Visa Global Privacy Notice

Personal information is any information that we can use to identify, locate or contact you. It also includes other information that may be associated with your personal information, such as demographic data. We may collect the following types of personal information:
 

• Contact information that allows us to communicate with you, such as your name, username, mailing address, telephone number, email address or other addresses that allow us to send you messages.
  
  
• Relationship information that helps us do business with you, such as information about the financial institution or other entity that issued your Visa card, shopping and payment preferences, services you use, and similar information that can help us understand you and offer you personalised content and offers. We may also enhance our files with demographic data about you or your household, such as census records that tell us about the average ages or incomes in a certain neighbourhood.
  
  
• Card transaction data about your purchases or other transactions using your payment cards, such as your payment card number, the location of the transaction, the time and date of the transaction, enhanced transaction information, and the amount of the transaction.
  
  
• Information about your interactions with Visa, such as data collected when you:
  
  
  • Use our products, services, websites or apps (including information collected using cookies and other data collection technologies described below),
    
    
  • Communicate with us, such as if you contact our customer service centres (including recordings of calls for quality and training purposes),
    
    
  • Participate in promotions or programmes,
    
    
  • Opt in or out of marketing or offers, and other activities.

We collect personal information from you and from other sources.

 

• In many cases, we collect personal information directly from you. You may choose to share your personal information with us when you register on our websites, to participate in a promotion, or to sign up to receive messages from us. We also collect personal information from you when you contact us, such as for customer service purposes, to report a lost or stolen card, or to interact with us online.
  
  
• We receive personal information (including card transaction data) from our affiliates and our clients as well as from your payment card issuer, merchants, acquirers, payment processors, service providers, and other third parties. For example, we may collect personal information from third party digital wallets and online merchants when you make an online purchase.
  
  
• We may collect information from publicly available sources, such as social media sites, when permitted by the site’s terms of service. For example, if you communicate with Visa using Facebook or Twitter, we may receive additional information about your from your profile. We may also obtain information from third party data suppliers who help us enhance our records.

 

We collect information about your interactions with Visa when you visit our websites, engage with our online advertisements, or call us. For example, when you use our websites or mobile apps, Visa and our service providers may collect information by setting and accessing cookies and using similar tracking technologies on your computer or device, as described in the “Cookies and other data collection technologies” section below. We treat this information as personal information when it is associated with other data elements that allow us to identify, locate or contact you.

We may use your Personal Information to:

 

• Enable your payment card transactions, including for related purposes, such as authentication, fraud prevention, and dispute resolution,
  
  
• Operate Visa products and services (such as authorisation, clearing, and settlement of transactions, payment processing, dispute resolution, and tokenisation),
  
  
• Provide you with the products, content or services you request from Visa or a third party, including for related purposes such as determining eligibility, sending service messages and for customer service and account management, including (for example) to provide you with Visa offers and other partner promotions when you enrol in those programmes,
  
  
• Provide you with additional information that may be of interest, such as Visa news and announcements, financial planning information and financial literacy messages,
  
  
• Where appropriate, provide you with marketing communications for products and services from Visa and our partners, including personalised offers and content based on your interactions with us and usage of our products,
  
  
• Generate anonymised and aggregated datasets, which can be used for modelling, reporting, and analytics, such as to analyse payment, transaction or similar trends,
  
  
• Administer surveys, support loyalty programmes, competitions, contests and other events in order to identify qualifying transactions and to select winners,
  
  
• Understand how you use our products, content and services, for analytics and product development purposes, developing new products and services and (where appropriate) to personalise offers that we make to you, and to
  
  
• Manage our everyday business needs, such as for our internal account management, client reporting, contract management, website administration, business continuity and disaster recovery, security and fraud prevention, corporate governance, reporting and legal compliance.

 

Please note that we may also use and disclose information about you that is not personally identifiable. For example, we may publish reports and provide products that contain non-personally identifiable statistical data, such as reports showing general payment card usage trends. These reports do not contain any personal information.

In some countries, Visa enhances card transaction data and uses it to generate anonymised and aggregated consumer spending and marketing reports and other data products that enable companies to improve their marketing efforts. These solutions help companies identify consumers that they can target. For example, a report may show that one postcode tends to spend more at car repair shops compared with other postcodes. These products also help companies to determine the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.  

Visa’s marketing solutions do not contain any personal information, but they do allow companies to enhance their own consumer files with intelligence to support targeted marketing

If you do not want us to use your card transaction data in Visa marketing solutions, click here to learn about how you can opt out.

We disclose your personal information as follows:

 

• We may share your personal information with the financial institution (or other entity) that issued your Visa card (or other payment mechanism) and with merchants, other financial institutions and third parties as needed to process transactions, for risk and fraud management, to provide services to such entities, and for similar purposes (such as investigating and resolving disputed charges) and to comply with applicable law.
  
  
• We may share your personal information with our affiliates, which may only use your personal information for the purposes listed herein.
  
  
• We may share your personal information with our service providers, who are bound by law or contract to protect your personal information and only use your personal information in accordance with our instructions.
  
  
• We may share your personal information with merchants and other partners through Visa’s partnerships, co-branded or promotional programmes or websites, but only to the extent you have a relationship with such partner or you authorise the sharing. For example, if you sign up to receive offers from retail or travel partners through Visa, we may share your personal information with those partners as needed to provide promotions and marketing communications, to validate referrals, measure the success of such promotions, or to operate the programmes. We may share your personal information with other partners, but only if we have your consent.
  
  
• We also disclose personal information where permitted by law, such as when needed to affect the sale or transfer of business assets, to enforce our rights, including our Terms of Use or Service, to protect our property, or protect the rights, property or safety of others, or as needed to support external auditing, compliance and corporate governance functions. We will disclose personal information when required to do so by law, such as in response to a witness summons, including disclosure to law enforcement agencies and courts in the United States and other countries where we operate.

When you visit our website, use our mobile applications, or engage with our online ads or email communications, we may collect certain information by automated means, using technologies such as cookies, pixel tags, browser analysis tools, server logs and web beacons.

In many cases, the information we collect using cookies and other tools is only used in a non-identifiable way, without any reference to personal information. For example, we use the information we collect about all website users to optimise our websites and to understand website traffic patterns.

In some cases, we also associate the information we collect with your personal information using cookies and other technology. This Privacy Notice describes how we use that information when we associate it with your personal information.

Cookies

When you visit our websites, we place cookies on your computer. Cookies are small text files that websites send to your computer or other internet-connected devices to uniquely identify your browser or to store information or settings in your browser. Cookies allow us to recognise you when you return. They also help us provide a customised experience and can enable us to detect certain kinds of fraud.

In many cases, you can manage cookie preferences and opt out of having cookies and other data collection technologies used by adjusting the settings on your browser. All browsers are different, so visit the “help” section of your browser to learn about cookie preferences and other privacy settings that may be available. Please note that if you choose to remove or reject cookies or to clear local storage, this could affect the features, availability, and functionality of our websites.

Flash cookies

We may use flash cookies (also known as local stored objects) and similar technologies to personalise and enhance your online experience. A flash cookie is a small data file placed on a computer using Adobe Flash technology. Adobe Flash Player is an application that allows the rapid development of dynamic content, such as video clips and animation.

We use flash cookies to personalise and enhance your online experience and to deliver content for Flash players. We may also use flash cookies for security purposes, to gather certain website metrics and to help remember settings and preferences. Flash cookies are managed through a different interface than the one provided by your web browser. To manage flash cookies, please visit Adobe’s website at http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html.

If you disable flash cookies or other similar technologies, please be aware that you may not have access to certain content and product features.

Pixel tags and web beacons

Pixel tags and web beacons are tiny graphic images and small blocks of code placed on website pages, ads, or in our emails that allow us to determine whether you have performed a specific action. When you access these pages, or when you open an email, the pixel tags and web beacons let us know you have accessed the web page or opened the email. These tools allow us to measure the response to our communications and to improve our web pages and promotions.

Server logs and other technologies

We collect many different types of information from server logs and other technologies. For example, we collect information about the device you use to access our website, your operating system type, browser type, domain, and other system settings, as well as the language your system uses and the country and time zone where your device is located. Our server logs also record the IP address of the device you use to connect to the internet. An IP address is a unique identifier that devices require to identify and communicate with each other on the internet. We may also collect information about the website you were visiting before you came to Visa and the website you visit after you leave our site. These tools help us to improve user experience and deliver our services.

Device information

We may use device-related information to authenticate users. For example, we may use your IP address, browser information, or other data provided by your browser or device to identify the device being used to access the Visa service. We may also use these device-related techniques to associate you with different devices that you may use to access our content, including for purposes of fraud-protection and to better target advertising.

We have relationships with third party advertising companies that place advertisements on and perform tracking and reporting functions for our website and other websites. Although we do not share any personal information with these third party advertising companies, they may place cookies on your computer when you visit our website or other websites so that they can display targeted advertisements to you. However, this Privacy Notice does not cover the collection methods or use of the information collected by these companies.

For more information about third party advertising, please visit the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) at https://www.networkadvertising.org. Opt out of being targeted by many third party advertising companies by visiting https://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/opt_out.asp.

On some Visa websites, you may see an AdChoices icon, which may appear on certain targeted ads. You may click on this AdChoices icon to learn more about the collection and use of your information or to opt out of such collection in the future. Please note that the opt-out is linked to your browser, so if you use different browsers or different devices, you will need to opt out on each one. Even if you opt-out, you may still receive ads that are not customised for you. To learn more about the Digital Advertising Alliance Consumer Choice tool, please visit http://optout.aboutads.info.

Additional information from the third party advertising companies that we work with:

• Adobe Marketing Cloud: If you would like more information on how to remove yourself from the tracking and reporting functions performed for this website by Adobe Marketing Cloud, please visit the opt-out page at http://www.adobe.com/privacy/marketing-cloud.html.
  
  
• Google+ For information on how Google Analytics uses data please visit “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps”, located at https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners.

Although our websites currently do not have a mechanism to recognise the various web browser Do Not Track signals, we do offer our customers choices to manage their cookie preferences as described in the previous section. To learn more about browser tracking signals and Do Not Track please visit https://www.allaboutdnt.org.

Our websites may enable you to interact with us and others via social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. For example, some Visa websites and applications allow you to sign in using social media platform credentials. We may also collect information from publicly available sources, such as social media sites, as permitted by the site’s terms of service. Please read the social media platform’s privacy statement to understand your privacy and data sharing choices.

We may display interest-based ads to you when you are using platforms such as Facebook and Google when you engage with us as described herein. These platforms allow us to personalise the ads that we display to you. We do not share any of your personal information with these platforms for ad-targeting, although we may convert your email address into a unique number that can be matched by the platform with its user to allow the delivery of the advertising. Additionally, although we do not provide any personal information to these platforms, they may gain insights into individuals who respond to the ads we serve.

We offer mobile applications that in some cases allow you to access your account, interact with us online and receive other information via your smartphone. All personal information collected by Visa via our mobile applications that link to this Privacy Notice are handled in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Notice.

When you download our mobile applications, you may choose to allow us to obtain your precise location from your mobile device. We use this information to deliver personalised content to you and for analytics purposes. We may also offer automatic (or "push") notifications. We will provide push notifications only to those individuals who opt in to receive such notifications from Visa. You do not have to provide location information to Visa or enable push notifications to use any of our mobile apps. If you have questions about location and notification privacy, please contact your mobile service provider or the manufacturer of your device to learn how to adjust your settings.

Visa offers you different choices about how we communicate with you and use your information.

• You can limit the information you provide to Visa. Participation in promotions and programmes is voluntary.
  
  
• You can limit the communications that Visa sends to you. To opt out of marketing emails, simply click the link labelled “unsubscribe” at the bottom of any marketing email we send you. To revoke permissions that you may have given to send text messages, text STOP in response to any message. Please note that even if you opt out of marketing emails, we may still need to contact you with important transactional information about your account. For example, even if you opt out of emails, we may still send you activity confirmations or fraud alerts.
  
  
• You can opt out of having your card transaction data used by Visa to generate certain anonymised and aggregated marketing products. If you do not want us to use your card transaction data to create these products, click here to learn about how you can opt out.

 

In addition to these choices, we respect the rights you have under any applicable privacy laws. If you have any questions about your choices or if you need any assistance with opting out, please see the contact us section below.

If you have an online account with Visa, you can log into your account to access and update your personal information. You can also contact us to update the information you have provided to us.  Additionally, Visa complies with all applicable laws regarding access and correction.  If you need assistance accessing or updating your personal information, please see the “Contact us” section below.

Visa is based in the United States and operates a global payments network with affiliates and service providers located around the world.  As a result, your personal information may be transferred to, stored at or processed in other countries, including the United States, Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and other countries that may not have equivalent privacy or data protection laws.  However, regardless of where your personal information is transferred, we will protect it in accordance with this Privacy Notice and the applicable law.  

We use physical, technical, organisational, and administrative safeguards to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access or loss. For example, we use technology such as encryption to protect sensitive personal information (such as your account number) during transmission.  We will retain your personal information for as long as the information is needed for the purposes listed above and for any additional period that may be required or permitted by law.

This Privacy Notice only addresses the use and disclosure of information by Visa Inc. and its affiliates.  If you have signed up for services through your card issuer or another third party, or if you are interacting with Visa through a social media platform or other site, you should read the privacy notice given to you by that company or site owner. If you are participating in Visa offers or promotions, please also read the privacy notices provided by our partners. Other websites that may be accessible through this website have their own privacy policies and data collection, use and disclosure practices.  We encourage you to familiarise yourself with the privacy statements provided by all third parties prior to providing them with information or taking advantage of an offer or promotion.

If you have applied for employment with Visa, the personal information submitted with your job application will be used only for recruitment and other customary human resources purposes including any required government reporting and record-keeping obligations. For more information, please contact us using the information provided under the “Contact us” section below.

Visa’s websites and applications are not directed to children under 16 and we do not knowingly collect any personal information directly from children under 16. We have websites that enable parents and teachers to help children learn about managing money and credit. We encourage parents and teachers to spend time online with children and to monitor their online activities.  

We may also receive personal information about children from their parents or guardians or from merchants, such as when children are authorised users of payment cards.  If you believe that Visa is processing information pertaining to a child inappropriately, please contact us using the information provided under the “Contact us” section below so that we may investigate and restrict the data.

From time to time, we may update this Privacy Notice to reflect new or different privacy practices. We will place a notice online when we make material changes to this the Privacy Notice. Additionally, if the changes will materially affect the way we use or disclose previously collected personal information, we will notify you about the change.

If you have questions or comments about our privacy practices, or would like to exercise your rights in accordance with this privacy policy, please

• email us: privacy@visa.com
  
  
• Send us a letter: 
  
  Global Privacy Office.
  900 Metro Center Blvd.
  Foster City, CA, 94404
  USA