What we do with your information.

Short version: we use your details to review your card-processing statement and, if you ask, to get you a quote. We don't sell them to anyone. Your statement is seen by two people and we never put it into an AI tool. We delete our copy within 30 days unless we still need it to finish a switch you've asked for. If we contacted you first, on LinkedIn for example, this notice covers that too, and you can tell us to stop at any time. The long version is below, in the same plain English we use for everything else.

Last updated 23 October 2026.

Who we are

ClearTill is a trading name of ST Consulting Services UK Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 15588006. Registered office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.

We are the data controller for the information described here, which means we decide what is collected and why. If you want to talk to a person about any of this, email hello@cleartill.co.uk — it reaches Simon Thorne directly.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), registration number ZC202131.

What we collect

Mostly what you give us, plus a basic log our web server keeps (see Cookies, logs and tracking). If we contacted you first, we also hold a few details about you and your business that you or the business have published online, mainly on LinkedIn (see If we contacted you first). If you ask us for a quote, Worldpay tells us what it can offer you and, if you switch, sends us reports on your account, because that's how we're paid. There are no cookies or tracking pixels on this website.

• Your enquiry details — when you fill in the statement-review form: your name, business name, what the business does, postcode, email address, mobile number, roughly how much you take on card, how many locations you have, who your current provider is, a few quick questions about how you're charged now, and your answer to whether we can pass your details to Worldpay for a quote.
• Your card-processing statement — if you send us one. We ask for it by email to hello@cleartill.co.uk, and if one reaches us some other way the same rules apply. Statements typically show your business's card turnover, transaction counts, the fees you're charged, your merchant and terminal IDs and your contract terms. They may also show your name, your business address and the bank account your takings are paid into.
• Our correspondence — our emails and messages, including any on LinkedIn, and, if we speak, brief notes of what was discussed. We also keep short working notes of where each enquiry has got to.

We don't ask for and don't want your bank details, card numbers, or anything about your customers. If a statement you send happens to contain more than we need, we don't use it and it goes when the statement goes.

You don't have to give us anything. Without a statement we can't do the review, and without your contact details we can't get you a quote.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

• To carry out the review you asked for and to quote for switching provider. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in running the business and in giving you the review you asked for.
• To follow up once if you asked for a review and we haven't heard back. Lawful basis: legitimate interests — you started the conversation and one reminder is what we'd want ourselves. Tell us to stop and we stop.
• To get you a price from a payment provider, where you've asked us to. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in getting you the price you asked for.
• To keep our own business records — invoices, correspondence, the things a company has to be able to show. Lawful basis: legal obligation and legitimate interests.
• To find and contact businesses that might want a review, and accountants who might pass it on, mainly on LinkedIn. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in telling small businesses, and the accountants who advise them, about a free check that may be useful to them, and in contacting only the ones it's likely to suit. More under If we contacted you first.
• To run a one-person business with help from an AI tool: drafting messages and notes, sorting the businesses we find, and keeping our lists up to date. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in running the business. More under How we use AI.
• To keep a backup of our working files, so a broken computer doesn't lose your enquiry. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in keeping the business's records safe.

We don't make any decision about you by purely automated means that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you. We do sort the businesses and people we find into those a review might suit and those it won't, using what's published about them, such as the type and size of business, where it is, whether it looks to be trading and whether the owner still runs it. An AI tool usually does the first pass, and Simon decides who is contacted. We treat that as profiling, and you can object to it (see Your rights).

If we contacted you first

ClearTill looks for owner-run businesses with a card machine, and for accountants and others who work with them, and gets in touch, mainly on LinkedIn, and sometimes by calling in at the business or by post. We also comment on people's LinkedIn posts and invite some of Simon's LinkedIn contacts to follow ClearTill's page. If that's how you heard from us, this is what we hold and why.

• Where it comes from: what you and your business have published on LinkedIn, which we search using LinkedIn's paid Sales Navigator tool, and on Google Maps and your business's own website, Facebook and Instagram pages. For food businesses, we also use the Food Standards Agency's public food hygiene ratings list: the business's name, type and address.
• What we hold: your name and job title, your business and what it does, roughly where it is, the web addresses of your LinkedIn profile and your business's website and social pages, a short note on why we thought a review might or might not suit you, any detail from your public profile or posts that we mention in a message, the dates of our messages, whether you connected, and a copy of any reply. We also note when we've invited you to follow ClearTill's LinkedIn page or commented on one of your posts. If we called in, we also note the date and whether you'd like a review.
• What we send: a connection request, sometimes with a short note, a first message if you connect, our answer if you reply, and at most one reminder. If your business is a sole trader or a partnership, we send only a connection request without a note, and we message you only if you get in touch first. Every message comes from Simon's own LinkedIn profile. If we call in, Simon leaves a card with our website address, where this notice is.
• Why, and our lawful basis: our legitimate interests in telling small businesses, and the accountants who advise them, about a free check that may be useful to them. We've written down why we think that's fair to you, and you can ask to see it.
• Who else sees it: see Who sees it. We don't pass it to Worldpay unless you later ask us for a quote.
• How long we keep it: 12 months from our last message, if nothing comes of it. If we've noted you but haven't contacted you within a month, we delete what we hold.
• Stopping it: reply "stop" to any message, or email hello@cleartill.co.uk, and you won't hear from us again. We keep your name and profile address on a do-not-contact list so we don't contact you again by mistake.

Who sees it

Your statement is seen by two people: Simon Thorne, and our pricing contact at Worldpay when you have asked us to get you a quote. No one else at ClearTill sees it, and we never put it into an AI tool. We send it to that one contact. Once Worldpay has it, Worldpay's own privacy notice covers how it's handled there. We don't sell or rent your details to anyone.

Worldpay is worth explaining properly, because it is the only company we pass your statement to, and the only one that may contact you about its own products as a result.

When you ask us to get you a price, we pass your contact details, what you've told us about your business and your statement to Worldpay (UK) Limited. We only do that if you've told us to. The enquiry form asks you yes or no, and if you came to us by email or LinkedIn we ask you before passing anything on and keep your answer. Say no and you still get the review.

Once we've passed them, Worldpay is a data controller in its own right, not a supplier acting on our behalf. That means Worldpay decides what it does with your details under its own privacy notice, and it may contact you about its own products and services as well as about the quote you asked for. We can't switch that off for you — if you want Worldpay to stop, you'd ask Worldpay, and its notice explains how. This is the one circumstance in which your details reach a company that may market to you, and it only happens because you asked us to get you a price.

Our arrangement with Worldpay won't last forever. If it ends, any details we've already passed to Worldpay stay with Worldpay, and may be kept by it or passed on to whoever takes over that arrangement, under its own privacy notice rather than this one. Nothing new goes across after that point.

Behind that, we use a small number of suppliers who handle information for us under a contract that limits what they can do with it:

• Google (Google Workspace) — our email, the enquiry form, and the spreadsheet the form feeds into.
• Hetzner Online GmbH — hosts this website and its access log, on servers in Finland, under Hetzner's data processing agreement.

We also use some services on the standard terms they offer to individual customers. On those terms the provider isn't simply following our instructions: it's responsible for what it does with the information under its own privacy notice.

• Anthropic (Claude): the AI tool described under How we use AI.
• Microsoft (OneDrive): a nightly backup of our working files and AI chats, which include enquiry details, our notes and our list of businesses to contact. Statements are kept out of it.
• LinkedIn: where we find and message most of the businesses we contact first.
• Google (Simon's personal Gmail): where LinkedIn notifications arrive and where, now and then, someone writes to Simon instead of hello@.

Some of this information is handled outside the UK:

• Hetzner's servers are in Finland. For UK users, Claude is provided by Anthropic Ireland, Limited and OneDrive by Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited. All three are in the European Economic Area, which the UK's adequacy regulations treat as giving adequate protection, so no extra safeguard is needed for that step.
• Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn may handle it in the US. Each is certified under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework (the UK–US "data bridge"). Anthropic may also handle it in the US, and says it uses standard contractual clauses and the UK's approved equivalent for that.

Ask us and we'll point you to the safeguards each provider publishes.

We would also disclose information if the law required it — a court order, a regulator, that sort of thing. It hasn't happened and we'd tell you if it did, unless we were forbidden from doing so.

How we use AI

ClearTill is one person, and Simon uses one AI tool, Claude from Anthropic, to help run it. This is what it does, and what it doesn't.

• What it does: drafts messages and notes for Simon to check. It searches LinkedIn for businesses a review might suit and does a first sort of them, reads replies in Simon's LinkedIn inbox and the LinkedIn notifications that arrive in his personal email, and keeps our list of businesses and our working notes up to date. With Simon's approval it comments on posts and sends invitations to follow ClearTill's LinkedIn page. When someone simply thanks or agrees with Simon in the comments on a ClearTill post or under one of his comments, it posts a short thank-you without asking him each time. It also helps look after this website, including counting visits from its access log.
• We never put your statement into it. Simon reviews statements himself.
• In live sessions with Simon, Claude also helps with our hello@ mailbox, which holds enquiries and our emails with you, and with Worldpay's partner website, where we ask for your quote. It isn't used in the mailbox while a statement email is in it, and it never opens, uploads or sends a statement.
• Simon sends every connection request and message himself. No comment goes out without his approval, apart from those short thank-you replies.
• Claude is used on Anthropic's standard terms for individual customers (see Who sees it). Simon has switched off the setting that lets Anthropic use our conversations to train its models.

How long we keep it

• Your statement: kept only on Simon's computer, in a folder that is never included in our backups or synced to the cloud, and deleted automatically 30 days after it's saved there. The email it came with, and any copy we email to Worldpay, is deleted from our mailbox, bin included, once it's saved. If we're mid-way through arranging a switch and still need it, we'll keep it until that's finished and then delete it. If you asked for a quote, Worldpay keeps its own copy under its own privacy notice.
• The review we send you: it includes figures from your statement, and we keep it with our emails for 12 months from our last contact.
• Your enquiry details, our emails and messages, and our notes: 12 months from our last contact, if nothing comes of it. The exception is the record of your answer about passing your details to Worldpay: if we did pass them on, we keep that record for six years, because our agreement with Worldpay requires us to be able to show it.
• If we contacted you first: 12 months from our last message, if nothing comes of it, and the do-not-contact list described above for as long as we're contacting businesses.
• Backups: something we delete can stay in our backups for up to about five weeks. Statements are kept out of them.
• If you become a customer: six years after the relationship ends, which is what the accounting and tax rules require of us.
• This website's access log: 90 days, then deleted automatically.

Cookies, logs and tracking

This site sets no cookies. There is no advertising pixel, no session tracking and nothing that follows you around other websites. That's why you haven't been asked to click a cookie banner.

Our web server keeps a basic access log of each visit: the page asked for, the time, the page you came from, the technical details your browser sends (such as its type and language), and a shortened IP address. The end of the address is removed before anything is saved. We use the log to count visits and clicks on the review button, and to keep the site secure. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in running and protecting the website. The log is deleted after 90 days.

Also worth mentioning: the site loads its typeface from Google Fonts, which means your browser makes a request to Google's servers and Google will see your IP address as part of that. Nothing is stored on your device and we receive nothing from it.

Our enquiry form is a Google Form on our Google Workspace account. Your answers come to us, with Google acting as our supplier (see Who sees it), but the form page itself is on Google's website, so Google's own privacy and cookie terms apply to your visit there. The form does not require you to sign in to a Google account, and we have deliberately turned off the option that would have forced you to.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy;
• correct anything that's wrong;
• delete it;
• restrict what we do with it, or object to us using it — including objecting to the legitimate interests we've relied on above, and to the way we sort businesses before contacting them;
• stop contacting you about ClearTill. That one isn't weighed up against anything: tell us and we stop, for good;
• hand it over in a portable format, or send it to someone else.

Email hello@cleartill.co.uk and ask. There's no charge and we'll come back to you within a month. We won't ask you why.

If you're not happy

Tell us first — hello@cleartill.co.uk — and we'll try to put it right. We'll confirm we've received your complaint within 30 days and give you a full answer as quickly as we can. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at any point, without going through us: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this notice

If we change how we handle your information, we'll update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is a significant one and we have your email address, we'll email you about it rather than expecting you to check.