Privacy Policy & POPIA Notice

Our Information Officer is Gavin Perch, contactable at support@myonlinecoach.co.za. Any question, concern, or request relating to your personal information, including the requests described in section 6 below, should be directed to this address.

We collect information you provide directly — account details (name, email, mobile number), coaching assessment responses (training history, goals, relevant health and injury information, and, where applicable, nutrition preferences and dietary restrictions/allergies), workout and check-in records you submit, and billing/package selection details. We do not collect payment card details ourselves; these are handled directly by our payment processor.

We process your personal information to: assess your coaching eligibility; match and assign you to a trainer; generate and deliver your training programme and, where applicable, nutrition plan; enable your trainer to review your progress and respond to your weekly check-ins; process payment for the package you select; operate and improve the Service; meet legal and safety obligations; and communicate with you about your account and coaching.

Structured training programmes and, where eligible, nutrition plans are drafted with the assistance of a third-party AI provider. Only the specific fields needed to draft a safe, relevant plan are shared with the AI provider — never your name, email, mobile number, payment details, or administrative notes. AI-drafted content is always reviewed and approved by our team before it is shown to you; nothing generated by AI is published automatically.

We share personal information only where necessary to operate the Service: with our database and hosting provider (Supabase), our payment processor (Paystack) for the limited purposes of processing your payment, our transactional email provider (Resend) for account and coaching-related notifications, and our AI provider for the limited, minimised purpose described above. Your assigned trainer can see the coaching information relevant to supporting you; trainers cannot see the coaching or financial information of clients who are not assigned to them. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use your health or nutrition information for advertising or marketing targeting.

Some of our service providers may process data on servers located outside South Africa. Where this occurs, we take reasonable steps to ensure the provider is subject to conditions for processing that are substantially similar to the conditions required under POPIA.

Subject to POPIA, you may request to:

• obtain a copy of the personal information we hold about you (access);
• have inaccurate or outdated personal information corrected;
• have your personal information deleted, subject to our legal and legitimate business retention needs (for example, financial records we are required to retain);
• object to processing of your information in certain circumstances; and
• withdraw consent for optional communications at any time.

To exercise any of these rights, contact our Information Officer at support@myonlinecoach.co.za. We will respond within a reasonable time and may need to verify your identity before actioning a request.

Communications necessary to deliver the Service (for example, check-in reminders, payment notices, and coaching updates) are sent as part of the coaching relationship and are not optional marketing. Where we seek your consent for optional marketing communications, this will always be presented separately from, and will never be a condition of, signing up for coaching.

We retain personal information for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period afterward to meet legal, tax, dispute-resolution, and legitimate business record-keeping requirements. Historical coaching records (programmes, workouts, check-ins) are retained as part of your coaching history and are not automatically deleted when a subscription ends.

We restrict access to personal information based on role — for example, a trainer can only see clients currently assigned to them, and financial/payout information is restricted to authorised administrators. These restrictions are enforced at the database level, not only in the application interface. Sensitive fields such as bank account details are stored encrypted.

We may update this notice from time to time. Material changes will be communicated to active clients.

My Online Coach — Information Officer: Gavin Perch — support@myonlinecoach.co.za. If you believe we have not adequately addressed a concern, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa).