How we handle your data

Ride-Now.ie ("we", "us") is operated by FAS Services, an on-demand ride platform serving Dublin and Kildare. FAS Services is the data controller for the personal data described below. Contact us about privacy at receipt@ride-now.ie.

When you book a ride — your name, mobile number, optional email (for your receipt), pickup, stops and destination, party size and luggage, any special instructions you choose to give your driver, the fare, and the ride's progress. We use this solely to provide the journey: to price it, to send a driver, to pass your instructions to the driver who takes the job, to keep you informed, and to email your receipt if you gave an email.

While your ride is live — your booking page shows your driver's car, registration and live position (never the driver's name); this works through a private link that only you hold. We do not track the passenger's location.

Our drivers — account details, the vehicle's position while on shift, a record of cancelled jobs and penalty points, and a settlement account for their earnings. Section 3 below is written for drivers and covers this in full.

Referral partners — a hotel desk, concierge or guide who refers bookings to us has an account with their name, contact details and a settlement account for their commission, held under the same rule as a driver's (section 3): the full IBAN and BIC only until the first pay-out, then a reference only. A booking made through a partner's link carries the partner's code; the partner sees only the date, route and fare of such bookings — never the passenger's name or contact details.

Hotel front desks — the hotel's name and the receptionist's first name, so bookings can be attributed to the desk that made them.

Website visits — deliberately minimal analytics: which page was viewed, when, and an anonymised (one-way hashed) identifier. We store no raw IP addresses in analytics, use no advertising trackers, and set no third-party advertising cookies. The booking app uses your browser's local storage only to remember your own active booking. Every cookie and storage item is listed in our cookie policy.

Your account — your name, email, mobile number, driver licence number, the car you drive and its plate, the account ID that ties your jobs to you, and your messages with the dispatch desk. Dispatch creates the account by invitation and you set your own password. We use these only to run the service: to offer you jobs, to show passengers who is collecting them, to apply the cancellation rule in the Driver Rules & Regulations, and to settle your earnings.

Cancellations and penalty points — when you cancel a job you accepted, we record when you cancelled, the journey (pickup, drop-off and pickup time), and whether it was free or added a penalty point. We also keep your points, any suspension with its start and end, and, when dispatch removes points or lifts a suspension, who did it and when. We use this to apply the cancellation rule fairly and to keep passengers' bookings reliable. It stays with your account while the account is open; only your 60 most recent cancellations are kept. How the rule works, and how to ask a person to review it, is in section 7.

Your position — the Ride-Now Driver app sends your car's precise GPS position to our dispatch desk and to the waiting passenger's tracking page only while you are At Work, inside your working hours, or on a job — including with the app in the background or the phone locked, so the car stays on the map while you use a sat-nav. Off Work, nothing is sent. The road you drive while At Work — the whole shift, not only the job legs — is kept for 60 days for settlement, run sheets and passenger queries, then deleted.

Push notifications — job offers and dispatch messages reach your phone, and a paired Apple Watch, through Apple's push service. The device token is stored against your account so we know which phone to reach. The Android app uses no push service: while it is running it checks our server for new job offers and messages itself.

Your settlement account (IBAN and BIC) — you give these when you join, and they exist in our system only on that acknowledgment. We hold the full numbers until the first payment is made to you. Once that first pay-out is made and dispatch records it as paid, the system removes the full numbers and keeps a reference only: the first 4 and last 4 characters of the IBAN and the first 2 and last 2 characters of the BIC, so dispatch can recognise the account on later statements. The transfers themselves, and all the information about them, are kept within the bank's own system — outside Ride-Now's management and beyond our ability to modify. If you change bank, dispatch enters the new account and the same rule applies again from the next pay-out. The app itself carries no bank, card or payment fields.

We never see or store card numbers. When online payment is offered, it is processed entirely by a regulated payment provider (such as Stripe or SumUp); we receive only confirmation that payment succeeded. Rides settled directly with the driver involve no payment data at all.

• Mapping & routing — addresses you search and route requests are sent to OpenStreetMap-based services (map tiles, geocoding, routing) to draw maps and price journeys.
• Email — receipts are sent through our mail provider, Migadu.
• Push notifications — driver app notifications on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch are delivered through Apple's push service using a device token held against the driver's account. The Android app uses no outside push service.
• Hosting — our systems run on our own server with an established cloud infrastructure provider; access is restricted and encrypted in transit (HTTPS everywhere).

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with anyone beyond what is listed here and what the law requires.

Booking and ride records are retained as business and accounting records. Expired hotel-desk booking data and stale technical data are pruned routinely. You may ask us to delete personal data we no longer need — see your rights below.

Drivers — job history and settlement statements are kept as accounting records for as long as Irish tax law requires; the road driven while At Work for 60 days; the full IBAN and BIC only until the first pay-out is recorded, after which only the reference described in section 3 remains in the live system. A routine backup taken before that pay-out keeps the numbers as they stood until it is rotated out; backups are stored outside the web root and are never used to put the full numbers back.

Under the GDPR you may ask us for access to, correction of, deletion of, or a copy of your personal data, and you may object to or restrict certain processing. Write to receipt@ride-now.ie and we will respond within one month. You also have the right to complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).

Drivers — write to dispatch@ride-now.ie. Your account, and the data in section 3, is deleted on request once any open settlement is closed; the accounting records in section 6 are kept for the period the law requires.

Drivers: automatic penalty points and suspensions — our system applies the cancellation rule on its own, without a person deciding each case. Cancelling a job is free within 4 minutes of accepting it, or within 1 hour of accepting it when the pickup is 12 hours or more away. Any other cancellation adds 1 penalty point. At 3 points you are automatically suspended from taking work for 7 days, and those 3 points are used up. While suspended you keep the jobs you already accepted, but you cannot take new jobs, be given jobs by dispatch, or go At Work. You have the right to ask a person to review any point or suspension, to give your side, and to challenge the outcome: write to dispatch@ride-now.ie. Dispatch can remove points and lift a suspension.

If we change this policy, the new version appears at this address with an updated date. Significant changes will be flagged on the booking page.