Uphold Privacy & Data Policy

This Privacy Statement describes how Uphold collects, uses, and shares your Personal Data that we receive from you when you visit our website or app or which we otherwise receive or collect from you in the course of, or in connection with, the provision of our products and services and our business operations. It answers the following questions:

• How do we collect Personal Data about you?
• What Personal Data do we collect?
• How do we use your Personal Data, and on what legal basis do we collect your Personal Data?
• How do we keep your Personal Data safe?
• How do we share your Personal Data?
• Do we transfer your Personal Data outside of the European Union?
• What does Uphold’s real-time public reserve transparency mean for your Personal Data?
• What are your legal data privacy rights?
• How long do we retain your Personal Data?
• How do we protect children’s privacy?
• How do we use your Personal Data to inform you and market to you?
• How do we make changes to this Privacy Statement?
• Where does this Privacy Statement apply?
• Who can you contact if you have further questions or requests about your privacy?

 

Uphold Group is made up of different legal entities, including Uphold HQ Inc., Uphold, LDA, Uphold Worldwide Ltd., Uphold International Equities, Inc., and other affiliates. This privacy statement is issued on behalf of the Uphold Group so when we mention “Uphold,” "we," "us" or "our" in this privacy statement, we are referring to the relevant company in the Uphold Group responsible for processing your Personal Data. Users residing in the UK, however, are subject to the UK Privacy & Data Policy available here: https://uphold.com/en-gb/legal/privacy-policy.

It is important that you read this Privacy Statement together with any other privacy statement or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing Personal Data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This Privacy Statement supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

How do we collect Personal Data about you?

We collect Personal Data about you both directly and indirectly. 

We collect information from and about you when you register with us or use our products, services or apps (our “Service”) or use our website or software applications, or access or use third-party services that use our Application Programming Interface (“API”).

• When registering with us as a customer, we ask you for detailed information, which we will use to verify your identity and protect against fraud, among other reasons discussed below.
• We gather Personal Data at other times when managing your Uphold account, such as from surveys, email communications, during support or customer care or during investigations.
• We automatically collect information sent to us by your computer, mobile phone or other device to improve your experience.
• When you use a location-enabled device with our Service, we may collect geographical location data or use various means to determine your location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for instance, provide data on nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi access spots.

 

As you interact with our website or software applications, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this information by using cookies, server logs, and other similar technologies. Cookies are small data files stored on your hard drive by a website. Cookies help us make our website and Service and your use of them better by allowing us to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information. Please see our Cookie Policy for additional information. You can also adjust your browser settings to disable cookies, but it may affect your ability to use the Service and our website.

We may receive data from third parties about you. This may include technical data from analytics and advertising partners like Google, from identity verification providers, as well as from other financial institutions.

What Personal Data do we collect?

Uphold only collects directly or indirectly the Personal Data it needs in order to offer and support our Service and meet our legal and regulatory obligations, which may vary depending on our relationship with you.

Here is an overview of the Personal Data we collect directly or indirectly from or about you:

• Identity verification data: To verify your identity, we collect your name, address, phone, email, and other similar information. We may also require you to provide additional Personal Data for verification purposes, including your date of birth, taxpayer or government identification number, or a copy of your government-issued identification. We may obtain information from affiliated and non-affiliated third parties, such as credit bureaus, identity verification services, and other screening services to verify that you are eligible to use our Services, and will associate that information with the information we collected from you. As part of our identity verification process, Uphold uses Veriff to verify your identity by determining whether a selfie you take matches the photo in your government-issued identification. Veriff’s facial recognition technology collects information from your photos that may include biometric data, and when you provide your selfie, you will be asked to agree that Veriff may process biometric data and other data (including special categories of data) from the photos you submit and share it with Uphold. Automated processes may be used to make a verification decision. Veriff’s privacy policy describes its collection, processing, storage and use of your personal data in more detail.
• Address verification data: We use Ekata to validate your physical address. Automated processes may be used to make a verification decision. Ekata’s privacy policy describes its collection, processing, storage and use of your personal data in more detail. In lieu of Ekata, we may use Trulioo to validate your physical address. Automated processes may be used to make a verification decision. Trulioo’s privacy policy describes its collection, processing, storage and use of your personal data in more detail.  We additionally may require further address verification and validation through our partner, SumSub by requesting that you provide us with documentation verifying your physical address such as bank statements, utility bills, Internet/cable TV/house phone line bills, tax returns, council tax bill, and or government-issued certifications of residence. SumSub’sprivacy notice describes its collection, processing, storage and use of your personal data in more detail. Uphold uses Google Places Autocomplete, a feature provided by Google that offers suggestions for addresses and places as you type in search fields. When you use our platform, we may access Google Places Autocomplete to provide real-time suggestions for addresses and places as you type in search fields.
• Financial data: In addition to identity verification, Uphold may collect various information regarding your finances through third parties in order to be able to perform the transactions you request on the platform and to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements (e.g., anti-money laundering laws) and our own internal policies; in order for this to function, we must share certain elements of your Personal Data with these third parties. The information we receive from these third parties may include accounts you hold, balances, transactions, and a risk score. When linking your existing bank account to the Uphold platform, users in certain jurisdictions may use Plaid, a third-party service, to seamlessly link accounts, and in order to do so, information about your bank account is shared by Plaid with Uphold. The collection and transfer of this information are subject to Plaid’s privacy policy.
  Account activity data: We collect information about your transactions, payments from or to you, and your other activities on our site or Service and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.
• Application use data: We may collect data on your interaction and use of our Service. This includes visits to our website or app, sign-up activity, your bank account, credit card , other payment details to enable you to enter into transactions on the Service, along with any additional information you may disclose to our user support team in order to resolve problems you report.
• Your device data: We collect and process your internet protocol (IP) addresses, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website or any of our software applications.
• Marketing and email data: We collect and process your preferences in receiving marketing from us, your email address, including hashed identifiers derived from email addresses for the purposes of cross-device tracking for targeted advertising, and where you may have seen Uphold advertisements. We use Customer.io for all marketing and transactional communications.
  • Our email headers contain tracking pixels that collect the following information;
    • Whether the email was opened
    • How long the email was open
    • How far down the email a recipient scrolls
    • Whether any links in the email were clicked
    • The recipient’s IP address
    • The recipient’s email client and device type
    • The recipient’s location

 

Customer.io’s Privacy Policy describes the collection, processing, storage, and use of your personal data in more detail.

How do we use your Personal Data, and on what legal basis do we collect and process your Personal Data?

We only collect and process your Personal data when it is lawful for us to do so. Listed below are the ways in which we may use and process your Personal Data and the legal grounds we rely on to do so.

• Providing our Service to you: It may sound obvious, but we need your data to make Uphold work in the first place. Without your name, banking information and other details, we simply could not offer you our products and services.
• Identity verification: As a financial institution, it is essential that we are able to confirm the true identity of our users. There are rules and regulations across the globe that require we identify our customers, including laws concerning anti-corruption, anti‐bribery, anti‐terrorism, and anti‐money laundering.
• Fraud Prevention: We use the personal information we collect in connection with providing you our services to detect and prevent fraudulent activity. We share this information with Unit 21 and Sift, both third party service providers, to assist us with this effort. Unit 21 and Sift use various technologies to capture various device identifiers, such as canvas fingerprinting and may use automated decision making in order to detect and prevent fraudulent activity. For more information on the privacy practices of Unit  21 please review their Privacy Policy.  For more information on the privacy practices of Sift, please review their Service Privacy Notice. 
• Account Security: We use your phone number for our account two-factor authentication process. This includes sending SMS or text messages (including by an automatic telephone dialing system) to any of the phone numbers provided by you or on your behalf in connection with your Uphold account.
• Address Verification: When you interact with our platform using Google Places Autocomplete, the following types of information may be collected and processed:
• Search Queries: Information about your search queries, specifically the text you input into address or place search fields.
• Location Data: Your device's geographical location, either provided by you or determined through GPS, IP address, or other methods, to refine autocomplete suggestions.
• Usage Data: Data on how you use the autocomplete feature, including the frequency and timing of your searches.
• Keeping you informed: It is important for security and financial transparency that we keep you aware of your transactions and related activity at Uphold. We will send you emails with confirmations, invoices, technical notices, updates, security alerts, legal and support and administrative messages.
• Investigations: Occasionally, we need to look at your account activity in order to check and protect against fraudulent, unauthorized or illegal behavior.
• Customer care: We strive to make sure you can easily use our products with no headaches, but sometimes you need help. Our customer care team will occasionally need access to your account data in order to fix any issues or answer your questions.
• Managing and improving our Service: We like to understand how our users engage and use Uphold in order to make sure Uphold is the best it can be. This process includes combining different account, transactional, marketing and other data to analyze the effectiveness and performance of our Service.
• Behavioral Advertising and Analytics (including attribution statistics)*: For those who choose to consent (opt-in) to our targeted advertising cookies, this process includes combining different account, transactional, marketing, and cross-device tracking. When we apply these techniques we may use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements, banners, or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. We may also use information from your mobile device, such as: browser type, device type and model, IDFA Identifiers, CPU, system language, memory, OS version, Wi-Fi status, time stamp and zone, device motion parameters and carrier for advanced attribution, acquisition, and analytical purposes including personalized or lookalike advertising. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page here.

 

*If you have chosen to consent to our  targeted advertising cookies but would like to change your mind and opt-out, you can do so by using the links below:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads
• Google: https://www.google.com/settings/ads/anonymous

 

You can opt-out of analytics by using the links below:

• Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/privacy-policy
• AppsFlyer: https://www.appsflyer.com/optout — You can view the Appsflyer privacy policy here.
• Google Analytics: https://myactivity.google.com/
• Additionally, you can opt-out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: https://optout.aboutads.info/. Or by visiting any of the links below: https://optout.networkadvertising.org/ or https://youronlinechoices.eu/. 

 

For more information, see our Cookie Policy.

• Communicating with you: We want you to be aware of product updates, news, events, and promotions and, if you consent, we will send you information, including regular personalized emails, to keep you up to date with all things Uphold.
• Business operations: We may need to use your Personal Data for our business operations, including internal training and administration, legal compliance, to enforce our legal rights, to protect third party rights, and in connection with a business transition such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of our assets.
• Website and software applications: We use data analytics to improve our website and software applications, activities and operations, products/services, events, etc. 
• Third parties: If you (i) use our Service and/or platform by (a) using an application (whether directly or by authorizing an application to use our Service and/or platform), (b) using a link provided by a third-party, or (c) any third party integrations or (ii) if you partner with us in a program or other business arrangement where a third-party intermediary is involved  all such third parties may receive detailed information about your account, your use of the Service, transaction history or even the ability to take actions on your behalf. When you authorize an application or third party integration via the Uphold platform, you will be notified of what Personal Data will be shared with these third parties. Information collected by these applications or third-party integrations are subject to their terms and policies and are required by contract by Uphold to maintain the confidentiality and security of your Personal Data.

 

The primary legal grounds upon which we collect and process your Personal Data are: 

• through obtaining your consent at the time of collection, 
• due to the necessity of doing so to perform the services as requested, 
• in order to comply with our legal obligations, and
• to pursue our legitimate interests (e.g., to provide you with access to our services; to improve our
• services, to detect and prevent fraudulent activity within our services, etc.).  

 

Note that we may process your Personal Data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using that data.

How do we keep your Personal Data safe?

We have implemented security measures to prevent your Personal Data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered or disclosed.

We protect your Personal Data by maintaining physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards, incorporating tested security technologies, in compliance with applicable laws. We may use network safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption, enforce physical access controls, and authorize access to Personal Data only for those people who require access to fulfill their job responsibilities.

In addition, we limit access to your Personal Data to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your Personal Data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Those with access to your Personal Data are carefully screened, periodically reevaluated, and are required to keep all your Personal Data confidential.

How do we share your Personal Data?

We sometimes share your information internally between employees and contractors of the Uphold Group (including those based outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”)), in particular in connection with activities undertaken jointly or in common with such group members and/or provide IT and system administration services and undertake management reporting.

We may disclose your personal data to our partner and affiliate Optimus Cards UK Limited (FRN: 902034) (“Optimus”), which provides e-money services in the UK. Optimus will hold your information on their own account, and process it in accordance with their own privacy policy, which may be updated from time to time. You can read Optimus’ privacy policy here.

We may share your search queries and relevant information with Google to enable the provision of the Google Places Autocomplete service. Google’s use of this data is governed by their own privacy policies and terms of service.

We do not sell, trade or otherwise transfer your Personal Data to third parties other than third parties who assist us in operating our Service, third parties who assist us in facilitating certain programs and other business arrangements for which you have expressly agreed to participate, management and reporting, maintaining compliance with relevant laws (including compliance with relevant anti-corruption, anti‐bribery, anti‐terrorism, and anti‐money laundering laws), conducting our business or supporting our users, or providing you with applications or services integrated via our API. We require that those third parties agree to keep this information confidential and secure on the same conditions and protection levels we provide to you as a user, in accordance with relevant privacy laws, including the GDPR. A complete list of our sub-processors can be viewed here. 

We may also release your information to certified and authorized law enforcement officials when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our terms or policies, or protect the rights, property, or safety of Uphold, our users, or others. We have a set of guidelines for how we engage with law enforcement officials that are available to the public here.

Finally, in the event of the sale or transfer of ownership, your data would be shared with the new owners.

Do we transfer your Personal Data outside of the EU?

Uphold is headquartered in the United States. Many of our affiliates and third party service providers are based outside the EEA, so processing of your Personal Data may involve a transfer of your Personal Data outside the EEA and may be maintained or accessed in servers or files located in countries outside the EEA, including the United States.

By voluntarily providing your Personal Data on or via this website or app, you consent to its transfer, processing and storage in the United States or other countries outside the EEA, some which have not been deemed by the EEA to have “adequate” privacy safeguards.

Whenever we transfer any Personal Data outside the EEA, we will put in place an adequate level of protection to ensure that any such transfers comply, and are consistent with applicable EU data protection laws, including with respect to transfers among Uphold affiliates, the standard data protection clauses adopted by the EU Commission. 

Please contact us at [email protected] if you are located in the EU and want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring Personal Data outside of the EEA.

What does Uphold's real-time public reserve transparency mean for your Personal Data?
As part of our transparency, we publish our holding and transactions on our Transparency Page. Our Reservechain™ and Reserveledger™ do not contain any Personal Data. The amount, asset class and time-stamp of all transactions conducted using our Service is a permanent part of the publicly-accessible Reservechain™ and Reserveledger™. Only users who are party to the transaction have the ability to access Personal Data associated with their transactions.

What are your legal data privacy rights?

You have the right to:

• Access the Personal Data we store and process about you or to request a copy of it to transfer to another service provider.
• Request that we correct inaccurate data about you.
• Ask us to delete, restrict, or object to us processing your data, although for legal reasons (e.g. anti-money laundering rules and regulations) we cannot always do this.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party, in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. 
• Withdraw your consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data, including for marketing
• Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
  Your marketing preferences can be updated on the Uphold Platform under your user settings or through any Newsletter via the “Unsubscribe” link.  For all other Data Privacy inquiries, please submit your request through our standard customer support process, by contacting our Support Team.

 

Also, under the relevant privacy laws of the EEA (including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation) in respect of your EEA Personal Data you may have a number of important rights. For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the European Information Commissioner’s Ofice (ECO) on individual’s rights under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation here.

How long do we retain your Personal Data?

Uphold maintains reasonable procedures to help ensure that your Personal Data is reliable for its intended use, accurate, complete, and current.

• We will only retain your Personal Data for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, as well as other factors required by General Data Protection Regulation or other laws to which we are subject, including those relating to anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing. Our legal and regulatory compliance obligations require that we retain customer data for a period of 7 years after the end of the customer relationship.
• When it is no longer necessary to retain your Personal Data, we will securely delete it, subject to applicable law and regulations.
  In some circumstances, we may anonymize your Personal Data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.
• If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials, we will continue to keep a record of your contact details and appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us.
• Should you make a Data Subject request through our standard customer support channel, we will retain the minimum required amount of data in order to keep a record of your request and the action we took to resolve it.

How do we protect children’s privacy?

We do not knowingly solicit or collect information from individuals under 18. If we become aware that a child under the age of 18 has provided us with Personal Data, we will close the account and restrict their information. If you believe that we might have collected Personal Data from a child under 18, please contact us using the information below.

How do we use your Personal Data to inform you and market to you?

In compliance with applicable laws, we may send you personalized marketing information, including by email, and such information may include product and service updates, industry news, our events, activities and offers, information about our business and personnel, and tips. We may combine your Personal Data such as age, transaction history, account usage to improve the value and specificity of these communications.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages or information at any time by following the “unsubscribe” link on any marketing message sent to you or by updating your contact preferences directly on the Uphold Platform. Please note, it may take up to 10 days for this to take effect. Where you opt-out of receiving these marketing messages or publications, this will not apply to Personal Data collected by or provided to us in connection with a specific purpose, request, order, event or activity or any dealings with you, and you may still receive emails from us relating to the operation of the Uphold service, like transaction confirmations.

How do we make changes to this Privacy Statement?

This version was last updated on the date indicated above and historic versions are archived and can be obtained by contacting us. We may update this Privacy Statement from time to time as we deem necessary or appropriate in our sole discretion. If there are any material changes to this Privacy Statement, we will notify you by email, by means of a notice on the Uphold Platform, or as otherwise required by applicable law. We encourage you to review this Privacy Statement periodically to be informed regarding how we are using and protecting your information and to be aware of any policy changes. Any changes to this Privacy Statement take effect immediately after being posted or otherwise provided by us.

It is important that the Personal Data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your Personal Data changes during your relationship with us.

Where does this Privacy Statement apply?

This Privacy Statement applies to all of the services offered by the Uphold Group and services offered on third-party sites, such as advertising services. This Privacy Statement does not apply to services that have separate privacy notices that do not incorporate this Privacy Statement.

This Privacy Statement doesn’t apply to the information practices of other companies and organizations that advertise our services or to services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may include our Services or be linked from our Services.

This website and app may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy statement of every website you visit.

Who can you contact if you have further questions or requests about your privacy?

You can direct any questions or complaints about the use or disclosure of your Personal Data to us by contacting us as set out below. We will investigate and attempt to resolve any complaints or disputes regarding the use or disclosure of your Personal Data as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement or need to contact us, please email us at [email protected], or contact us by mail at 80 East Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ste. 3D, Larkspur, CA 94939. All Data Subject Requests should be submitted to our Customer Support Team. Uphold does not process requests received by a privacy automated service (bot). All requests must come directly from the individual to the email address noted above.

As Uphold is based in the United States it has appointed Uphold, Ltda a company incorporated in Portugal (Co. Number: PT513095136), to be its representative within the EEA. They may be contacted at [email protected].

If you are resident in the European Union and are dissatisfied with the resolution of your complaint in respect of your EEA Personal Data, you may contact the EU data protection authority in your jurisdiction using the contact details provided here for further information and assistance.

Who can you contact if you have further questions or complaints about Uphold in USA?

If you have a complaint, first contact Uphold HQ Inc. at 1-888-677-9280 or [email protected], and if you still have an unresolved complaint regarding Uphold HQ Inc.'s money transmission activity, please direct your complaint to:

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
• 855-411-2372, 855-729-2372 (TTY/TDD)
• https://consumerfinance.gov

 

In addition, if you are a Texas resident:

• Texas Department of Banking
• 2601 North Lamar Boulevard
• Austin, Texas 78705
• 1-877-276-5554 (toll free)
• www.dob.texas.gov