity, we will check that the request really comes from you before we act on it — expect to be asked something only the account holder would know. We aim to answer within 30 days, and will tell you if something will take longer.

It is free. If we have to refuse part of a request — usually because a record is one we are required to retain — we will tell you which part, and why.

If our answer does not satisfy you, tell us and it will be looked at again by someone more senior. You may also complain to the competent Lao authority responsible for data protection or for supervising financial services.

12. Your phone and this website

On your phone

The app keeps some things on the device so it works properly: your sign-in token and PIN settings in the platform's secure storage, and your preferences, such as the language you chose. Photographs you take for an identity check are held on the device only until they are uploaded. Deleting the app removes what was stored on the device; it does not delete your account or the records described above.

On this website

This site is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads no fonts, scripts or images from anyone else's servers — everything it needs is served from www.somchit.la. Nothing here identifies you, and there is nothing to opt out of. As with any website, our hosting provider records ordinary web server logs, which include the IP address making the request; those are used for security and troubleshooting.

The app is a separate matter. It requires an account, and what it collects is described in section 4.

13. Age

Somchit accounts are for adults. You need to be 18 or older to open one, since a claim is paid into a bank account in your name. We do not knowingly collect information about children for their own accounts. Where a transfer was sent to a younger family member, an adult claims it on their behalf and provides that person's identity details under section 4. If you believe a child has created an account, tell us and we will close it and remove what we can.

14. Changes to this policy

We update this page when the service changes — a new partner, a new kind of check, a change in what we collect. The date at the top always shows the current version. If a change materially affects what we do with your information, we will say so in the app rather than rely on you noticing this page. Continuing to use Somchit after a change means the updated policy applies to you.

15. How to reach us

For anything on this page — a question, a request, a correction or a complaint — the fastest route is the chat inside the app, because the team can see your claim while they read your message. If you are not signed in:

• Email

  info@somchit.la
• Phone and WhatsApp

  +856 20 5209 6396

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