PRIVACY POLICY

Updated and Effective as of [24 /01/ 2024]

Overview

[Merchant’s Name] (hereinafter referred to as the “Company” or “we”) prioritizes protecting the personal information of users who access service provided by the Company (hereinafter referred to as “Distributor” or “you”). As our Company recognizes the importance of protecting personal information, we will do our best to thoroughly and carefully protect and handle the personal information of our Distributors.

1 Who we are

For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679/EU (the "EU GDPR"), the Data Protection Act 2018 (the "Act") and the EU GDPR as it forms part of the law of the United Kingdom by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (the "UK GDPR"), the data controller is [Merchant’s official company name] with registered company number […] and with following trading address […] (“we”, “us” or “our”).

If you would like to contact us about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at [email and/or phone number].

2 What we collect and how we use personal information

We will collect and use your personal information provided by you voluntarily, generated when you use the [website name/service system name], and obtained by us from third parties, in accordance with the UK GDPR principles for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

You understand that the features of the [website name/service system name] may change over time business strategies. If we change our privacy practices, we may update this Privacy Policy. To the extent any changes are material, we will give you reasonable notice.

Information we collect

Information you provide to us about you and your employees or authorised persons, such as your name, business name, email address, phone number, social media, registration number, VAT number, and log-in password.
Payment or billing information you provide us, such as your bank account number and your billing records.

How we use such information

To provide you with the affiliate system or other services (i.e. open an account, contact you)
To pay you relevant services fees upon your authorisation, and to assist you to check billing records

Legal Basis

Legitimate Interests (to run our business, to manage our relationship with you, to provide support; to manage our relationship with you, to recover debts due to us);
Performance of our contract with you;
Compliance with a legal obligation.

3 What is our legal basis for processing your personal information

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. In respect of each of the purposes for which we use your personal information, the UK GDPR requires us to ensure that we have a "legal basis" for that use. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances. We have set out our specific purposes and associated legal bases in more detail in table format above.

Where we need to perform a contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you (“Performance of our contract with you”);
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests ("Legitimate Interests"). More detail about the specific legitimate interests pursued in respect of each purpose we use your personal information for is set out in the table above; (TO MERCHANT: for these activities, merchants will need to undertake and document a Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA).)
Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation (“Compliance with a legal obligation”); and
Where we have your specific consent to carry out the processing for the purpose in question (“Consent”).

4 When we share, transfer and disclose personal information

We may share your personal information with the following parties for the purposes set out in the table under section 2 above:

Certain features of the [website name/service system name] may be provided by our third-party partners, and we may entrust partners (including technical service providers) with the processing of certain personal information of the Personal Data Subjects. [For example, if you use the auto-payments feature, we may ask third-party payments companies to process your credit card information so that to charge you relevant services fee as directed by you.]

In addition, in order to provide the [website name/service system name] to you, we may use service providers. These service providers process your personal information as our data processors, on the basis of our instructions pursuant to a written agreement and we do not allow them to use your personal information for their own purposes.

(a)Affiliates – we share personal information with our affiliates to help provide services to you or analyse / improve the [website name/service system name].

(b)Third-party partners – we share personal information with business partners, i.e. when our [website name/service system name] is integrated with third-party e-commerce platforms / services.

(c)Social Networking Sites – we may share personal information, at your direction, with website plugins and social media platforms, e.g. to log into your account.

(d)Payment processing companies – we share personal information with payment processors to administer payment.

(e)In connection with a business reorganisation or an asset or share sale or purchase – we will share personal information with the prospective buyer or seller as the case may be.

(f)To comply with legal requirements – we share personal information if determined reasonably necessary to comply with the law, or as permitted by applicable law in order to comply with a legitimate disclosure request.

5 International transfers

We may share your personal information within our group, which may involve transferring your personal data outside the EEA and/or UK.

Some of our third-party partners are also based outside the EEA and/or UK so their processing of your personal information may involve a transfer of data outside the EEA and/or UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal information out of the EEA and/or UK, we will ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data; or
We will take measures to comply with applicable data protection laws related to such transfers and use appropriate transfer solutions for any transfers of data outside the EEA and/or UK, such as the UK Standard Contractual Clauses.

6 Automated decision-making

If we deploy automated technologies which give rise to automated decision-making about you, we will either: (1) have a human being involved in the process; or (2) use these technologies in ways that don’t have legal or similarly significant effects.

7 How you exercise rights over your personal information

You have the right to, at any time:

Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a data subject access request). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal information to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a Legitimate Interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information in the following scenarios:
If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; and
You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues – if you are unhappy about how we process your personal information, you can always file a complaint with the ICO at www.ico.org.uk. We would however appreciate the opportunity to resolve your concerns in the first instance before you contact the ICO.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at [contact info].

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

8 How we retain and protect personal information

(1) Retention period

We will only retain your personal information for such period as necessary to achieve the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, unless otherwise required by law or regulation.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including contact and financial data) for six (6) years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data. Please see your legal rights above for further information.

(2) Protection of personal information

We take personal information security very seriously. We have adopted technical security measures, appropriate organisational structure and management system and other protections in line with industry standards to prevent leak, damage, misuse, unauthorised use, disclosure, or alteration of your personal information, including:

(a) Technical measures for data security

In order to ensure the security of your personal information, we strive to take all reasonable technical measures to protect personal information, so that you and your customers’ personal information will not be leaked, damaged, destroyed, or lost. We use encrypted transmission technologies such as SSL to protect the security of data transmission and use appropriate protection mechanisms to prevent malicious data attacks. We adopt an encrypted storage and data permission control mechanism for personal information to prevent your and your customers’ personal information from being accessed, disclosed, used or altered without authorisation, or intentionally or accidentally damaged or lost.

(b) Organisational and management measures for data security

We have established internal policies for the safe use of data and implement strict management rules for employees or contractors who may have access to your and your customers’ information, including but not limited to implementing different access controls for different roles, signing confidentiality agreements with them, and monitoring their operations.

We provide employees with training on security and privacy protection and require them to complete assessments, in order to enhance their awareness of the importance of personal information protection.

(c) Contractual obligations for data security

We will require our partners to sign a data processing agreement or set out data protection compliant terms, as required by Article 28 of UK GDPR, in a contractual agreement signed by both parties, which stipulates those partners’ obligations, including to ensure that the use and transfer of personal information shall satisfy our requirements and is subject to our review, instructions and audit rights, and in the event of any breach, we will hold the processor partner legally liable to the extent it has not complied with the UK GDPR’s processor obligations or has acted outside or contrary to our lawful instructions.

(d) Handling of security incident

In the event of a personal information security incident, we will activate the emergency plan, take remedial measures, record the incident, and report it in time in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations. If the security incident may cause serious damage or pose high risk to the legitimate rights and freedoms of you and/or your customers, such as the unauthorised disclosure of sensitive personal information, we will inform you of the security incident and its possible impact, the measures we have taken or are about to take, risk prevention and mitigation we recommend for you, the remedies we provide to you and/or your customers, and our contact. We will promptly inform you of the above by email, letter, telephone or notification. When it is difficult to inform the Personal Data Subject one by one, we will issue a warning notice in a reasonable and effective way.

Please note that the Internet is not an absolutely secure environment. We strongly suggest that you safeguard security of your account by using a secure and complex password. If you find that your personal information, especially your account number or password, has been leaked, please contact us immediately using the methods provided in this Privacy Policy, so that we can take appropriate measures to protect your information.

9 How we update this Privacy Policy

We may update the terms of this Privacy Policy from time to time, and such updates shall form part of this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to stay informed about how we are using and protecting information that we collect. This Privacy Policy was last updated [dd/mm/yyyy]

In the event of significant or material changes, we will notify you in a prominent manner as appropriate.

10 Definitions

Personal information (personal data): means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

Sensitive personal information (special categories of personal data): personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

Deletion: the act of removing personal information from the system involved in the provision of routine service functions, so that it cannot be retrieved or accessed.

11 Third-party information sharing list

When you use the services provided by a third party, we will share the corresponding information after obtaining or ensuring that the third party obtains your authorization and consent, as well as other cases in compliance with laws and regulations. You can know how the third party will deal with your personal information through the relevant information listed. We will also strictly restrict the third party’s access to personal information to protect the security of your personal information.

We may also access the software development kit (SDK) provided by a third party to achieve to ensure the stable operation of the platform or realize relevant functions. Our access-related third-party SDKs are also listed in the following list. You can view the data use and protection rules of third-party through the links or paths provided in the directory. Please note that the type of personal information processing of third-party SDK may change due to version upgrades, policy adjustments, and other reasons. Please follow the official instructions published by it.