Privacy Policy

At CircleUp, our most important asset is our relationship with you. We may ask for certain Personal Information in order to perform our services for you, but we are committed to protecting that information and to keeping you informed about how we use it. This Privacy Policy describes the treatment of information that you provide to us through your use of the sites and services where this Privacy Policy is posted. It also describes the treatment of information provided by you on applications that we make available on third-party sites or platforms, if disclosed to you in connection with the use of such applications. This Privacy Policy also describes your choices with respect to how we use your information and addresses and how you can access and update this information.

Financial companies choose how they share your Personal Information. Applicable law gives consumers the right to limit some but not all sharing. Applicable law also requires us to tell you how we collect, share, and protect your personal information. Please read this notice carefully to understand what we do.

When you interact with us through the Site or the Services, we may collect Personal Information and other non-personal information about you, as further described below.

(A) Personal Information: Personal Information is information that may be used to identify, describe, or be reasonably linked to an individual User or household. We may ask you to provide Personal Information that will enable us to enhance your use of the Services, for purposes such as facilitating correspondence with you, registering your entitlement to access certain special features, or to complete transactions. It is always your choice whether or not to provide that Personal Information. If you choose not to provide requested Personal Information, you may not be able to use certain features of the Services.

We have grouped together the following categories of Personal Information to explain how this type of information is used by us. These terms are used throughout this notice:

1. Identity Information, including your first and last name, birth date, age, gender, social security number, and any of the foregoing information related to your business representative, if applicable.
2. Applicant Information, including your employment history and level of education.
3. Contact Information, including your email address, phone number, and home address.

(B) Non-Personal, De-identified, or Aggregated Data: Non-personal information, alone, cannot be used to reasonably identify or contact you. When you interact with CircleUp through the Site or Services, we receive and store certain non-personal information about you for purposes that include improving our products and services, troubleshooting bugs, providing services to you, facilitating the provision of updates, dynamically served content and product support, and communicating with you. We may also automatically receive and record such information passively on our server logs from your browser or through other means, which may include: (i) demographic information (e.g., gender, age, and zip code); and (ii) technical information about your computer, hardware, software, media, and mobile device, such as unique device IDs or other device identifiers, incident data, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, network Media Access Control (“MAC”) address, cookie information and connection. This information is referred to herein as “Technical Information”.

When non-personal or de-identified information, including Technical Information, is directly associated with Personal Information, such that the non-personal or de-identified information can be reasonably associated with an individual User or household, then this non-personal or de-identified information is treated as Personal Information.

We use different methods to collect information from and about you, including through the channels set out below.

(A) Direct Interactions. You give us your information in your direct interactions with us. We collect information you provide to us when you request products, services or information from us, interact on our sites and applications and other Services, respond to surveys, or otherwise interact with us. Such information includes Identity Information, Contact Information, Business Information, and Technical Information, which you give us from time to time (i) by submitting an application through our customer portal or by otherwise using our Site; (ii) by submitting a resume or other job application materials to us; (iii) through other electronic platforms which we may offer or which we have agreed with you to use, or (iv) by corresponding with us by email or post.

As described below, CircleUp may use cookies, clear GIFs, tracking pixels, and other activity tracking tools on the site and through email to collect your engagement metrics, including your Identity Information and Technical Information, related to your activity on the site. CircleUp may make this information available to third parties and affiliates. Please also be aware that other websites and services, including the websites of third parties that you connect with through our Site or Services, may collect personal information about you. CircleUp does not expressly require that its agents or service providers use data consistently with this Privacy Policy. The collection and use of data by such third parties, including Google Analytics, is subject to their privacy policies.

As described below, CircleUp may use cookies, clear GIFs, tracking pixels, and other activity tracking tools on the site and through email to collect your engagement metrics, including your Identity Information and Technical Information, related to your activity on the site. CircleUp may make this information available to third parties and affiliates. Please also be aware that other websites and services, including the websites of third parties that you connect with through our Site or Services, may collect personal information about you. CircleUp does not expressly require that its agents or service providers use data consistently with this Privacy Policy. The collection and use of data by such third parties, including Google Analytics, is subject to their privacy policies.

1. Internet Log Files As is true of most web sites, we gather certain information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes IP addresses, browser type, internet service provider (“ISP”), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data. CircleUp may store such information itself or such information may be included in databases owned and maintained by CircleUp affiliates, agents, or service providers. This Site may use such information and pool it with other information to track, for example, the total number of visitors to our Site, the number of visitors to each page of our Site, the domain names of our visitors' ISPs, and how our Users use and interact with the Services. Also, in an ongoing effort to better understand and serve our Users, CircleUp often conducts research on its customer demographics, interests, and behavior based on Personal Information and other information provided to CircleUp by Users. This research may be compiled and analyzed on an aggregate and non-aggregate basis. CircleUp may share this data, including Personal Information, with its affiliates, agents and business partners for any lawful purpose. CircleUp may also disclose such User statistics in order to describe our Services to current and prospective business partners and to other third parties for lawful purposes.
2. Cookies In operating this Site, we also may use a technology called “cookies.” A cookie is a piece of information that the computer that hosts our Site gives to your browser when you access the Site. Our cookies help provide additional functionality to the Site and help us to analyze Site usage more accurately. We may use cookies to collect your Personal Information. On most web browsers, you will find a “help” section on the toolbar. Please refer to this section for information on how to receive notification when you are receiving a new cookie and how to turn cookies off. We recommend that you leave cookies turned on because they allow you to take advantage of some of the Site's features. If you wish to disable the storage of cookies on your device, you may do so using the settings on your browser or device. Please note, however, that without cookies you may not be able to use all of the features of our websites. For more information on deleting or controlling cookies, visit www.aboutcookies.org. The use of cookies by our any of our service providers is not covered by this Privacy Policy, except to the extent that the cookies are delivered to you through our Site. We do not have access or control over cookies delivered to you by third-party websites. Our partners may use session ID cookies to make it easier for you to navigate our Site and use our Services.
3. Clear GIFs and Tracking Pixels Clear GIFs (including web bugs, beacons or tags) are small graphic images placed on a web page, web-based document, or in an email message. Clear GIFs are invisible to the user because they are small (only 1-by-1 pixel) and usually the same color as the background of the web page, document or email message. We use clear GIFs to collect your Personal Information. Furthermore, we use clear GIFs to capture statistical usage information for our web pages, features or other elements on a web page. We correlate this information to a User to personalize User experience and for statistical analysis of User experiences on our web pages. We and third parties may also use tracking pixels, which allow us to advertise more efficiently by, for example, excluding our current Users from certain promotional messages or identifying the source of a new installation.
4. Analytic Metric Tools and Other Technology CircleUp uses third party analytics technologies to collect information when you use our online Services. These tools and technologies use server log files, web beacons, cookies, tracking pixels and other technologies to collect and analyze certain types of information, including cookies, IP addresses (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), mobile or other hardware device ID or other device identifiers, browser types, browser language, information passed from your browser (if any), referring and exit pages, and URLs, platform type, click information, information about your media, peripheral hardware, software and/or applications installed on your machine and/or device, domain names and types, landing pages, pages viewed and the order of those pages, advertising conversion rates, the date and amount of time spent on particular pages, other internet and website usage information, and the date and time of activity on our websites. The third party analytics companies who collect information on our Site and in the context of our Services may combine the information collected with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your activities across their network of websites as well as online and/or mobile products and services. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies.
5. Google Analytics and AdWords This Site uses Google Analytics to track viewing trends and help analyze how visitors use the CircleUp Site. This information helps us to improve the Site and the overall User experience. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect standard internet log information and User behavior information. This Site also uses the Google AdWords remarketing service to advertise CircleUp and CircleUp Issuers on third party websites to previous visitors to the CircleUp Site. Google AdWords remarketing will display relevant ads tailored to you by using a cookie that helps track what parts of the Site you have viewed. Google AdWords remarketing allows us to tailor our marketing efforts to better suit your needs and display ads that are most relevant to your interests. You can set preferences for how Google advertises to you using the Google Ad Preferences page.
6. Ad Serving Technology CircleUp’s websites, online or mobile products or services may employ proprietary or third party ad serving technologies that use cookies, clear GIFs, web beacons, tracking pixels or other technologies to collect information as a result of ad serving through our products or services as well as to help track results. We or third parties operating the advertisement serving technology may use information such as age and gender, as well as information logged from your hardware or device to ensure that appropriate advertising is presented to you and to calculate or control the number of unique and repeat views of a given ad, and/or to deliver ads that may relate to your interests, and to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. We or third parties may collect data for this purpose including IP address (including for purposes of determining your approximate geographic location), device IDs, information about your software, applications and hardware, browser information (and/or information passed via your browser), hardware, machine or device make and model, advertisement(s) served, length of time an advertisement was visible, other Internet and website usage information, web pages and mobile internet sites which have been viewed by you (as well as date and time), domain type, size of the advertisement, advertisement response (if any), and angle of view. The foregoing data may be used and disclosed per this Policy and the privacy policy of the company providing the ad serving technology. The advertising companies who deliver ads for us may combine the information collected or obtained from CircleUp with other information they have independently collected from other websites and/or other online or mobile products and services relating to your web browser’s activities across their network of websites. Many of these companies collect and use information under their own privacy policies. For more information about the practices of other ad serving companies that may collect information based on your interaction with ads on this site, in our mobile products, and other sites or products not owned/managed by CircleUp, or to “opt out” of targeted advertising delivered by National Advertising Initiative (NAI) member ad networks, you should visit www.networkadvertising.org. Please refer to your mobile device or browser’s technical information for instructions on how to delete and disable cookies, and other tracking/recording tools. Depending on your type of device, it may not be possible to delete or disable tracking mechanisms on your device. Note that disabling cookies and/or other tracking tools prevents CircleUp or its analytics providers from tracking your browser's activities in relation to the Service. However, doing so may disable many of the features available through the Service. If you have any questions about opting out of the collection of cookies and other tracking/recording tools, you can contact us directly at privacy@circleup.com. Although we do our best to honor the privacy preferences of our Users, we are not able to respond to Do Not Track signals from your browser or device at this time.

(B) Third Party Sources.

1. CircleUp may also receive other information from third parties, including in connection with the operation of our products and services as well as marketing and demographic studies that we use to supplement Personal Information and deidentified information provided directly by you. Some third party services such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn may also provide us with information from your accounts there with your permission.
2. For example, in order to access additional functionality of the Site, you may be required to create an account for your use of the Service (an “Account”). You may create an Account directly via the Site or by logging into your Account with certain third party social networking sites (such as Facebook and LinkedIn) via our Service. If you decide to create an Account by logging into a social networking site via our Service, we will obtain the Personal Information you have provided to the social networking site (such as your name, profile picture, email address, and other information you make publicly available via the applicable social networking site) from the social networking account and use that information to create your Account with us. The information we obtain may depend on the privacy settings you have with the social networking site. We also collect other information that you provide as part of Account registration and your use of the Service.
3. CircleUp may also collect or receive information about you from other CircleUp users who choose to upload their email and other contacts. This information will be stored by us and used primarily to help you and your friends connect.

(C) Publicly Available Sources

We collect Personal Information from publicly available sources, including from public registers and public websites.

CircleUp uses the Personal Information you provide in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Policy. If you provide Personal Information for a certain reason, we may use the Personal Information in connection with the reason for which it was provided. For instance, if you contact us by email, we will use the Personal Information you provide to answer your question or resolve your problem. Also, if you provide Personal Information in order to obtain access to the Services, we will use your Personal Information to provide you with access to such Services and to monitor your use of such Services. In addition, we may provide information regarding your Site activity to third parties and affiliates. We also may obtain information about you from third party sources to verify your identity so we can properly process your requests and prevent fraud. By accessing our Site and using our Services, you explicitly consent that we may use your submitted and obtained Personal Information and Technical Information for such purposes.

CircleUp, its subsidiaries, and its affiliates (the “Related Companies”) may also use your Personal Information, Technical Information, and other personally non-identifiable information collected through the Site to help us improve the content and functionality of the Site, to enforce our Terms of Service, to better understand our Users, to detect, investigate and prevent activities that may violate our policies or be illegal, to personalize control and experiences on our Sites and applications, and to improve the Services. CircleUp and its Related Companies may use this information to communicate with you regarding the Services and, to the extent permitted by law, to tell you about services we believe will be of interest to you.

If at any time you wish not to receive any future marketing communications or you wish to have your name deleted from our mailing lists, please contact privacy@circleup.com. Note, however, that as a User of the Service, we will send you administrative communications that are reasonably necessary to provide the Service.

If you choose to refer a friend to a CircleUp Service, we may ask you for your friend’s name and email address. CircleUp retains your friend’s name and email for the sole purpose of sending this email. We do not keep or use this information for any other purpose.

All financial companies need to share personal information to run their everyday business. In the section below, we describe the reasons that CircleUp chooses to share your Personal Information and Technical Information and whether you can limit this sharing. We only will share your Personal Information with third parties in the ways that are described in this Privacy Policy. There may also be circumstances where you may share information on your own. To opt out of further communications from a marketing partner or sponsor with your information has been shared, please contact that partner or sponsor directly.

From time to time, CircleUp employs third party contractors to collect Identity Information and Contact Information on our behalf to provide email delivery, products, promotional fulfillment, shipping or other services on our sites. When requesting these services, you may be asked to supply your name, mailing address, telephone number and email address to our contractors. We ask some third party contractors, such as data analytics or market research firms, to supplement Personal Information and Technical Information that you provide to us for our own marketing and demographic studies, so that we can consistently improve our Sites and related advertising to better meet our visitors’ needs and preferences. To enrich our understanding of individual customers, we tie this information to the Personal Information you provide to us.

We may also access and disclose Personal Information, including personal communications, in connection with abuse reporting functions in our products and services, to enforce legal rights and comply with the law, or to comply with an order from a government entity or other competent authority, or when we have reason to believe that a disclosure is necessary to address potential or actual injury or interference with our rights, property, operations, users or others who may be harmed or may suffer loss or damage, or when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, combat fraud and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on CircleUp. Note that certain publicly available information you post and communicate on third party sites and services is public information for which you have no expectation of privacy.

We share your Personal Information only when applicable law allows us to do so without obtaining your prior consent. Federal law only gives you the right to limit: (i) sharing Personal Information about your creditworthiness with a Related Company for the Related Company’s everyday business purposes; (ii) the ability of a Related Company to use your Personal Information to market to you; (iii) sharing for non-affiliates to market to you. State laws and individual companies may give you additional rights to limit sharing.

We will not share or sell your Personal Information with a non-affiliate, whether for monetary or other valuable consideration, for its independent marketing purposes without your consent. We also will not share or sell your Personal Information with joint marketing partners except to the extent that applicable law permits us to do so without your prior consent. Please see below for additional information about our Related Companies.

(A) Testimonials

We may 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 and other Identity Information. If you wish to update or delete your testimonial, please contact us at privacy@circleup.com.

(B) Public Information Including User Generated Content, Forums, Blogs, and Third Party Sites

Our Site may offer a publicly accessible blog. You should be aware that any information you provide in this area may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your Personal Information from our blog, contact us at privacy@circleup.com. In some cases, however, we may not be able to remove your Personal Information.

You may choose to disclose information about yourself in the course of contributing content to CircleUp or in our online forums, blogs, message boards for public view or in similar forums on our sites and/or on third party sites. Information that you disclose is unencrypted, public information that may be accessed or recorded by CircleUp employees or others, and you should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality with respect to such information.

You should be aware that any Personal Information you submit in the course of these public activities can be read, or collected, or used by other Users of these forums, and could be used to send you unsolicited messages. We are not responsible for the Personal Information you choose to make public in any of these forums on third party sites.

Unsolicited information that you provide to CircleUp through this Site or through any other means, including (but not limited to) information posted to any public areas of the Site, such as bulletin boards, any ideas for new products or modifications to existing products, and other unsolicited submissions (collectively, “Unsolicited Information”) shall be deemed to be non-confidential. CircleUp shall be free to reproduce, use, disclose, distribute and exploit such Unsolicited Information without limitation or attribution.

Note also that in the ordinary course of Internet activity, certain information may be sent from your browser to third parties such as advertising networks and analytics companies. CircleUp has no control over the information sent from your browser to those networks or other third parties and recommends that you ensure that your browser settings prevent the disclosure of information you would not like to share.

If you post a video, image, or photo on one of our Sites for public view, you should be aware that these may be viewed, collected, copied and/or used by other Users without your consent. We are not responsible for the videos, images, or photos that you choose to submit to any CircleUp sites.

There are also certain circumstances in which we may share your Personal Information with certain service providers or third parties, as set forth below:

1. Business Transfers: As we develop our business, we might sell or buy businesses or assets. In the event of a corporate sale, merger, reorganization, dissolution or similar event in which a third party assumes control of all or part of our business, Personal Information may be part of the transferred assets.
2. Related Companies: We also may share your Personal Information with our Related Companies for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy, but only to the extent that applicable law permits us to do so without your prior consent. Related Companies are affiliated by common ownership or control. They can be financial or non-financial companies. Our Related Companies include companies with a CircleUp name and other financial companies, such as Fundme Securities, LLC, CircleUp Credit Advisors LLC, CircleUp Credit Fund Advisors, LLC, and CU Advisors, LLC.
3. Agents, Consultants and Related Third Parties: CircleUp, like many businesses, sometimes hires other companies to perform certain business-related functions. Examples of such functions include mailing information, maintaining databases, identity verification, processing applications, shipping and fulfillment, and processing payments and completing transactions. When we employ another company to perform a function of this nature, we only provide them with the information that they need to perform their specific function. These companies are authorized to use your Personal Information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
4. Joint Marketing: Joint marketing is a formal agreement between nonaffiliated financial companies that together market financial products or services to you. CircleUp does not jointly market.
5. Legal Requirements: CircleUp may disclose your Personal Information if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to (i) comply with a legal obligation, (ii) protect and defend the rights or property of CircleUp, (iii) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of Users or the public against fraud or other harm, or (iv) protect against fraud or legal liability.

If your Personal Information changes, or if you no longer desire our Services, you may correct, update, amend, delete or request deletion by emailing us at privacy@circleup.com or by contacting us at the contact information listed at the bottom of this Privacy Policy. We will respond to your request within a commercially reasonable time.

When you sign up for our Services or newsletter(s), we will send periodic emails to you regarding the Services or to tell you about additional services we believe will be of interest to you. Out of respect for your privacy, you may choose to stop receiving our newsletter or marketing emails by following the unsubscribe instructions included in these emails, or you can contact us at privacy@circleup.com.

To protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access and use, we use security measures that comply with federal law. These measures include computer safeguards and secured files and buildings.

If you enter sensitive information (such as bank account information) on our website, we encrypt the transmission of that information using transport layer security (TLS). We also may use third party identity verification to validate our Users’ identities. From time to time, we review our security procedures to consider appropriate new technology and methods. Please be aware, however, that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that your information will not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards. We cannot assume responsibility or liability for unauthorized access to our servers and systems. We will retain your information for as long as our relationship with you is active or as needed to provide you with the Services, unless a longer retention period is required by law. If you wish to request that we no longer use your information, or if you have any questions about our security practices, please contact us at privacy@circleup.com.

This Privacy Policy does not apply to any Personal Information collected by CircleUp other than Personal Information collected through the Site or Services. This Privacy Policy also does not apply to information about businesses or other non-individual Users. CircleUp reserves the right to use and disclose such non-Personal Information for any commercially reasonable purpose.

CircleUp does not knowingly collect Personal Information from children under the age of sixteen. If you are under the age of sixteen, please do not submit any Personal Information to CircleUp. We encourage parents and legal guardians to monitor their children’s Internet usage and to help enforce our Privacy Policy by instructing their children never to provide Personal Information to CircleUp without their permission. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of thirteen has provided Personal Information to CircleUp, please contact us, and we will endeavor to delete that information from our databases.

This Privacy Policy applies only to the Site and the Services. This Site may contain links to other web sites not operated or controlled by CircleUp (the “Third Party Sites”). The policies and procedures we described here do not apply to the Third Party Sites. The fact that we link to a Website is not an endorsement, authorization or representation of our affiliation with that third party. If you click on a link to a Third Party Site, including on an advertisement, you will leave the CircleUp Site you are visiting and go to the Third Party Site you selected. Because we cannot control the activities of third parties, we cannot accept responsibility for any use of your Personal Information by such third parties, and we cannot guarantee that they will adhere to the same privacy and security practices as CircleUp. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any other service provider from whom you request services. If you visit a Third Party Site that is linked to a CircleUp Site, you should consult that site’s privacy policy before providing any Personal Information.

Members may apply for other services from our Site(s). Certain products and/or services available on our Site are provided to you in partnership with third party(s) and may require you to disclose Personal Information in order to apply for and access such products and/or services. Such products and/or services shall identify the third party partners at the point of application. If you elect to apply for such products and/or services, your Personal Information will be transferred to such third party(s) and will be subject to the privacy policy and practices of such third party(s). We are not responsible for the privacy practices and policies of such third party(s) and, therefore, you should review the privacy practices and policies of such third party(s) prior to providing your Personal Information in connection with such products and/or services.

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our information practices. If we make any material changes we will notify you by email (sent to the e-mail address specified in your account) or by means of a notice on this Site prior to the change becoming effective. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

Under California law, California residents who have an established business relationship with CircleUp or one of its subsidiaries may choose to opt out of CircleUp’s disclosure of Personal Information about them to third parties for direct marketing purposes. We have not disclosed Personal Information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the prior calendar year.

If you are a California resident, then you also have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA”) regarding your Personal Information.

1. Access to Personal Information Rights. You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection, use, disclosure, and sale of your Personal Information. This includes your right to request the specific pieces of Personal Information that we have collected about you.
2. Deletion Request Rights. You have the right to request that we delete any of your Personal Information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions provided by law. To exercise your access or deletion request rights, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us as indicated in the Contacting CircleUp section of this Privacy Policy.

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your Personal Information. You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

• Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected Personal Information or an authorized representative.
• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with Personal Information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the Personal Information relates to you.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not deny you goods or services; charge you different prices or rates for goods or services; provide you a different level or quality of goods or services; or suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about CircleUp's Privacy Policy or the information practices of this Site, of if you would like to exercise your applicable data protection rights via the web, by email at privacy@circleup.com, or by calling toll-free at 877-760-5214.