Usawa Privacy Policy

PLEASE READ THIS PRIVACY POLICY CAREFULLY. THIS POLICY DESCRIBES THE WAYS Usawa, Inc. and its affiliates ("Usawa", "we", "us", "our") OR OUR VENDORS COLLECT, PROTECT, USE, AND STORE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION. YOU ACCEPT THIS PRIVACY POLICY BY USING OUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ON OUR WEBSITE OR THROUGH ANY OTHER MEANS (COLLECTIVELY THE "SERVICES"). We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting a revised version on our website. We will attempt to give a reasonable notice period upon making any changes; however, unless otherwise stated, the revised version will be effective at the time we post it.

If you open an account or use the Usawa Services, either directly or through a merchant partner or a third-party platform, we may collect the following types of information:

Personal information - your name, date of birth, Social Security number, address, phone, email, third-party application IDs, and other similar information.

Financial information - bank account online login information, bank account numbers, bank account details including transaction history, routing numbers and/or debit card numbers and credit card numbers that you link to your Usawa account or you give us when you use the Services. Before permitting you to use the Services, we may require you to provide certain information, including but not limited to your date of birth, or social security number. We may use this information or other information you provide to verify your identity.

When you visit the Usawa website or use the Services, we may collect information sent to us by your computer, mobile phone, or any other device. This information may include your IP address, device information including but not limited to your identifier, name and type, operating system, location, mobile network information, and standard web log information, such as your browser type, traffic to and from our site, the pages you accessed on our website, and any other available information. We may also collect information about your use and interaction with our website, application, or the Services. For example, we may evaluate your computer, mobile phone, or other access device to identify any malicious software or activity that may affect the availability of the Services. When you use the Services, we may also store information based on your usage history. This includes, but is not limited to, details of your purchases, content you viewed, event information, click stream information, and cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your account. We may also collect information about you from any contact you have with any of our services or employees, such as, with our customer support team, in surveys, or through interactions with our affiliates.

We use various technologies to collect and store information when you use the Services, and this may include sending one or more cookies or device identifiers. We also use these tracking technologies when you interact with the services we offer to our partners, such as advertising services or Usawa features that may appear on other sites and in any other manner that we deem necessary for our business purposes, such as:

Site operations: Enabling features that are necessary for providing you the Services on our site, such as identifying you as being signed in, tracking content views, remembering your preferences, and the number of times you have been shown an advertisement.

Analytics: Allowing us to understand how our Services are being used, track site performance, and make improvements.

Personalized advertising: Delivering tailored advertising based on your preferences or interests across services and devices, and measuring the effectiveness of advertisements.

We may also obtain information about you from third parties such as credit bureaus and identity verification services. If you apply for a loan or line of credit with Usawa, we will obtain consumer reports from consumer reporting agencies related to you at the time of your collection and periodically throughout the term of your loan or line of credit, as well as in connection with the use of any other services that we offer or that you may obtain from us.

Usawa stores and processes your information maintaining physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards. We maintain physical security measures to guard against unauthorized access to systems and use safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption. We enforce physical access controls to our buildings, and we authorize access to personal information only for those employees or agents who require it to fulfill the responsibilities of their jobs.

Usawa uses information to perform and improve our services, and to contact you. For example, we may use information to provide customer service and support, process transactions, resolve disputes, collect payments, prevent illegal activities, customize the Services, reduce risk to all parties involved in our transactions, and verify the accuracy of information.

We may use information to deliver targeted marketing, service update notices, and promotional offers based on your communication preferences. We may combine your information with information we collect from other companies and use it to improve and personalize the Services, content, and advertising.

We share your personal information with employees, affiliates, vendors, partners, merchant partners, marketing providers, and third parties as required to offer the Usawa Services. This includes, but is not limited to, processing transactions, maintaining your account, offering or servicing loans or lines of credit, offering other financial services, responding to court orders and legal investigations, litigation purposes, complying with audits or other investigations, and reporting to credit bureaus. We also engage the following types of service providers to perform functions on our behalf: marketing providers, billing and collection providers, auditing and accounting firms, professional services consultants, providers of analytics services, security vendors, and IT vendors. Occasionally, these service providers may also collect data directly from you and their privacy policies may also apply. Usawa will not share your financial information collected under Section 1.1 of this Privacy Policy with any third party unless required by law or valid court order.

We will share your information with any party when required by law or by a government request to do so or to combat fraud or criminal activity.

We may share your information with merchants with which you interact and which use Usawa for marketing, if you consent or as permitted by law. By creating a Usawa account, you consent to Usawa sharing your information with merchants with which you use the Usawa Services, for those merchants to market to you. We do this to help merchants personalize services and offers, so you can have a better experience. You are able to revoke your consent at any time by emailing Optout@Usawa.social. If you choose to do so, we will stop sharing your information with merchants from that point onward, except as necessary to complete transactions you initiate.

If you no longer wish to receive notifications about our Services, you may change your notification preferences by emailing Help@Usawa.social Alternatively, you may be able to indicate your preference by logging into your account and adjusting your preferences or by following the directions provided with the communication. Usawa reserves the right to close or limit access to your account should you opt out of the crucial notices that are required to perform the Usawa Service. You are still responsible for any amounts due to Usawa even if we close or limit access to your account.

You can opt out of receiving SMS messages by emailing Help@Usawa.social. Alternatively, you may be able to indicate your preference by logging into your account and adjusting your preferences or by following the directions provided with the communication. Again, Usawa reserves the right to close or limit access to your account should you opt out of the crucial notices that are required to perform the Usawa Service. You are still responsible for any amounts due to Usawa even if we close or limit access to your account.

You can review and edit your personal information at any time by logging in to your account or by contacting us at Help@Usawa.social. You can also request to close your account if you do not have an active loan by contacting us at Help@Usawa.social. If you close your Usawa account, we will mark your account in our database as "Closed", but will keep your account information in our database to comply with our legal obligations. 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. 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, as required by law or in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Persons with disabilities may obtain this notice in alternative format upon request by contacting us at Privacy@Usawa.social or by calling Customer Care at (866) 952-2744.

California Shine the Light: Residents of the State of California have the right to request information from Usawa regarding other companies to whom the company has disclosed certain categories of information during the preceding year for the other companies' direct marketing purposes. If you are a California resident and would like to make such a request, please email Privacy@Usawa.social.

California Consumer Privacy Act: The California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA") provides California residents with the right to receive certain disclosures regarding the collection, use, and sharing of "Personal Information", as well as the right to know/access, delete, and limit sharing of Personal Information. The CCPA defines "Personal Information" to mean "information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household." Certain information we collect may be exempt from the CCPA because it is considered public information (e.g., it is made available by a government entity) or covered by a specific federal privacy law, such as the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

To the extent that we collect Personal Information that is subject to the CCPA, that information, our practices, and your rights are described below.

Right to notice at collection regarding the categories of personal information collected

You have the right to receive notice of the categories of Personal Information we collect, and the purposes for which those categories of Personal Information will be used. This notice should be provided at or before the time of collection. The categories we use to describe the information are those enumerated in the CCPA.

We collect your name, phone number, email address, and contact address when you create an account or complete a transaction. If you choose to create an account, you will also be asked to create a username, and we will assign one or more unique identifiers to your profile. We use this information to provide the Services, respond to your requests, and send information and advertisements to you.

We collect payment information when you provide it to us, which may be your credit card number or a bank account, when you complete a transaction. You have the option to store this information to your account or set up a recurring transaction. We use this information to streamline and facilitate payments and transactions.

We may collect your Social Security number or Driver's License number. We use this information to identify you, authenticate and collate information about you, prevent fraud, and conduct background checks or other screening activities.

We collect your IP address automatically when you use our Services. We use this information to identify you, gauge online activity on our website, measure the effectiveness of online services, applications, and tools, and to serve targeted advertisements based on your online activities.

We collect your Device ID automatically when you use our Services. We use this information to monitor your use, and the effectiveness of, our Services, to identify you, and to provide you with targeted information and offers.

Protected classifications: We collect your age in order to comply with laws that restrict collection and disclosure of personal information belonging to minors.

Commercial information: When you engage in transactions with us, we create records of goods or services purchased or considered, as well as purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies. We use this information to measure the effectiveness of our Services and to provide you with targeted information, advertisements, and offers.

Biometric information: We collect information about your physiological, biological, and behavioral characteristics. We use this information to verify your identity.

Internet or other electronic network activity information: We collect information about your browsing history, search history, interaction with websites, and applications or advertisements automatically when you utilize our Services. We use this information to gauge online activity on our website, measure the effectiveness of online services, applications, and tools, and to serve targeted advertisements based on your online activities.

Geolocation data: As described above, we collect your IP address automatically when you use our Services. We may be able to determine your general location based on your device's IP address. When you use the Services for the first time, we may ask for your permission to collect your precise location (i.e., your GPS coordinates). If you allow your device to provide us with this information, we use it to make improvements to our products and services, and to provide recommendations and deliver relevant advertising.

Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information: If you contact us via phone, we may record the call. We will notify you if a call is being recorded at the beginning of the call. We may collect your photographic or video image, or similar information. We use this information to monitor our customer service, maintain the security of our systems and physical locations, and train employees.

Professional or employment-related information: We collect information about your current employer and your employment history. We use this information to conduct background and other screening activities, and to promote our services to others.

Inferences drawn to create a profile about a consumer reflecting the consumer's preferences or characteristics: We may analyze your actual or likely preferences through a series of computer processes. On some occasions, we may add our observations to your internal profile. We use this information to gauge and develop our marketing activities, measure the appeal and effectiveness of our Services, applications, and tools, and to provide you with targeted information, advertisements, and offers.

We may use any of the categories of information listed above for other business or operational purposes compatible with the context in which the Personal Information was collected.

We may share any of the above-listed information with Service Providers, which are companies that we engage for business purposes to conduct activities on our behalf. Service Providers are restricted from using Personal Information for any purpose that is not related to our engagement. The categories of Service Providers with whom we share information and the services they provide are described in this Privacy Policy.

Right to know about personal information collected, disclosed, or sold

You have the right to request that we disclose to you the Personal Information we collect, use, disclose, or sell. In order to process your request to know/access your Personal Information or delete your Personal Information, we may ask you to take additional steps to verify your request or identity.

Verification procedures

In order to process your request to know about or delete personal information we collect, disclose, or sell, we must verify your request. We do this by:

Providing personal identifiers we can match against information we may have collected from you previously, and

Asking you to confirm your request using the email address or telephone account stated in the request.

If you have authorized someone else to make requests on your behalf, we will require that you provide notarized statements confirming the identity and authority of that person. Such notarized statements can be obtained by emailing Privacy@Usawa.social.

Right to know/access information

You have the right to request access to Personal Information collected about you and information regarding the source of that information, the purposes for which we collect it, and the third parties and service providers with whom we share it. To protect our customers' Personal Information, we are required to verify your identify before we can act on your request.

Right to request deletion of information

You have the right to request in certain circumstances that we delete any Personal Information that we have collected directly from you. To protect our customers' Personal Information, we are required to verify your identity before we can act on your request. We may have a reason under the law why we do not have to comply with your request, or why we may comply with it in a more limited way than you anticipated. If we do, we will explain that to you in our response.

Right to information regarding participation in data sharing for financial incentives

You have the right to be free from discrimination based on your exercise of your CCPA rights. We may run promotions from time to time wherein we provide incentives for a consumer to share certain pieces of information with us. Participation in these incentives is voluntary, and you may opt out of the data sharing at any time.

Right to opt out of sale of personal information to third parties

Though Usawa does not sell Personal Information to third parties, California law requires that we maintain a separate webpage that allows you to opt out of the sale of your Personal Information in the future, which can be accessed by calling us at (866) 952-2744.

Please note that your right to opt out does not apply to our sharing of Personal Information with service providers, who are parties we engage to perform a function on our behalf and are contractually obligated to use the Personal Information only for that function.

We may also disclose information to other entities when required by law or to protect Usawa or other persons, as described in our Privacy Policy.

How to submit a request

You may submit a request to exercise your rights by sending an email to Privacy@Usawa.social or by calling us at (866) 952-2744.

Authorized agent

You may authorize another individual or a business registered with the California Secretary of State, called an authorized agent, to make requests on your behalf. We require that you and the individual complete notarized affidavits in order to verify the identity of the authorized agent and confirm that you have authorized them to act on your behalf.

Residents of the State of Nevada have the right to opt out of the sale of certain pieces of their information to other companies who will sell or license their information to others. Usawa does not sell the Personal Information of its customers; however, if you are a Nevada resident and would like to make such a request, please email Privacy@Usawa.social.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you should contact us at Help@Usawa.social