A. Overview
In order to operate the PayCafe service and to reduce the risk of fraud, PayCafe (“PayCafe” or “we”) must ask you to provide us information about yourself and your credit card and/or bank account. This Privacy Policy describes the information we collect and how we use that information.
PayCafe takes the privacy of your personal information very seriously and will use your information only in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information or a list of our customers to third parties. However, as described in more detail in Part C below, there are limited circumstances in which some of your information will be shared with third parties, under strict restrictions, so it is important for you to review this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy applies to all services that are hosted on the PayCafe.com website, whether the services are offered by PayCafe or by its subsidiaries. By accepting the Privacy Policy and User Agreement in registration, you expressly consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is incorporated into and subject to the terms of the PayCafe User Agreement. This Privacy Policy will take effect on January 1, 2018. This Privacy Policy was last updated on January 1, 2018.
Notification of Changes
This policy may be revised over time as new features are added to the PayCafe service or as we incorporate suggestions from our customers. If we are going to use or disclose your personally identifiable information in a manner materially different from that stated at the time we collected the information, you will have a choice as to whether or not we use or disclose your information in this new manner. Any material changes will be effective only after we provide you by e-mail with at least 30 days’ notice of the amended Privacy Policy (if you have closed your PayCafe account, you will not be contacted to notify you of the amended Policy and your personal information will not be used or disclosed in this new manner).
We will post the amended Privacy Policy prominently on our Web site so that you can always review what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we will disclose it to anyone. Please check the PayCafe Web site at PayCafe.com at any time for the most current version of our Privacy Policy.
PayCafe and other pages on the PayCafe Website may include links to third-party Web sites. These sites are governed by their own privacy statements, and PayCafe is not responsible for their operations, including but not limited to their information practices. Users submitting information to or through these third-party Web sites should review the privacy statement of these sites before providing them with personally identifiable information. A Special Note About Children. Children are not eligible to use our service and we ask that minors (under the age of 18) do not submit any personal information to us or use the service.
B. Information We Collect
Required Information
To open a PayCafe account, you must provide your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. In order to make payments through PayCafe, you must provide credit card, debit card or bank account information (bank account information is required to make payments totaling more than $1,000.00 USD). We also ask you to choose two different security questions to answer (such as your city of birth or your pet’s name) This required information is necessary for us to process transactions, issue a new password if you forget or lose your password, protect you against credit card fraud and checking account fraud, and to contact you should the need arise in administering your account.
Information About You From Third Parties
In order to protect all our customers against potential fraud, we verify with third parties the information you provide. In the course of such verification, we receive personally identifiable information about you from such services. In particular, if you register a credit card or debit card with PayCafe, we will use card authorization and fraud screening services to verify that your card information and address matches the information that you supplied to PayCafe, and that the card has not been reported as lost or stolen.
If you register your online business with PayCafe or if you send or receive high overall payment volumes through PayCafe, in some circumstances we will conduct a background check on your business by obtaining information about you and your business from a credit bureau or a business information service such as Dun & Bradstreet. If you incur a debt to PayCafe, we will generally conduct a credit check on you by obtaining additional information about you from a credit bureau, to the extent permitted by law. PayCafe, at its sole discretion, also reserves the right periodically to retrieve and review a business and/or consumer credit report for any account, and reserves the right to close an account based on information obtained during this credit review process.
Additional Verification
If we cannot verify the information that you provide, or if you request a withdrawal by check to an address other than your verified credit card billing address, we ask you to send us additional information by fax (such as your drivers’ license, credit card statement, and/or a recent utility bill or other information linking you to the applicable address), or to answer additional questions online to help verify your information.
Web Site Traffic Information
Because of the way that World Wide Web communication standards work, when you arrive at or leave the PayCafe Web site, we automatically receive the Web address of the site that you came from or are going to. We also collect information on which pages of our Web site you visit while you are on the PayCafe site, the type of browser you use and the times you access our Web site. We use this information only to try to understand our customers’ preferences better and to manage the load on our servers, so as to improve our service and your experience with PayCafe. We do not track the Web sites that you visit before or after you leave the PayCafe site.
Our Use of “Cookies”
“Cookies” are small files of data that reside on your computer and allow us to recognize you as a PayCafe customer if you return to the PayCafe site using the same computer and browser. We send a “session cookie” to your computer if and when you log in to your PayCafe account by entering your e-mail address and password. These cookies allow us to recognize you if you visit multiple pages in our site during the same session so that you don’t need to re-enter your password multiple times. Once you log out or close your browser, these session cookies expire and no longer have any effect. We also use longer-lasting cookies to display your e-mail address on our sign-in form, so that you don’t have to retype the e-mail address each time when you log in to your PayCafe account. In addition, we use cookies to process our referral program, described in Section C below. Our cookie files are encoded so that your e-mail address and other information can only be interpreted by PayCafe. We may, however, share cookie information regarding whether or not a certain user is already registered with PayCafe with certain merchants with whom we have an official co-marketing relationship.
Customer Service Correspondence
If you send us correspondence, including e-mails and faxes, we retain such information in the records of your account. We will also retain customer service correspondence and other correspondence from PayCafe to you. We retain these records in order to measure and improve our customer service and to investigate potential fraud and violations of our User Agreement. We may, over time, delete these records if permitted by law.
Questionnaires, Surveys and Profile Data
From time to time, we offer optional questionnaires and surveys to our users for such purposes as collecting demographic information or assessing users’ interests and needs. The use of the information collected will be explained in detail in the survey itself. If we collect personally identifiable information from our users in these questionnaires and surveys, the users will be given notice of how the information will be used prior to their participation in the survey or questionnaire.
Non-member Recipients and Requests
When a member either sends a payment to, or requests a payment from, an individual who is not a registered member of PayCafe, we will retain the information that the member submits to us, including, for example, the other party’s email address and/or name, for the benefit of the member who is attempting to contact the non-member, so that the member can see a complete record of his or her transactions, including uncompleted transactions. Although this information is stored indefinitely, we will not market to the non-member in any way at any time. Additionally, these non-members have the same rights to access and correct information about themselves (assuming that their email addresses were correct enough to reach them) as anyone else who uses PayCafe.
C. Our Use and Disclosure of Information
Internal Uses
Disclosure to Other PayCafe Customers
If you are a registered PayCafe user, your name, e-mail address, phone number (if applicable) date of sign-up, and whether you have verified control of a bank account are displayed to other PayCafe customers whom you have paid or who are attempting to pay you through PayCafe. If you are a Business account holder, we will also display to other PayCafe customers the Web site address (URL) and customer service contact information that you provide us. However, your credit card number, bank account and other financial information will NEVER be revealed to anyone whom you have paid or who has paid you through PayCafe, except with your express permission or if we are required to do so pursuant to a subpoena or other legal process.
If you are buying goods or services and paying through PayCafe, the seller of the goods or services may request that you provide a mailing address that PayCafe has confirmed as matching the billing address in the credit card system. You do not have to provide this information. If you do not provide the information, however, the seller may choose not to accept your PayCafe payment and not to complete the transaction.
We work with third-party merchants to enable them to accept payments from you, including direct credit card payments. Merchants who use this service will share personally identifiable information you provide to them with PayCafe in order to validate the information, assess the risks of your payment, or confirm the existence or status of your PayCafe account. You permit PayCafe to share information with the merchant on the validity of the personally identifiable information you provided to the merchant, and on the existence or status of your PayCafe account.
PayCafe does not store the personally identifiable information provided by these merchants to validate the existence of your account.
Disclosure to Third Parties Other Than PayCafe Customers
PayCafe will not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information to third parties. PayCafe will not share any of your personally identifiable information with third parties except in the limited circumstances described below, or with your express permission (and with other PayCafe customers as described above). These third parties are limited by law or by contract from using the information for secondary purposes beyond the purposes for which the information is shared.
- We share information with companies that help us process the transactions you request and protect our customers’ transactions from fraud, such as sharing your credit card number with a service that screens for lost and stolen card numbers. See “Information About You From Third Parties” in Section B above. Additionally, if you go into a negative balance and owe us money, we may share information with processing companies including collection agencies.
- We may disclose the information we collect, as described in Section B above, to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf. We may also disclose the information we collect (but not your bank account or credit card information) to other financial institutions with whom we have joint marketing agreements, in order to determine whether you are pre-approved for the products that PayCafe is jointly marketing with the third party. These companies are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit using the information except to market the specified PayCafe-related products or services unless you have affirmatively agreed or given your prior permission for other uses.
- We disclose information that we in good faith believe is appropriate to cooperate in investigations of fraud or other illegal activity or to conduct investigations of violations of our User Agreement. For example, this means that if we conduct a fraud investigation and conclude that one side has engaged in deceptive practices, we can give that person or entity’s contact information (but not bank account or credit card information) to victims who request it.
- We disclose information in response to a subpoena, warrant, court order, levy, attachment, the order of a court-appointed receiver or other comparable legal processes, including subpoenas from private parties in a civil action.
- When a user signs up for a co-branded version of PayCafe (e.g. PayCafe) through links to PayCafe from our co-branded partner’s website, PayCafe will share with the co-branded partner that user’s name, e-mail address and physical address in order to provide enhanced integration between PayCafe’s services and the services of our co-branded partner. If you do not want your information shared with PayCafe’s co-branded partner, you should sign up with PayCafe directly and not through a link from our partner’s website.
- We disclose information to your agent or legal representative (such as the holder of a power of attorney that you grant, or a guardian appointed for you).
- We share aggregated statistical data with our business partners or for public relations. For example, we may disclose that a specific percentage of our users live in California. However, this aggregated information is not tied to personally identifiable information.
- As with any other business, it is possible that PayCafe in the future could merge with or be acquired by another company. If such an acquisition occurs, the successor company would have access to the information maintained by PayCafe, including customer account information, but would continue to be bound by this Privacy Policy unless and until it is amended as described in Section A above.
- We share your information with our parent, subsidiaries and joint ventures to help coordinate the services we provide to you, enforce our terms and conditions, and promote trust and safety.
Our Contacts with PayCafe Customers
We communicate with users on a regular basis via e-mail to provide requested services, and we also communicate by phone to resolve customer complaints or investigate suspicious transactions. We use your e-mail address to confirm your opening of a PayCafe account, to send you notice of payments that you send or receive through PayCafe (including referral payments described below), to send information about important changes to our products and services, and to send notices and other disclosures required by law. Generally, users cannot opt-out of these communications, but they will be primarily informational in nature rather than promotional.
In connection with independent audits of our financial statements and operations, the auditors may seek to contact a sample of our customers to confirm that our records are accurate. However, these auditors cannot use personally identifiable information for any secondary purposes.
Internet Address Information
We use IP addresses, browser types and access times to analyze trends, administer the site, improve site performance and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
Your Use of Information and Our Services
In order to facilitate the transactions between PayCafe members, our service allows you limited access other users’ contact or shipping information. As a seller you may have access to the User ID, email address and other contact or shipping information of the purchaser, and as a purchaser, you may have access to the User ID, email address and other contact information of the seller.
By entering into our User Agreement, you agree that, with respect to other users’ personally identifiable information that you obtain through the site or through a PayCafe-related communication or PayCafe-facilitated transaction, you will only use this information for (a) PayCafe-related communications that are not unsolicited commercial messages, (b) using services offered through PayCafe (e.g. insurance, shipping and fraud complaints), and (c) any other purpose that such user expressly agrees to after adequate disclosure of the purpose(s).
In all cases, you must provide users with the opportunity to remove themselves from your database and review any information you have collected about them. In addition, under no circumstances, except as defined in this Section, can you disclose personally identifiable information about another PayCafe user to any third party without our consent and the consent of such other user after adequate disclosure. Note that law enforcement personnel and other rights holders are given different rights with respect to information they access PayCafe does not tolerate spam. Therefore, without limiting the foregoing, you may not add a PayCafe user to your mail list (email or physical mail) without their express consent after adequate disclosure, even if said user has previously made a purchase from you. We strictly enforce our Anti-Spam Policy! To report PayCafe-related spam to PayCafe, please contact us.
D. Information Security
Information Security
PayCafe is committed to handling your customer information with high standards of information security. We restrict access to your personally identifiable information to employees who need to know that information in order to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information. We test our security systems regularly and also contract with outside companies to audit our security systems and processes.
The security of your PayCafe account also relies on the protection of your PayCafe password. You may not share your PayCafe password with anyone. PayCafe will never ask you to send your password or other sensitive information to us in an e-mail, though we may ask you to enter this type of information on the PayCafe website, which will always have a URL beginning with “https://www.paycafe.com”.
Any e-mail or other communication requesting your password, asking you to provide sensitive account information via email, or linking to a website with a URL that does not begin with a “https://www.paycafe.com” should be treated as unauthorized and suspicious and should be reported to PayCafe immediately. If you do share your PayCafe password with a third party for any reason, the third party will have access to your account and your personal information, and you may be responsible for actions taken using your password. If you believe someone else has obtained access to your password, please change it immediately by logging in to your account at PayCafe.com and changing your Profile settings, and also contact us right away as described in Section F below.
E. Accessing and Changing Your Information
You can review the personal information you provided us and make any desired changes to such information, or to the settings for your PayCafe account, at any time by logging in to your account on the PayCafe Web site and changing your preferences in the Profile page of the “My Account” tab. You can also close your account through the PayCafe Web site. If you close your PayCafe account, we will mark your account in our database as “Closed,” but will keep your account information in our database. This is necessary in order to deter fraud, by ensuring that persons who try to commit fraud will not be able to avoid detection simply by closing their account and opening a new account. However, if you close your account, your personally identifiable information will not be used by us for any further purposes, nor sold or shared with third parties, except as necessary to prevent fraud and assist law enforcement, or as required by law.
F. Contacting Us
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, PayCafe’s information practices, or your dealings with PayCafe, please contact us. Please CLICK HERE to see our contact details.