Privacy Policy

1. General

By agreeing to this privacy policy you agree specifically that we can collect, process, and use your data and personal information in accordance with the present privacy policy. This privacy policy describes how we collect and use this information. Switch will use your information in strict compliance with data protection regulations.

Under no circumstances will we sell or rent your personal information to third parties, for their marketing purposes, or for any or other purposes. If you do not agree with the terms of the privacy policy, please do not register and do not use this service.

BY AGREEING TO THE PRESENT PRIVACY POLICY, YOU ACCEPT THE COLLECTION, PROCESSING, AND USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION AND DATA IN THE MANNER HEREBY DESCRIBED.

1.1. Changes to the data privacy policy

This privacy policy may be revised in the course of time, if new features are added, or if proposals from our customers are implemented. We reserve the right to change this privacy policy at any time, and to place the revised version on our website. The revised version becomes effective upon expiration of a period of 30 days after it has been changed on the website. It will be assumed that you have agreed to all changes to the privacy policy if you continue to use the services after this period.

If you do not agree to the provisions of the privacy policy, you can cancel your account at any time.

1.2 Links on the Switch website

Some sections of our website contain links to the websites of third parties. These pages are subject to their own privacy policies. Switch is not responsible for their operation, including data handling. Users who send information to or via such third-party sites, should check the privacy policies of these sites before they share information with them.

It is hereby clarified that these privacy policies do not represent any framework agreement within the meaning of the EU Payment Services Directive 2 (2015/2366) and its transposition laws in the European Union and the EEA. Our services are available in compliance with the legal data protection provisions, which are described in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679).

2. Data Collection, Processing and Use

2.1 Required Information

We will only collect your personal data if you voluntarily share it with us, for example via our website, by email, or by telephone. To process payments with Switch, you must also specify your bank account information. We additionally require more information about yourself and your company if you want to use our service in its entirety. For tests only, a valid email address and a password are required.

Under some circumstances we will also ask you certain security questions. We need this information to process transactions, assign new passwords, to carry out checks in protecting you from credit card and bank account fraud if you have forgotten your current password, and to connect you with the administration of your account or of our services.

If you are transferring or receiving sums of money exceeding the amounts stipulated by anti-money laundering regulations, we may require more information about you or your company in order to meet the legal requirements.

2.2 Transaction data

If you use our service, we may request to store some information, including

• Your name, mailing address, city, state, zip code, email address, phone number and IP address;
• Your bill payment (including payment amount and designated payee);
• Your credit or debit card or bank account numbers, expiration date, and cardholder or account holder name;
• Social Security Number (SSN) and/or employer identification number (EIN);
• Unique identifier such as user name, account number, and password;
• IP address and other information about your computer, or the device that you use to access your user account, in order to monitor your account in relation to unauthorized access.

2.3 Information about you from third parties

To protect against potential fraud, with the help of payment processors and/or credit agencies we check the information you have provided in the list that is within the section "Use and disclosure of information" (see below). In the course of this verification we will receive personally identifiable information about you via these services.

If you owe money to Switch, we are authorized to perform a review of your credit rating, within the legal limits, by obtaining additional information about you from the credit agency. At its sole discretion, Switch also reserves the right, after conducting its own test, to periodically retrieve from a credit agency a business or customer credit report for each account, examine it, and to close accounts based on the information obtained during the credit check process.

2.4 Additional verification

If we cannot verify the information you have provided, or if we need additional information regarding your company, we will ask you to send additional information by fax, scan, or post (such as disclosure of all shareholders, excerpt from the commercial register not older than 3 months, credit card statement, or other information that places you in connection with the appropriate address), or we will perform a postal identity check. Switch reserves the right under some circumstances to make an onsite visit to your company.

2.5 Correspondence with customer service

If you send us correspondence, including emails and faxes, they will be stored in your account. We also save the entire customer service correspondence and other correspondence from Switch addressed to you. We store this data to document our customer relationships, to evaluate and improve our customer service, and to investigate potential fraud or violations of our terms of use. The data will of course be deleted or blocked in accordance with applicable legislation.

3. Use and disclosure of information

3.1 Data Usage

You agree that we may use and store your personal information for the following purposes:

Internal use

• Providing the services and customer services you have requested;
• Resolving conflicts, collection of fees, troubleshooting problems;
• Prevention of potentially illegal or prohibited activities;
• Enforcing our terms of use;
• Adjustment, review and improvement of our services;
• Comparison of information for determining accuracy and validation using third parties.

Disclosure of customer information via financial institutions: Please be advised that financial institutions from whom you purchase and with whom you concluded a contract, may have their own privacy policies, and that Switch is not liable for their application and manner of operation. Under some circumstances within the privacy policy your information may be accessed by additional third parties. Therefore, please check whether you are in agreement with the respective financial institution or third party's privacy policy.

Disclosure of data to third parties: Switch does not sell or rent any personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes. Disclosure takes place solely for the purposes described in this policy. You expressly agree, and indicate to Switch, that the following measures will be taken:

Disclosure of information, including, but not limited to transaction data, accounts, personal data, and the exchange of information with police, security forces, state, intergovernmental and supranational institutions, agencies (except tax authorities), departments or regulatory authorities, or organizations (including but not limited to the authorities listed below in the table, under the heading "Authorities"), or third parties, including group corporations, regarding whom we believe there is cause for investigating cases of fraud or other unlawful or potentially unlawful activity, as well as violations of our terms of use (including your credit card or EC card provider, or other account payment source). If you have given us false or inaccurate information and we determine that there is an instance of fraud, we will disclose the relevant data to appropriate credit agencies for the prevention of fraud, or to law enforcement agencies. We and other organisations may use this data (including data from other countries) to prevent fraud and money laundering. Disclosure due to credit card regulations or because of a criminal or civil process. In this table, the phrase ‘All account information’ includes: name, address, email address, telephone number, IP address, account number, account type, details of funding instruments associated with the account, details of payment transactions, details of commercial transactions, customer information and reports, account settings, customer data that we have received in the course of the legal obligation to identify our customers, and customer correspondence. With regard to the section"Purpose", all third party providers, with the exception of the authorities and group corporations, are obliged to conform to their contractual obligations over and against Switch, as listed at the end of this table. The authorities are obliged to fulfil their own regulatory objectives and provisions. Disclosure of information to your agent or legal representative (such as the holder of power of attorney granted by you or a guardian appointed for you). Disclosure of aggregate statistics to our business partners or PR partners. This summarized information is fully anonymous and does not contain any personal information.

Like with other companies, it is possible that Switch will enter into joint ventures in the future, or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition takes place, you agree that the subsequent company will gain access to the information managed by Switch, including information regarding member accounts. The subsequent company will still be bound by the privacy policy, unless it is changed accordingly.

3.2 Our contact with financial institutions

We generally communicate with financial institutions via email or phone to provide requested services: in the processing of customer complaints, to reply to customer inquiries, to inform you that in our view your user account is being used for an unauthorized purpose, in order to confirm information concerning your person, to confirm your business or banking transactions, for the collection of receivables, to conduct customer surveys, or to investigate suspicious transactions.

We use your email address or postal address to confirm your user account, to send you notifications about e.g. the entrance or the debiting of payments via Switch, to inform you about important changes to our products and services, and to send you notices and other legally prescribed announcements. In general members cannot choose what messages they will receive. The messages are mainly sent for informational purposes and not for advertising purposes.

In connection with independent audits of our financial statements and transactions, auditors may contact some of our customers to confirm the correctness of our documents. The auditors may use any personal data for secondary purposes.

4. Data Security

Switch applies the highest standards for data security in the management of customer information. We utilize computer protection mechanisms, such as firewalls and data encryption, there are physical access controls to our buildings and files, and we provide access to personal information only to those employees who need it to carry out their activities (need-to-know basis).

Once you have entered and saved your personal information on our website or in your account, and have logged in, from this point forward communication will be encrypted. We will connect you with our secure server, so that the data cannot be read by any other person. On the basis of 128 bit SSL encryption technology, we encrypt your data and transmit it in safe mode. This standard meets the highest standards, and is used for example by banks.

For your own security, we recommend using the latest version of your browser and an up-to-date virus scanner. You can recognize when encryption is switched on by the activated lock icon at the bottom of the browser status bar, or directly above the comparison engine. We protect our server and your data with the latest security software and firewalls, which should prevent any unauthorized access attempt from the outset.

The security of your account also depends on how well you protect your password. Do not share your password with anyone. You will never be asked by a Switch employee to specify your password. Therefore, consider emails or other messages in which you are asked for your password to be unauthorized and suspicious, and forward them to security@switchpayments.com.

If you nevertheless give your password to someone else for a particular reason, this person will gain access to your user account and your personal information, and you will be responsible for all activities carried out using your password. If you believe that someone else has access to your password, change it immediately by logging in to your account at www.switchpayments.com, and make the change in the profile settings, and notify us immediately as described above.

5. Accessing and Changing your Personal Information

You can check the personal data you have provided at any time, and may change this data for your Switch account only via a written statement. You may also only close your account only via a written statement.

If you cancel your account, your details will not be used for other purposes, sold, or given to third parties, unless we are legally obliged to do.

6. Protection of Customer Data

Switch is a service that is only successful due to trust in our company, in our customers and vice versa. Thus the protection of your personal data is a very important and special concern for us.

6.1 Basic principle: trustworthy handling of your data

Switch handles the data you provide carefully and conscientiously. Collection, processing, and use of your data only proceeds in the context of the legal provisions, or in the case of your explicit consent. Your personal data and the personal data of others that you provide us with, will not be sold, rented, or disclosed to third parties for other commercial reasons, such as for marketing purposes. Personal data consists of individual details about your personal or factual circumstances. Insofar as personal data regarding a person or transaction is transmitted to Switch, it will only be used for processing contracts paid via Switch.

6.2 Technical, organisational data protection

Our own standard is that our measures are always above the industry standard (‘best practice’). To this end we require that anyone who may come in contact with your personal data, commit to maintaining data confidentiality. These obligations also remain in force after termination of activities with Switch.

7. Your Rights

On your express request, which can be directed to us as desired by letter (Switch S.A., Avenida da Boavista 3769 Loja 27 e 28, 4100-139, Porto, Portugal) or email (security@switchpayments.com), we will give you information about data stored that pertains to your person. If it is incorrect, we will of course immediately arrange the necessary corrections. If you would like to make use of your right to data deletion/blockage, we will perform the deletion/blockage in accordance with applicable law. Only data that we are required to store by law is excluded from this. You of course may at any time revoke your consent to the privacy policy of Switch, by using the contact options mentioned in the previous paragraph.

8. Cookies, Website Tracking

To make visiting our website attractive and to establish the use of certain functions for you, we use so-called ‘cookies’ on some pages of our website. These involve small text files that are stored locally in the cache of your computer's Internet browser. Cookies enable the recognition of the Internet browser upon your next visit to our website, making our offer more user-friendly, more effective, and also more secure. However, you have the option of setting your browser to reject cookies or to display them in advance. However, if you reject cookies or similar technologies you may not be able to use certain web page offers, services, applications, or features. In addition, you can delete cookies on your system at any time. Please use the help integrated into your browser for more information on this topic.

Switch uses Google Analytics, an Internet analysis service provided by Google Inc. (‘Google’), to evaluate and support online marketing measures. Google Analytics uses so-called ‘cookies", which are text files placed on your computer for helping to analyse how you use the website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. This website uses IP anonymization. Your IP address will be shortened by Google mainly within Member States of the European Union, or in other States party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area.

On behalf of Switch, Google will use this information to evaluate your use of the website, to compile reports about the website activity, and to provide Switch with further services related to website activity and Internet usage. The IP address that your browser transmits within the scope of Google Analytics will not be associated with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However please be advised that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

You can also prevent Google from collecting the data generated by the cookie related to your use of the website (including your IP address), as well as prevent the processing of this data by Google, by downloading and installing this browser plug-in.

Further information regarding terms of use and privacy policy can be found here and here. Would like to advise you that this website has expanded Google Analytics using the code ‘GAT._anonymizeIp();’ to ensure anonymous collection of IP addresses (so-called IP masking).

For evaluation, and to support online marketing measures, Switch uses pixels, or transparent GIF files. These GIF files are provided by our ad management partners. These files can detect a unique cookie on your Internet browser, with which we can determine what advertisements the user brings to our website. The cookie was introduced by us or by another advertising customer. The information, collected and shared with cookies, Spotlight, or Floodlight technology, is anonymous and not personally identifiable. It contains neither your name nor your address, phone number, or email address.

You can prevent the installation of cookies by adjusting your Internet application (browser). To do this, you must turn off the storage of cookies in your Internet browser. For more information, please consult your Internet browser's user instructions.

This website uses the ‘Google AdWords’ online advertising program, specifically its conversion tracking function. The conversion tracking cookie is set when a user clicks on an ad delivered by Google. These cookies will expire after 30 days and do not yield personal identification. If the user visits certain pages of this website and the cookie has not expired, we and Google will detect that the user has clicked on the ad and been redirected to this page. Each Google AdWords customer receives a different cookie. Cookies cannot be tracked via the websites of AdWords customers. Information obtained by using the conversion cookie is used to create conversion stats for advertisers who have opted-in to conversion tracking. The customers can determine the total number of users who have clicked on their ad and who were redirected to a page with a conversion tracking tag. However, they do not obtain any information which can identify the user personally. Users who do not want to participate in this tracking can easily disable the Google conversion tracking cookie on their Internet browser via the user settings. These users will not be included in the conversion tracking statistics. Learn more about the Google Privacy Policy.

9. Contact for Privacy Policy

If you have questions regarding the collection, processing or use of your personal data, the correction, blocking or deletion of data, as well as the revocation of granted consent, please contact: security@switchpayments.com