General Privacy Policy
This General Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”) applies to businessfinancialpartners.com.com (the “Site”), which is owned and operated by Business Financial Partners. (“Business Financial Partners,” “we” or “our”).
At Business Financial Partners, we recognize and respect your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and disclose personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) gathered through our Site. This Privacy Policy applies to information collected through our Site as well as our collection of Personal Information from other sources, such as from sales representatives including any independent sales or marketing representative (each, an “ISO”) who may refer you or your business to us, through email communications, our online channels (including websites, ISOs, mobile applications and social media websites) and to Personal Information you provide us offline (e.g., at trade shows or sales exhibitions or directly to an ISO), when you submit a business funding application over the phone, or when you contact our customer service or collections departments. Note that this is a business-to-business, not a consumer, website and that we may also collect information regarding businesses. Again, this Privacy Policy applies to Personal Information about individuals and not to information about businesses.
The Privacy Policy is subject to and incorporates by reference our Terms of Use, including its limitation on liability.
Types of Personal Information We May Collect
You may browse our Site without creating an online account, but to use certain features you or your ISO may be required to create an account. When you create an account with us, we may collect your name, email address, contact information, a username and password that you will use to access your account and other information. In addition, to submit a question, comment, or post to a blog, you may be required to submit your name and email address, and we may also ask you for other optional information, such as your business’s website address.
We may also collect information from you if you log into our Site through an account created with a third-party website (e.g., QuickBooks, Facebook, or LinkedIn). The option to access our Site via these third-party websites may occur and will be entirely at your option. The information we are able to migrate to our Site from these third-party websites will depend on the privacy settings that you have in place with the third-party site from which you log in. If you choose to log into the Site via a third-party website, you hereby consent to our access to and collection of such Personal Information about you.
We also may collect the following types of Personal Information about you:
We may also append to the Personal Information collected new or other data that we receive from other sources, such as public records, demographic information, and other background information supplied by information services or third parties.
In addition, we automatically collect through our Site information that is often not personally identifying, such as the website from which you came to our Site and your IP address, browser type, and other information relating to the device through which you access the Site. We may combine this information with the Personal Information we have collected from you, which we store in log files. We do this to improve services we offer you.
Information We Collect From You and About You
Some information collected from you is required and some is optional; some will remain private and some will be shared with third parties. Additional information may be gathered during your subsequent use of the Site, whenever you choose to provide it.
Certain Personal Information must be supplied to determine eligibility for financial products and to verify and guard against potential fraud.
We will use this information to request a credit report from a credit bureau to process your business’ application as well as to help assess your business funding request in the context of your and your business’ overall financial situation. We will also use your required and optional information to facilitate activities and transactions that need to occur during the funding process.
Additional Uses of Personal Information
We use the Personal Information you provide us and allow us access to as described herein for the following purposes:
Types of Disclosures of Personal Information
We will share your Personal Information with third parties only in the ways that are described in this Privacy Policy. We do from time to time provide others with your information, for various products and services including working capital or equipment financing, as described below. We may disclose Personal Information to third parties for the following purposes:
Notwithstanding anything else in the Privacy Policy, we may share aggregate or personally identifying information about users with third parties for marketing, advertising, research, or other business purposes.
IMPORTANT: All business loans are currently made by WebBank, and if you request a loan through us, your Personal Information will be shared with WebBank. All equipment financing transactions through us are currently made both directly and by a select network of providers. If you request equipment financing through us, your Personal Information will be shared with this network of providers.
Business Financial Partners may, from time to time and in its sole discretion, elect to contract with one or more other bank(s) or financial service provider(s) to underwrite loans. In such case, you will be notified of such bank(s) or financial service provider(s) during the loan process.
Sale of Personal Information
In the preceding twelve (12) months, Business Financial Partners has not sold Personal Information.
User Access
If your Personal Information changes, or if you no longer want updates or to be contacted for new products, you may correct, update, amend, delete/remove or deactivate your contact information by emailing our Customer Support or by contacting us by telephone or postal mail at the contact information listed below. We will update your file within 30 days.
Data Retention
We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you services. In addition, we are required to retain your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements.
Cookies and Analytics
Technologies such as: cookies, beacons, tags and scripts are used by Business Financial Partners and our analytic partners or service providers. These technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users’ movements around the site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.
We use cookies to remember users’ settings or for authentication. Users can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level. If you reject cookies, you may still use our site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our site may be limited.
Third Parties, with whom we partner to provide certain features on our site or to display advertising based upon your web browsing activity, use Local Storage (LS) also known as HTML5 to collect and store information. Various browsers may offer their own management tools for removing LS’s (HTML5). We partner with third parties to either display advertising on our Site or to manage our advertising on other sites. Our third party partners may use technologies such as cookies to gather information about your activities on this Site and other sites in order to provide you advertising based upon your browsing activities and interests.
Social Media Widgets
Our Site includes or may include Social Media Features, such as the Facebook Like button and Widgets, such as the Share this button or interactive mini-programs that run on our Site. These Features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our Site, and may set a cookie to enable the Feature to function properly. Social Media Features and Widgets are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Site. Your interactions with these Features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.
User Content
We may, from time to time, allow users or third parties to post information to our Site, such as comments or blogs or to offer you information on small business topics. Any information that you post to our Site becomes public information and may be viewable by other users, as well as visitors to our Site (this is not true of uploaded documents as part of the funding process). In addition, your name, as well as other optional information you choose to submit along with the information you post, will be publicly displayed along with your comment or blog. We are not responsible for the privacy of any information that you choose to post to our Site, or for the accuracy of any information contained in those postings. We cannot prevent such information from being used by others in a manner that may violate this Privacy Policy, the law, or your personal privacy. To request removal of your Personal Information from our blog or community forum, contact us at compliance@businessfinancialpartners.com. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your Personal Information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why. Your posting of any content to any of the Site is subject to our Terms of Use.
Testimonials
We display personal testimonials of satisfied customers on our site in addition to other endorsements. With your consent we may post your testimonial along with your name. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, you can contact us at compliance@businessfinancialpartners.com.
Third-party Links
At times, our Site may contain links to other, third-party websites. Any access to and use of such linked websites is not governed by this Privacy Policy but, instead, is governed by the privacy policies of those third-party websites. We are not responsible for the information practices of such third-party websites.
Marketing Communications
We may send you emails or text messages from time-to-time about information that we (or third parties) believe may be of interest to you. We may also send you news and offers from us or other third parties, which may include our newsletter or information about special offers, products or offerings, or other items. If, at any time, you would like to stop receiving these promotional e-mails or text messages, you may follow the opt-out instructions contained in any such e-mail or text message. Please note that it may take up to 10 business days for us to process opt-out requests. If you opt-out of receiving emails or promotions from us, we still may send you e-mails about your business’ account, your business’ application or any products or services you have requested or received from us, or for other customer service purposes.
International Users
The Site is hosted in the United States. If you are accessing the Site from outside the United States, by providing your information to the Site, you are consenting to and authorizing the transfer of your information to the United States for storage, use, processing, maintenance, and onward transfer of such information to other entities regardless of their location in accordance with this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. You are also consenting to the application of United States law in all matters concerning the Site.
Security
Business Financial Partners takes reasonable steps to safeguard your personal and sensitive information through vigorous physical, electronic, and operational policies and practices. Data can only be read or written through defined service access points, the use of which is password-protected. The physical security of the data is achieved through a combination of network firewalls (there is no direct communication allowed between the database server and the Internet) and servers with operating systems, all housed in a secure facility. Access to the system is controlled.
Further, we also equip our servers with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate technology to ensure that when you connect you are actually on our Site. SSL also ensures that all data entered into the Site is encrypted. To verify that SSL is being used, look for the key or padlock icon on your browser. For further encryption protection, we use a 128-bit secure browser for logins and transactions. Portions of our Site also make use of “CAPTCHA” technology, which is a test that we use to ensure certain sensitive transactions are being initiated by a human and not by another computer. The test involves viewing a distorted image of a word that a computer would not be able to interpret and then entering in the text shown in the image. Finally, we subject our systems to periodic security audits to ensure that your information is thoroughly protected and secure.
No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. If you have any questions about security on our Site, you can contact us at compliance@businessfinancialpartners.com.
Secure, Off-Site Hosting
We store all sensitive financial data such as social security numbers and bank accounts in a secure environment.
Session Time-Outs
We also employ session time-outs to protect your account. You will be logged out of the Site automatically after a specified period of inactivity. This time-out feature reduces the risk of others being able to access your account if you leave your computer unattended.
Protection of Account Numbers
When we contact you about your account or to confirm a funds transfer, we only reference the last four digits of your social security number; this is done for your protection.
Passwords
Your password is not known to any employee or third party with whom we may partner, and we will never ask for your password as a means of identifying yourself. You should never share your password with anyone, and if you ever receive an email purporting to come from us that asks for your password, you should immediately report this development to us at compliance@businessfinancialpartners.com.
What You Can Do
In addition to our own substantial efforts, you can take several precautions to protect the security of your computer and Personal Information. For instance, you can start by using a complex/well-chosen password. You should avoid using any information that others can easily learn about you, such as a family member’s name or birthday; you can also use special characters in place of letters. We also recommend that you change your password frequently. You can also install and regularly update antivirus and firewall software to protect your computer or device from external attacks by malicious users. When you are finished with a session on our Site, be sure that you log out and close the browser window.
If you use a computer that is accessed by other people, such as in a public library or Internet cafe, we recommend that you take special precautions to protect the security of your account and personal data. When you are finished using our Site, you should log out completely, then close the browser window and clear the browser’s cache files.
You should also be aware of fraudulent attempts to gain access to your account information known as “phishing.” Phishing is a tactic used by scammers in which unsuspecting people are brought to a website by a genuine-looking email purporting to be from a legitimate company. The phony or “spoof” email takes the person to a website that looks legitimate but in fact is not. Either in the email itself or on this fake site, scammers will ask for login information to gain access to people’s accounts and withdraw their money. Business Financial Partners will never ask you for your Site login information in the context of any email. In general, you can protect yourself against phishing by never providing personal or login information via an email, instead, go to the website directly. You might also make it a habit to check the URL of a website to be sure that it begins with the correct domain. You should always ensure the URL begins with http://www.businessfinancialpartners.com
Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our information practices at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will post the updated Privacy Policy on the Site and update the Privacy Policy’s revision date. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.
Exercising Your CCPA Data Protection Rights
In order to exercise any of your CCPA rights, you can contact us:
Only you, or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable request related to your personal information.
Your request to us must:
We cannot respond to your request or provide you with the required information if we cannot:
We will disclose and deliver the required information free of charge within 45 days of receiving your verifiable request. The time period to provide the required information may be extended once by an additional 45 days when reasonably necessary and with prior notice.
Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable request’s receipt.
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
You have the right to opt-out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. Once we receive and confirm a verifiable consumer request from you, we will stop selling or sharing your personal information. To exercise your right to opt-out, please:
Further the service providers we partner with (for example, our analytics or advertising partners) may use technology on our Site that sells personal information as defined by the CCPA. If you wish to opt out of the use of your personal information for interest-based advertising purposes, you may do so by following the instructions below. Please note that any opt out is specific to the browser you use. You may need to opt out on every browser that you use, and if you delete your cookies, you will need to opt out again.
You can opt out of receiving certain personalized advertisements by following the instructions presented by these platforms:
Your mobile device also may give you the ability to opt out of the use of information about the apps you use in order to serve you ads that are targeted to your interests. For example, you may select:
You also can stop the collection of location information from your mobile device by changing the preferences on your mobile device.
Site Changes to Our Privacy Policy
Business Financial Partners reserves the right to amend this California Privacy Policy at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this California Privacy Policy, we will post the updated California Privacy Policy on the Site and update the California Privacy Policy’s effective date. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices. Your continued use of our Site following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.
