Account & data deletion.

How to delete your Payaam account and the information held with it — including if you can no longer sign in.

Applies to the Payaam app for iOS and Android, and to payaam.in.

This page explains how to request deletion of your Payaam account and the personal information held with it. It applies to the Payaam mobile app for iOS and Android, and to the Payaam website — they are one account.

You do not need the app installed, and you do not need to sign in, to make this request. If you are able to sign in, the in-app route is faster and gives you a cancellation window you can operate yourself.

1. How to request deletion

If you can sign in (fastest)

Open the Payaam app, or sign in on the website.
Go to Settings → Danger zone → Request account deletion.
Confirm. Your profile is hidden from everyone immediately.
You can cancel the request yourself at any point in the next 30 days by signing back in.

If you cannot sign in

Use the form at the end of this page, or email us directly. We verify that the request comes from the account holder before acting on it — usually by confirming the registered mobile number — because acting on an unverified deletion request would let anyone erase someone else's account.

You can also write to support@payaam.in from any address, including one not linked to the account.

2. What deletion does

Your profile stops being visible to anyone, immediately on request — before any data is erased.
You are withdrawn from matching. No new introductions are created for you or shown to anyone else.
Open introductions and connections go inert. The other family can no longer open your profile or reach you, and they are not told why. The connection record itself is not deleted — see below.
A recurring membership is scheduled for cancellation immediately, and confirmed with the payment provider shortly afterwards. If a renewal is somehow taken in between, write to us and we will refund it.
After the 30-day window, the erasure runs: what is listed as destroyed below is destroyed, and what is listed as anonymised is stripped of everything identifying you.

Deletion is of the account as a whole. Payaam has no partial-deletion option, because a matrimonial profile is not meaningful with parts of it missing.

3. What is erased, and what is kept

Three categories, and the difference is not discretionary. What is yours alone is destroyed. What is jointly held with another member is anonymised rather than deleted, because removing it would rewrite their history too. And a narrow set is retained in full because Indian law requires an intermediary to keep it.

Destroyed after the 30-day window	Includes
Biodata	Every field of your profile: family, education, career, religious practice, lifestyle, and your partner preferences, together with your listed siblings and any pending edits.
Photos	All uploaded photos and every derived version, including the blurred copies, deleted from storage.
Verification documents	Any identity or verification evidence you submitted, deleted from storage.
Device data	Push notification tokens, signed-in sessions, and one-time passcodes.

Anonymised, not destroyed	What survives, and why
Your account and profile record	The row itself remains, with your name, mobile number, email, date of birth and city replaced by placeholders and the account marked deleted. It no longer identifies you and cannot be signed in to or shown to anyone.
Introductions, interests and connections	The records linking you to other members are kept as an anonymised skeleton. Deleting them would silently rewrite the other member's own history — their introductions, and the outcome of a rishta their family took part in. Once your profile is anonymised these carry no name, photo or contact detail.
Chat messages	The text of everything you sent is replaced with a removal marker and the message is marked deleted. The thread itself remains, because the other member's side of the conversation is their record too and cannot be reconstructed with half of it missing.

This is the honest shape of deletion on a platform where two families' records are entangled: what is yours alone is destroyed, and what is jointly held is stripped of everything that points to you. If you need the anonymised records addressed as well, say so in your request and we will tell you exactly what can and cannot be done under our retention obligations.

Retained, and why	Basis
Transaction and tax records	Payment, invoice and refund records are retained for the period required by Indian tax law. They identify the transaction, not your biodata.
Safety and abuse records	If your account was reported or actioned for safety reasons, a minimal record is kept so the same person cannot immediately return. It holds the outcome, not your profile.
Records required by law	Anything an intermediary must preserve under the Information Technology Act and its rules, or that we have been directed to preserve by a lawful order.
Aggregated statistics	Counts that no longer identify anyone — for example the number of introductions made in a month. These cannot be traced back to you.

Nothing in the retained column can be used to reconstruct your profile, contact you, or show you to another member.

4. Timing and the recovery window

Immediately: your profile is hidden and you are withdrawn from matching.
For 30 days: the request can be cancelled. Signing back in restores your profile and your biodata as they were. A membership that has already been cancelled with the payment provider cannot always be resumed — if it cannot, you will be asked to subscribe again, and nothing else about the account is affected.
After 30 days: erasure runs and cannot be reversed. Nothing above can be recovered after this point, by you or by us.

The 30 days exist because families change their minds, often together, and an irreversible tap is the wrong shape for that decision. The window is fixed: we do not shorten it on request, because doing so would remove the protection it exists to give — including from someone acting on an account that is not theirs. Your profile is already hidden and you are already out of matching from the moment you ask, so nothing about your visibility depends on waiting it out.

5. Requesting a copy of your data instead

Deletion and export are separate rights, and export is worth exercising first if you want a record of anything. Signed-in members can request an export from Settings → Privacy & Safety. Otherwise use the form below and say that you want an export rather than deletion.

6. Submit a deletion request

Use this if you cannot sign in. We will reply to the email address you give here, and may ask you to confirm the mobile number registered to the account before we act.