Port St Johns Golf Club

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 1 July 2026 Version 2.1 - last updated 15 September 2026

1. Who We Are

Port St Johns Golf Club ("PSJ Golf Club", "we", "us", "our") is a trading name of GOLFERSCARDINTL (Pty) Ltd, a private company registered in South Africa with registration number 2023/538800/07 and registered address at 135 Annie Road, Malanshof, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2194. We are the responsible party under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) for the personal information we collect and process.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your information, contact us at:

  • Email: ben@golferscard.co.za
  • Phone: +27 82 891 5171 (Ben Pols – membership admin and privacy queries. To book a game, call the club manager on +27 82 081 7905.)
  • Address: 380 Golf Course Drive, Port St Johns, 5120, South Africa
  • Information Officer: Ben Pols

2. What Personal Information We Collect

When you use our website, join as a member, or sponsor our junior golf programme, we may collect:

  • Full name and title (Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss/Dr/Other)
  • Email address
  • Contact telephone number
  • Billing and payment information (processed by PayFast – we do not store credit card details)
  • Membership application details, including your HNA / GolfRSA Player ID
  • A delivery address, where you ask us to post a membership card to you
  • Any other information you voluntarily provide (e.g., messages, notes, dedications)
  • Technical information automatically collected via cookies (see Section 8)
  • A record of the pages viewed on our website, kept without cookies and in a form that cannot be traced back to you (see Section 8.5)

3. How We Collect Your Information

  • Directly from you – when you complete the sponsorship form, membership application, or contact form
  • Automatically – via cookies and similar technologies when you browse our website
  • From third parties – PayFast (payment processing) and Resend (the service that sends our email)

4. Purpose of Collection

We collect and process your personal information for the following purposes:

  • Processing sponsorship/donation payments for the Young Golfers in Africa programme
  • Sending you a confirmation of your sponsorship
  • Managing your membership (if applicable)
  • Sending club news, updates and offers – only if you have explicitly opted in
  • Complying with legal and regulatory obligations (record-keeping, tax)
  • Improving our website and services

5. Legal Basis for Processing

We process your personal information on the following legal bases:

  • Consent – where you have given us explicit consent (e.g., marketing emails)
  • Performance of a contract – to process your sponsorship or membership
  • Legal obligation – to comply with applicable laws (e.g., Companies Act record-keeping)
  • Legitimate interest – to improve our services and communicate with our supporters

6. Voluntary or Mandatory Provision

Providing your personal information is voluntary. However, if you do not provide the required information (marked with *), we may not be able to process your sponsorship, membership, or enquiry.

7. Recipients of Your Information

We may share your information with:

  • PayFast (Pty) Ltd – payment processing
  • Supabase – database and file storage, where your membership record is held
  • Vercel – website hosting
  • Resend – sending the emails we send you
  • Zoho Books – invoices and receipts
  • Google Analytics 4, Meta (Pixel and Conversions API) and PostHog – website analytics, and only if you accept analytics cookies
  • Law enforcement, regulators, or courts – where required by law

8. Cookies and Website Measurement

8.1 What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files stored on your device when you visit a website. They help the site work properly, remember your preferences, and show us how people use the site so we can improve it.

8.2 How we use cookies

We use two kinds of cookies:

  • Essential cookies – These keep the website working securely. They are always on and don't need your consent.
  • Analytics and marketing cookies – These are set by Google Analytics, Meta and PostHog. They help us see which pages are popular, how visitors find us, and whether our advertising works. They are covered by a single choice on the cookie banner: accept and they all switch on, decline and none of them do. We do not currently offer separate switches for analytics and for marketing.

8.3 Third-party cookies

Some services we use (PayFast, Google Analytics, Meta and PostHog) may place their own cookies. These are covered in our Privacy Policy above.

8.4 Managing cookies

When you first visit our site, a banner lets you accept or decline analytics and marketing cookies. Essential cookies are always on.

You can change your mind at any time using the Cookie settings link at the foot of any page. It brings the banner back, and choosing Decline also removes the cookies those services have already set. You do not need to be signed in, and withdrawing your consent is as easy as giving it.

8.5 How we count visits without using cookies

Separately from the cookies above, we keep our own simple count of website visits. It uses no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and does not ask for your consent, because it never creates an identifier that can single you out or follow you around.

It works like this. When a page is viewed, our server mixes the details of that request with a secret key that changes every day, and stores only the scrambled result. The key is destroyed within about a day and a half. After that it is not possible, for us or for anyone else, to work out whose visit it was, or to connect a visit on one day with a visit on another.

For each visit we record the page address without anything following a "?", the domain of the site you arrived from (for example google.com, never the full address), your country as a two-letter code, whether you are using a phone, tablet or computer, any campaign tag in the link you followed, and whether the request looks like an automated bot rather than a person. Where a visit ends in a payment we also record the order reference, so we can tell which pages lead to memberships.

We never store your IP address, your full browser details, the full web address you visited, or your name, email address, telephone number or ID number. Your IP address exists only for the instant it takes to scramble it, and is never written to disk.

This information is held in our own database, is used only by us to understand which pages bring people to the club, and is not shared with any third party. We keep it for up to 400 days and then delete it.

9. International Transfers

Your personal information is primarily processed within South Africa. Some of our processors – including Vercel, Supabase, Resend and our analytics providers – store data on servers located outside South Africa. Where this occurs, we ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place in accordance with Section 72 of POPIA.

10. Data Security

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against loss, theft, unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. These include:

  • SSL/TLS encryption on our website
  • Secure payment processing via PayFast (PCI-DSS compliant)
  • Restricted access to personal information on a need-to-know basis
  • Regular security reviews and updates

11. Data Retention

We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, or as required by applicable law (e.g., the Companies Act requires records to be kept for 7 years). After this period, we will securely delete or anonymise your information.

12. Your Rights

Under POPIA, you have the following rights:

  • The right to be informed about how your information is collected and used
  • The right to access your personal information held by us
  • The right to request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information
  • The right to request destruction of your information (subject to legal requirements)
  • The right to object to the processing of your personal information
  • The right to withdraw consent at any time (where processing is based on consent)
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator

13. How to Exercise Your Rights

To exercise any of your rights, contact our Information Officer Ben Pols at ben@golferscard.co.za or 380 Golf Course Drive, Port St Johns, 5120, South Africa. We will respond to your request within 30 days as required by POPIA.

14. Information Regulator

If you are not satisfied with our response to a data protection query, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator:

  • Website: https://www.inforegulator.org.za/
  • Email: complaints.IR@inforegulator.org.za
  • Phone: +27 (0)10 023 5200
  • Address: 33 Hoofd Street, Forum III, 3rd Floor, Braampark, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The latest version will always be available on our website at /privacy-policy. We will notify you of material changes by email or a prominent notice on our website.