We may collect, store, and/or use the following types of information:

• name and contact details including postal address; telephone numbers; email addresses.
• lifestyle information such as marital status; living arrangements.
• identification information such as your date of birth; identity documents; proof of address.
• financial information, for example, bank account and payment card details; salary information; payslips; credit commitments and debts; mortgage details; financial expenditure; utility bills; bank statements; credit reports; entitlement to benefits.
• employment information.
• health information.
• information about your business, its owners, shareholders, and proprietors.
• details about the product(s) and service(s) we provide to you and how you use them.
• information you provide on other individuals (for example, dependants and third parties you may have instructed to act on your behalf).
• correspondence you have had with us.
• information about your computer / mobile device; the telephone number(s) you call us from; your visits to our website.
• content that our Business Partners post on their social media platforms if it is in our legitimate interests to do so. For example, where our Business Partners post news about their products and services or good news stories about award nominations or wins either about the company or its employees. If we process this data, it is for the purpose of re-sharing or creating posts to raise the profile of our Business Partners who offer Buyline finance.
• any other information provided, collected, or shared with us as described in the section above entitled ‘The information we collect’.

Where you supply us with information on behalf of another individual, for example, if you make an application on behalf of another individual or a joint or guarantor application or an application on behalf of a business, or if you agree to us sharing your business posts, which may include personal data of your employees, on our social media platforms, then this privacy notice will also apply to those individuals. By providing their information to us you confirm that you have told them their details will be shared with us and you have drawn their attention to this privacy notice.

Where we process card payments, we do so in compliance with The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”), which is a set of requirements intended to ensure that all companies that process, store or transmit card information maintain a secure environment and protect against payment card fraud.

Who we share your data with? 

If you are the borrower, we may also share your personal data with any of the following categories of third party. Any such sharing data will be under a contract requiring compliance with rules protecting your privacy: 

• Business partners involved in your purchase. 

• Agents who we use to perform our contracts. 

• Collection agencies who we use to collect monies due if you fail to pay us. 

• Specialist insolvency or debt solution service providers, where this is necessary to manage an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) or other formal debt solution you have entered into. 

• Analytics and search engine providers. 

• Credit reference agencies. 

• Fraud prevention agencies. 

• The Financial Conduct Authority, other regulators and authorities. 

• Third parties that you ask us to share your personal data with such as your bank or a money advisor. 

• IT providers. 

• Banks and payment service providers 

• Companies which we may wish to buy or which might wish to buy us. 

If you give us false or inaccurate information or we identify fraud, we may record this with fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We and other organisations may access and use information recorded by fraud prevention agencies in other countries. We may also report other financial crime to the relevant law enforcement agencies or Government bodies  

Add this to the sharing of information section please 

Sharing your data with Credit Reference Agencies 

In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more credit reference agencies TransUnion or Experian (“CRA”). 

To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRA, and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your application and about your financial situation and financial history. CRA will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information and fraud prevention information. 

We will use this information to: 

• Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product 

• Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us 

• Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering 

• Manage your account(s) 

• Trace and recover debts 

• Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances 

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRA while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRA about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRA will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs. 

When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders. If we notify them of criminal activity on your account they will keep a record of this which may result in other organisations refusing to provide you with services or employment. 

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at www.transunion.co.uk/crain and www.experian.co.uk/legal/crain.   

Who we share your data with? 

If you are the borrower, we may also share your personal data with any of the following categories of third party. Any such sharing data will be under a contract requiring compliance with rules protecting your privacy: 

• Business partners involved in your purchase. 

• Agents who we use to perform our contracts. 

• Collection agencies who we use to collect monies due if you fail to pay us. 

• Specialist insolvency or debt solution service providers, where this is necessary to manage an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) or other formal debt solution you have entered into. 

• Analytics and search engine providers. 

• Credit reference agencies. 

• Fraud prevention agencies. 

• The Financial Conduct Authority, other regulators and authorities. 

• Third parties that you ask us to share your personal data with such as your bank or a money advisor. 

• IT providers. 

• Banks and payment service providers 

• Companies which we may wish to buy or which might wish to buy us. 

If you give us false or inaccurate information or we identify fraud, we may record this with fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We and other organisations may access and use information recorded by fraud prevention agencies in other countries. We may also report other financial crime to the relevant law enforcement agencies or Government bodies  

Add this to the sharing of information section please 

Sharing your data with Credit Reference Agencies 

In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more credit reference agencies TransUnion or Experian (“CRA”). 

To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRA, and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your application and about your financial situation and financial history. CRA will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information and fraud prevention information. 

We will use this information to: 

• Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product 

• Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us 

• Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering 

• Manage your account(s) 

• Trace and recover debts 

• Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances 

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRA while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRA about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRA will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs. 

When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders. If we notify them of criminal activity on your account they will keep a record of this which may result in other organisations refusing to provide you with services or employment. 

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at www.transunion.co.uk/crain and www.experian.co.uk/legal/crain.   

Your Rights 

You have a number of rights in respect of how we use your personal information: 

• You have the right to access the data we hold about you. 

• You have to right to withdraw consent at any time and require us to cease any data processing which we are undertaking relying solely on consent. 

• You have the right to ask us to rectify any inaccuracies in your personal information. 

• You have the right to ask us to erase or restrict processing of your personal information if it is no longer necessary for us to process in accordance with any contract or legal obligation or legitimate interest. 

• You have the right to ask us to cease or not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. 

You can exercise the above rights by contacting us by post to Data Protection Officer, at Buyline Ltd, B12 Elmbridge Court, Cheltenham Road East, Glocester, GL3 1JZb by telephone on 03330 230 134 or by email at compliance@buyline.co.uk  

If you make a request that is unreasonable or repeated many times, we may need to charge a small fee. 

Automated Decision Making and Profiling 

Prior to any loan being agreed with you we will use your personal data to make automated decisions. This is done in order to determine whether we wish to enter into a contract with you and to determine your creditworthiness in the quickest, fairest and most legally compliant way using credit scoring and past payment history to predict future performance. We will also monitor your account using automated means for fraud detection and crime prevention purposes. 

The automated decision may result in us declining your loan application altogether or offering a lesser amount than that sought. 

We regularly test our credit scoring model to ensure it is working appropriately and accurately. 

If you are dissatisfied with the result of this automated processing you have the right to seek an explanation and request a person review the decision. 

Data Retention 

We will process your personal data for either as long as you have a contractual relationship with us or you continue to owe us any repayments. If you stop being a customer after repaying your loan in full we may keep your personal data for longer than 6 years. We do this because we are obliged to hold transactional data for 5 years by law and in order to answer any regulatory inquiries or respond to any complaints. 

If you have previously given us consent, from time to time we may contact you about Buyline products and services. This consent forms part of our legitimate interest to market our products and services and will remain in place until you update your preferences. 

We use the following channels to contact you about Buyline’s products and services: 

• By Email 

• By SMS 

• By Post 

• By Telephone 

We will only ever contact you in a way you have agreed to, and you can opt in or out of each channel individually. 

From time to time, we may also work with other companies in the financial services sector who offer similar products. With your consent, we may also share your details with them so they can provide you information on their products and services. 

Consent to any of the marketing preferences above is entirely optional and can be withdrawn at any time. You can update your marketing preferences, or withdraw you consent entirely, by contacting us atcompliance@buyline.co.uk  or by contacting your Business Partner. You can also opt out of any email or SMS marketing communications by clicking the opt-out link in the email or replying “Stop” to any marketing SMS. 

Sending Personal Data outside the UK 

We may send your personal data outside the UK in order to enable us to perform the contract, comply with a legal obligation or where we have a legitimate interest in so doing. 

Before we send any personal data to an organisation outside the UK we will make sure it is protected to the same or similar standards as if it was being used within the UK by means of contracts between us and the overseas processor or in reliance on the Information Commissioner’s finding of that country having adequate data protection provisions in place. 

It is your responsibility to provide us with honest, accurate and up to date information both when you apply for a loan / account / Agreement with us and during our relationship with you.

If false or inaccurate information is provided to us and fraud is identified, details may be passed to fraud prevention agencies, or other law enforcement agencies. Further details explaining how the information held by fraud prevention agencies may be used can be found in the credit agreement we will provide you with prior to your applying for a loan with us or in your supplier or introducer agreement if you have been approved as an affiliate (“Buyline Business Partner”). We may also report other financial crime to the relevant law enforcement agencies or Government bodies.

You are responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your account information, and for always controlling access to your email communications and any unique passwords. There are some simple steps that you can take to keep your information secure; https://getsafeonline.org provides practical advice on how to protect yourself, your computers and mobile devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other problems encountered online.

Cookies Policy 

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile device by websites that you visit. They are widely used to make websites work or work more efficiently and to provide information to website owners. 

We, or the companies which work on our behalf, use cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Necessary cookies are stored on your browser as they are essential for the basic functionality of our website to work. We also use third party cookies, for example, to help us to analyse and understand how you use our website, but these are only stored on your browser with your consent. 

When you first visit our website, you will be notified that we place necessary cookies on your browser and to seek your consent to third party cookies. Information about the cookies we use is provided so you can make an informed decision when giving your consent. 

You can control cookies through your browser settings. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org. 

Links to other websites 

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites. 

If you are dissatisfied about how we have used your personal data you can contact us at complaints@buyline.co.uk Alternatively, you also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office although they will ask you whether you have raised the matter with us beforehand. Find out how to report a concern on their website: www.ico.org.uk/concerns