Privacy Information

Internet privacy notice

Thank you for using Piedmont! Our pledge to protect your privacy is reflected in our Privacy Policy. We value our relationship with you and are committed to protecting the confidentiality of private/nonpublic personal information (“P/NPI”).

This Privacy Policy describes how we collect, use, process, and disclose your P/NPI, in conjunction with your access to and use of the System and Services. This privacy policy describes our privacy practices for all websites, platforms and services that link to it.

If you see an undefined term in this Privacy Policy (such as “System” or “Services”, it has the same definition as in our Processing Terms and Conditions (“Terms”) which can be found at www.piedmontterms.com. When this policy mentions “Piedmont,” “we,” “us,” or “our,” it refers to Piedmont Payment Services, LLC, the company that is responsible for your information under this Privacy Policy. When this policy mentions “Member” it refers to you, the individual whose P/NPI is being collected under this Privacy Policy.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We collect P/NPI about you to provide you with Products and Services. This may include your name, address, telephone number(s), e-mail address(s), financial account information, and information used to identify you. We may receive P/NPI from many sources, including but not limited to, your applications and forms, Billers, medical providers, insurers, employers, support organizations, and service providers.

Information You Give Piedmont

We ask for and collect the following P/NPI about you when you use the Piedmont Services. This information is necessary for the adequate performance of the contract between you and us and to allow us to comply with our legal obligations. Without it, we may not be able to provide you with all the requested services.

  • Identification Information. When you sign up for a Piedmont Account, we require certain information such as your first name, last name, mobile phone number, and email address.

  • Financial Information. To use certain features of Piedmont Services, we may require you to provide certain financial information (e.g. your bank account or bank card information) in order to facilitate the processing of Funding Events.

  • Communications. When you communicate with Piedmont, we collect information about your communication and any information you choose to provide.

  • Other Information. You may otherwise choose to provide us information when you fill in a form, update or add information to your Piedmont Account, respond to surveys, communicate with us, or use other features of the Piedmont Services.

Information We Automatically Collect when You use the Services

When you use the Services, we automatically collect P/NPI about the services you use and how you use them. This information is necessary for the adequate performance of the contract between you and us, to enable us to comply with legal obligations and to enable us to enhance the Services.

  • Usage Information. We collect information about your interactions with Piedmont such as the web pages or content you view, and other interactions on the Piedmont System.

  • Log Data. We automatically collect log data when you access and use the System, even if you have not created a Piedmont Account or logged in. That information includes, details about how you’ve used the Services, IP address, access dates and times, hardware and software information, unique identifiers, crash data, cookie data, and the pages you’ve viewed before or after using the System or Services.

  • Cookies. We use cookies and other similar technologies when you use our System. We may collect certain information by automated technologies such as cookies, web beacons, pixels, browser analysis tools, server logs, etc. In many cases we use information we collect to better understand website traffic patterns in order to improve your experience.

  • Do Not Track Indicators. While you may disable the usage of cookies through your browser, the Piedmont System currently does not respond to a “Do Not Track” indicator in the HTTP header from your browser or mobile application. This is due to the lack of standardization regarding Do Not Track indicators.

  • Financial Transaction Information. Piedmont collects information related to your financial transactions through the Services, including the payment instrument used, date and time, payment amount, expiration date, other information as needed, and other related transaction details. This information is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and Piedmont and to allow us to fulfill the Services.

Information We Collect from Third-Parties

Piedmont may collect information, including P/NPI, that others provide about you when they use the Services. We do not control, supervise or respond for how the third parties providing your information process your P/NPI. Any information request regarding the disclosure of your P/NPI to us should be directed to such third parties.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, we may receive additional information about you, such as demographic data or information to help detect fraud and safety issues, from third party service providers and/or partners, and combine it with information we have about you. We may receive information about you and your activities through partnerships.

Children’s Data

Our websites and applications are not directed to children under 18 and we do not knowingly collect any P/NPI directly from children under 18. If you believe that we are processing P/NPI pertaining to a child, we ask that you contact us immediately using the information provided under the “Contact Us” section below.

HOW WE USE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We may use, store, and process P/NPI to provide, enhance, and develop the Piedmont Services and to provide advertising and marketing such as to:

  • enable you to access and use the Piedmont Services

  • operate, protect, improve, and optimize the Piedmont Services and experience, such as by performing analytics and conducting research

  • provide customer service

  • send you service or support messages, updates, security alerts, and account notifications

  • detect and prevent fraud, spam, abuse, security incidents, and other harmful activity

  • conduct security investigations and risk assessments

  • verify or authenticate information or identifications provided by you

  • comply with our legal obligations

  • resolve any disputes and enforce our agreements with third parties

  • enforce our Terms and other policies

  • send you promotional messages, marketing, advertising, and other information that may be of interest to you

  • administer referrals, rewards, surveys, sweepstakes, contests, or other promotional activities or events sponsored or managed by Piedmont or its third-party partners

  • send you promotional messages, marketing, advertising and other information that we think may be of interest to you

  • for any purpose you authorize

We will process your P/NPI for the purposes listed in this section given our interest in your experience with Piedmont, and where necessary for the performance of the Services.

How the System uses the P/NPI Collected

We may use the P/NPI as a part of the Services to:

  • Enable you to access and use the Services.

  • Detect and prevent fraud, abuse, security incidents, and other harmful activity.

  • Conduct fraud and risk assessments.

  • Comply with legal obligations.

  • Enforce the Terms and other policies.

  • With your consent, send you promotional, sales, marketing, advertising, and other information that may be of interest to you.

The System processes your P/NPI for the purposes listed in this section given our interest in your experience with Piedmont, and where necessary for the performance of the Services, and to comply with applicable laws.

SMS Terms

Having agreed to the Terms, and by acknowledging or otherwise consenting to receive one or more text messages (“Opting In”) or using a Piedmont arrangement in which Piedmont sends (or indicates that it may send or receives a request that it send) one or more text messages (“Text Message Service”), you accept these SMS Terms (“SMS Terms”), consent to the handling of your P/NPI as described in the Piedmont Privacy Policy, and agree to resolve disputes with Piedmont as described in the Terms. Piedmont is not responsible for the costs to you for text messaging; message and data rates from your carrier may apply

Piedmont will use reasonable commercial efforts to deliver the automated Alerts and marketing text messages to the number you provide. Carriers and Piedmont are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages. The short codes we use for some Text Message Services may not be supported on all U.S. carriers.

Opting In

By Opting Into a Text Message Service:

  • You expressly authorize Piedmont to send text messages to the cell phone number associated with you at the time the text message is being sent. You also authorize Piedmont to include marketing content in any such messages.

  • You consent to the use of an electronic record to document your Opt-In. To withdraw that consent, or to update our records with your contact information, please contact us via the methods described in the Contact Us section. If you withdraw your consent, certain features of our service may not be available to you. To update information on how we would contact you electronically, please contact us via the methods described in the Contact Us section.

  • You confirm that you are the subscriber to the relevant phone number or that you are the customary user of that number on a family or business plan and that you are authorized to Opt-In.

  • You confirm that by accepting the Terms, you are automatically Opting Into the Piedmont Text Message Service. You may Opt-Out by notifying Piedmont at any time, or by replying, “STOP” to any Text Message sent by Piedmont.

  • These SMS Terms still will apply if you withdraw the consent mentioned above or Opt-Out of the Text Message Service.

About the Text Message Services and Opting Out

Message and data rates may apply. Unless otherwise noted, Text Message Services may send multiple, recurring messages. Piedmont may terminate any Text Message Service or your participation in it at any time with or without notice, including, for example, before you have received any or all messages that you otherwise would have received, but these SMS Terms still will apply. Text “STOP” to any message to Opt-Out. For additional help, contact Customer Service.

SHARING & DISCLOSURE

We share the types of P/NPI described herein primarily with people who perform business and professional services for you and/or us, such as helping us detect fraud, resolve processing disputes, or payment issues. We may share P/NPI with others, including but not limited to, your Billers, medical providers, insurers, agents, employers, insurance support organizations, and service providers as needed to perform our Services for you. These organizations may retain the P/NPI and disclose it to others for whom it performs services or provides products. In certain cases, we may share P/NPI with third parties for reporting and auditing purposes and for research and study purposes. We do not sell your P/NPI to catalog companies. The law allows us to share P/NPI as described above (except health information) with affiliates to market products and services. The law does not allow you to restrict these disclosures. We may also share with companies that help us market our products and services, such as vendors that provide mailing services to us. We may share with others to jointly market products and services. When other companies help us conduct business, we expect them to follow applicable privacy laws. We do not authorize others to use or share P/NPI except when necessary to conduct the work they are performing for us or to meet regulatory or other governmental requirements. The P/NPI might not be directly related to our transaction or experience with you. Consistent with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, we ask your permission before sharing P/NPI that is not directly related to our transaction or experience with you.

Compliance with Law and Legal Requests

Piedmont may disclose your information, including P/NPI, to courts, law enforcement, governmental authorities, tax authorities, or authorized third parties, if and to the extent we are required or permitted to do so by law or if such disclosure is reasonably necessary: (i) to comply with our legal obligations, (ii) to comply with a valid legal request or to respond to claims asserted against Piedmont, (iii) to respond to a valid legal request relating to a criminal investigation or alleged or suspected illegal activity or any other activity that may expose us, you, or any other of our users to legal liability, (iv) to enforce and administer our Terms, or (v) to protect the rights, property or personal safety of Piedmont, its employees, its Members, or members of the public.

These disclosures may be necessary to comply with our legal obligations, for the protection of your or another person's vital interests or for the purposes of our or a third-party’s legitimate interest in keeping the Services secure, preventing harm or crime, enforcing or defending legal rights, or preventing damage.

Where appropriate, we may notify Members about legal requests unless: (i) providing notice is prohibited by the legal process itself, by court order we receive, or by applicable law, or (ii) we believe that providing notice would be futile, ineffective, create a risk of injury or bodily harm to an individual or group, or create or increase a risk of fraud upon Piedmont’s property, its Members and the Services. In instances where we comply with legal requests without notice for these reasons, we may attempt to notify that Member about the request after the fact where appropriate and where we determine in good faith that we are no longer prevented from doing so.

Service Providers

Piedmont uses a variety of third-party service providers to help us provide services related to the Services.

For example, service providers may help us: (i) verify your identity or authenticate your identification documents, (ii) check information against public databases, (iii) conduct fraud prevention and risk assessment, (iv) perform product development, maintenance and debugging, (v) allow the provision of the Services through third party platforms and software tools (e.g. through the integration with our widgets or APIs), or (vi) provide customer service, advertising, or payments services. These providers have limited access to your P/NPI to perform these tasks on our behalf and are contractually bound to protect the P/NPI and only use the P/NPI in accordance with our instructions.

Piedmont will need to share your information, including P/NPI, in order to ensure the adequate performance of our contract with you.

Corporate Affiliates

To enable or support us in providing the Services, we may share your information, including P/NPI, within our corporate family of companies (both financial and non-financial entities) that are related by common ownership or control.

Additionally, we share your information, including P/NPI, with our corporate affiliates in order to support and integrate, promote, and to improve the Services and our affiliates’ services.

Information Provided to Enterprise Customers

If you have linked your Piedmont Account to that of a company, union, association, or other organization (an “Enterprise”), added your work email address, that Enterprise may have access to your name, contact details, permissions and roles, and other information as required to enable use by you and the Enterprise of the Services or Enterprise capabilities and services.

Business Changes

If Piedmont is involved in any merger, acquisition, reorganization, sale of assets, bankruptcy, or insolvency event, then we may sell, transfer or share some or all of our assets, including your information in connection with such transaction or in contemplation of such transaction (e.g., due diligence). In this event, we will notify you before your P/NPI is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Aggregated Data

We may also share aggregated information (information about our Members that we combine so that it no longer identifies or references an individual Member) and other information for research, industry and market analysis, regulatory compliance, sales, marketing, advertising, and other business purposes.

OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Third Party Affiliates & Integrations

The Services may contain links to third-party websites or services, such as third-party integrations, co-branded services, or third party-branded services (“Third-Party Affiliates”). Piedmont doesn’t own or control these Third-Party Affiliates and when you interact with them, you may be providing information directly to the Third-Party Affiliate, Piedmont, or both. These Third-Party Affiliates will have their own rules about the collection, use, and disclosure of P/NPI. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of all websites you visit.

YOUR RIGHTS

Consistent with applicable law, you may exercise any of the rights described in this section. Unless stated otherwise, you may exercise these rights by contacting us by any means shown in the “Contact Us” shown below.

Correcting Inaccurate or Incomplete Information

You have the right to ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete P/NPI about you (and which you cannot update yourself within your Piedmont Account).

Data Access

In some jurisdictions, applicable law may entitle you to request certain copies of your P/NPI held by us. You may also be entitled to request copies of P/NPI that you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.

Data Retention and Erasure

We generally retain your P/NPI for as long as is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and us and to comply with our legal obligations. Upon termination of the contract between you and us, Piedmont’s Data Retention Policies which govern how long we will retain P/NPI will prevail.

Inactivating and Deletion Requests

Inactivating and deleting an Account two different things. When you choose to inactivate your account, you can reactivate later if you wish. A request to suspend future transactions is treated as a request to inactivate. When you request permanent deletion of your P/NPI, your Account is closed, your P/NPI is deleted, and Piedmont’s Data Retention Policies ensue. Once deleted you cannot reactivate.

To inactivate an Account, you may contact us by any means shown in the “Contact Us” shown below. Alternatively, you may enter “SUSPEND” as a response to any SMS text, and your Account will be suspended and inactivated.

To delete an Account, you can submit a deletion request at any time in accordance with our Terms and Privacy Policy. Once your request is processed, your P/NPI will be permanently deleted (except for certain information that we are legally required or permitted to retain, as outlined in our Privacy Policy) and your Account will be permanently closed. This means that we'll no longer be able to provide Services to you and if you decide to use the Services in the future, you will be required to set up a new Account.

To have your P/NPI deleted send an email to support@piedmontpays.com providing the following information in your email:

  • Subject: “Account Deletion Request”

  • Your specific Account ID. In lieu of the Account ID you may provide identifying information including but not limited to, Last Name, First Name, email, mobile phone number, etc.

Please note that Piedmont may need to contact you to verify your identity before acting on your request.

Please note that if you request the erasure of your P/NPI:

  • We may retain some of your P/NPI as necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud detection and prevention and enhancing safety. For example, if we suspend a Piedmont Account for fraud or safety reasons, we may retain certain information from that Piedmont Account to prevent that Member from opening a new Piedmont Account in the future.

  • We may retain and use your P/NPI to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations. For example, Piedmont may keep some of your information for trailing transactions, legal reporting and auditing obligations.

  • Because we maintain the Services to protect from accidental or malicious loss and destruction, residual copies of your P/NPI may not be removed from our backup systems for a limited period of time, but will be removed following our policies and procedures that govern how long we will retain P/NPI.

Withdrawing Consent and Restriction of Processing

If we are processing your P/NPI based on your consent you may withdraw your consent at any time by sending a communication to Piedmont specifying which consent you are withdrawing. Please note that the withdrawal of your consent does not affect the processing activities based on such consent before its withdrawal.

Lodging Complaints

You have the right to lodge complaints about our data processing activities by filing a complaint with our Privacy Officer who can be reached by the “Contact Us” section below.

OPERATING IN CALIFORNIA AND VERMONT

California and Vermont Residents

Piedmont Payments will not share information it collects about you with its affiliates or third parties (both financial and non-financial), except as required or permitted by your state’s law.

California Privacy Rights

California law permits Members who are California residents to request and obtain from us once a year, free of charge, a list of the third parties to whom we have disclosed their P/NPI (if any) for their direct marketing purposes in the prior calendar year, as well as the type of P/NPI disclosed to those third parties. See the “Contact Us” section for where to send such requests. Piedmont does not share P/NPI with third parties for their own direct marketing purposes without your prior consent. Accordingly, you can prevent disclosure of your P/NPI to third parties for their direct marketing purposes by withholding consent.

Effective January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) allows California residents, upon a verifiable consumer request, to request that a business that collects consumers’ P/NPI to give consumers access, in a portable and (if technically feasible) readily usable form, to the specific pieces and categories of P/NPI that the business has collected about the consumer, the categories of sources for that information, the business or commercial purposes for collecting the information, and the categories of third parties with which the information was shared. California residents also have the right to submit a request for deletion of information under certain circumstances. Consistent with California law, if you choose to exercise your rights, we won’t charge you different prices or provide different quality of services unless those differences are related to your information. Please note that you must verify your identity and request before further action is taken. As a part of this process, government identification may be required. Consistent with California law, you may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf. In order to designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf, you must provide a valid power of attorney, the requester’s valid government issued identification, and the authorized agent’s valid government issued identification.

We do not sell P/NPI to third parties. We do allow third parties to collect P/NPI through our Service and share P/NPI with third parties for the business purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including without limitation advertising and marketing on our Service and elsewhere based on users’ online activities over time and across different sites, services, and devices.

SECURITY

We are continuously implementing and updating administrative, technical, and physical and electronic security measures to help protect your information against unauthorized access, loss, destruction, or alteration. Some of the safeguards we use to protect your information are firewalls and data encryption, and information access controls. If you know or have reason to believe that your Piedmont credentials have been lost, stolen, misappropriated, or otherwise compromised or in case of any actual or suspected unauthorized use of your Piedmont Account, please contact us.

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

Piedmont reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time in accordance with this provision. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the revised Privacy Policy on the Piedmont website and update the “Last Updated” date at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. We will also provide you with notice of the modification by email at least thirty (30) days before the date they become effective. If you disagree with the revised Privacy Policy, you may cancel your Account. If you do not cancel your Account before the date the revised Privacy Policy becomes effective, your continued access to or use of the Piedmont System and Services will be subject to the revised Privacy Policy.

CONTACT US

If you have any questions, concerns, or complaints about this Privacy Policy or Piedmont’s information handling practices, you may contact us by phone at 866.254.5245, by email at support@piedmontpays.com, or by U.S. Mail at:

Privacy Officer
Piedmont Payment Services LLC
P.O Box 940
Fortson, Georgia 31808

Rev 8_01.01.2020 Last Updated: January 1, 2020