Privacy Policy for charge1.com
Last Updated: June 18, 2025
At charge1.com, we are committed to protecting the privacy and security of the personal and financial information entrusted to us by our merchants and their customers. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our credit card processing services, visit our website (charge1.com), or otherwise interact with us.
By using our services or accessing our website, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.
1. Information We Collect
We collect various types of information to provide and improve our services, including:
- Information You Provide Directly:
- Account and Contact Information: When you sign up for our services, we collect your name, business name, address, email address, phone number, and other contact details.
- Financial Information: To process payments, we collect bank account information, tax identification numbers (TIN), and other financial details necessary for merchant account setup and settlement.
- Verification Information: We may collect government-issued identification (e.g., driver’s license, passport) and other documentation for identity verification and fraud prevention purposes.
- Customer Service Interactions: Records of your communications with our customer support team, including emails, chat transcripts, and phone calls, texts etc.
- Phone Numbers for SMS: “SMS opt-in or phone numbers for the purpose of SMS are not being shared with any third party and affiliate company for marketing purposes.”
- Information We Collect from Your Customers (Transaction Data):
- Payment Information: When your customers make purchases through our processing services, we collect their credit/debit card numbers, expiration dates, CVVs, billing addresses, and transaction amounts.
- Transaction Details: Information about the goods or services purchased, date and time of transaction, and merchant details.
- Customer Identifiers: Unique identifiers associated with your customers (e.g., customer ID, email address if provided by the merchant for receipting).
- Information Collected Automatically (from Website and Services Usage):
- Device and Usage Information: We collect information about how you access and use our website and services, including your IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs, pages viewed, and the dates and times of your visits.
- Cookies and Tracking Technologies: We use cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to enhance your experience, analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements around the website, and gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level.
- Information from Third Parties:
- We may receive information about you from third-party sources, such as credit bureaus, financial institutions, and identity verification services, for fraud prevention, risk assessment, and compliance purposes.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect for various purposes, including:
- Providing and Maintaining Services: To operate, maintain, and provide all features of our credit card processing services, including processing transactions, settling funds, and managing merchant accounts.
- Customer Support: To provide customer support, respond to your inquiries, and resolve issues.
- Security and Fraud Prevention: To detect, prevent, and mitigate fraudulent or unauthorized transactions, money laundering, and other illegal activities. This includes using data for risk assessment and identity verification.
- Compliance and Legal Obligations: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, industry standards (e.g., PCI DSS), and legitimate requests from law enforcement or other governmental authorities.
- Improving Our Services: To understand how users interact with our website and services, diagnose technical problems, and develop new features and functionalities.
- Communication: To send you service-related communications, technical notices, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages.
- Marketing (with Consent): If you opt-in, we may use your contact information to send you marketing and promotional communications about our services that may be of interest to you. You can opt-out of these communications at any time.
3. How We Share Your Information
We do not sell or rent your personal or financial information to third parties for their marketing purposes. We may share your information in the following circumstances:
- With Financial Institutions and Payment Networks: We share transaction data with acquiring banks, issuing banks, credit card networks (e.g., Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover), and other financial institutions involved in the payment processing ecosystem to facilitate transactions.
- With Service Providers: We engage third-party service providers who perform functions on our behalf, such as data hosting, security, analytics, customer support, and marketing. These providers are contractually obligated to protect your information and only use it for the purposes for which it was disclosed.
- For Legal Reasons: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:
- Comply with a legal obligation (e.g., subpoena, court order).
- Protect and defend the rights or property of charge1.com.
- Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the services.
- Protect the personal safety of users of the services or the public.
- Protect against legal liability.
- Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganization, bankruptcy, or sale of all or a portion of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you via email and/or a prominent notice on our website of any such change in ownership or control of your personal information.
- With Your Consent: We may share your information with your explicit consent or at your direction.
- Aggregated or Anonymized Data: We may share aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you with third parties for various purposes, including analytics, research, and marketing.
4. Data Security
We implement robust technical, administrative, and physical security measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access, use, alteration, and disclosure. These measures include:
- Encryption: We use industry-standard encryption (e.g., SSL/TLS) to protect data transmitted over the internet.
- PCI DSS Compliance: We adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to ensure the secure handling of credit card information.
- Access Controls: We restrict access to your information to authorized personnel who have a legitimate need to access it for business purposes.
- Regular Audits and Monitoring: We regularly audit our systems and monitor for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.
Despite our efforts, no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the absolute security of your information.
5. Data Retention
We retain your personal and financial information for as long as necessary to provide our services, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements. The specific retention periods vary depending on the type of information and the purpose for which it was collected.
6. Your Choices and Rights
Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information, including:
- Access: You may have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you.
- Correction/Rectification: You may have the right to request that we correct or update inaccurate or incomplete personal information.
- Deletion/Erasure (“Right to be Forgotten”): In certain circumstances, you may have the right to request the deletion of your personal information.
- Restriction of Processing: You may have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information in certain situations.
- Data Portability: You may have the right to receive your personal information in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.
- Objection to Processing: You may have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances, including for direct marketing.
- Withdraw Consent: If we are relying on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact information provided below. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable law. Please note that we may need to verify your identity before fulfilling your request.
7. Cookies and Tracking Technologies
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly.
8.Third-Party Websites and Services
Our website or services may contain links to third-party websites or services that are not operated by us. This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of these third parties. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any third-party sites you visit.
9. Children’s Privacy
Our services are not directed to individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you are a parent or guardian and believe that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us, and we will take steps to delete such information from our systems.
10. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or other factors. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page and updating the “Last Updated” date at the top. We encourage you to review this Privacy Policy periodically.
11. Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:
310.826.7000