Legal Notices and Privacy Policy
Last modified: [October 2019]
Please read the following statements. By accessing this website and its pages (the “Website") as well as the products, services, information, tools, and documentation (the “Content") contained or described therein, you declare that you have understood and acknowledge these legal notices and the privacy policy (collectively “Terms and Conditions of Use") in the version current at any given time.
The Terms and Conditions of Use can be amended at any time. Any amendment will be published and becomes effective upon publication. You will find a reference to the last update date at the beginning of this document.
User access and the use of this Website and its Content as well as the Terms and Conditions of Use are subject to substantive Swiss law. The courts of Horgen (Switzerland) shall have exclusive jurisdiction and venue, subject to mandatory provisions with different content.
I. Legal Notices
1. No Offer
This Website and its Content do not represent any offer or any invitation to acquire a means of cashless payment (e.g. charge card and/or credit card), to take out a loan or acquire any other financial services product, to enter into a contract dealer contract (merchant contract), or any other legal and/or other transaction, and only serve informational purposes. Products and/or services featured on the Website are only addressed to persons established or domiciled and with their habitual abode in Switzerland. The fact that you access this Website or Content does not make you a contracting party with Swisscard AECS GmbH (“We" or "Us").
2. No Assurance
Although We make an effort to ensure the correctness of the information on this Website and of the Content when publishing it, neither We nor our contracting parties can provide you or other persons an express or implied assurance, guarantee, or warranty regarding the currency, correctness, accuracy, dependability, or completeness of the information or its suitability for a particular purpose.
We provide no express or implied assurance, guarantee, or warranty that the functions on this Website will not be interrupted or are error-free, that errors will be corrected, or that the Website or the infrastructure necessary for you is free of viruses or other harmful software (malware). Furthermore, We cannot ensure that information on this Website will not be falsified by technical faults or access by unauthorized third parties. Please contact Us if you have any questions about the acquisition or use of your means of cashless payment and/or other products or services offered or brokered by Us. Insofar as our partners introduce themselves or their offers on our site, We assume no responsibility for these representations, also not with regard to correctness, completeness, or the legality of these representations.
All information on the Website and in the Content may be modified or removed at any time and without notice. We are not obligated to remove information that is no longer current from the Website or from the Content or to label it as such.
3. Liability exclusion
We exclude any and all liability for damages and losses of all kinds, effective for Us and for our managing directors, employees, agents, and other vicarious agents, that arises from the use of or access to the Website and its Content or from links to third-party websites (or arising from the impossibility or failure to access or to use), regardless of the legal basis of any liability, subject to the reservation of intentional or grossly negligent damage caused by Us. We exclude liability for actions by our vicarious agents.
Specific links on this Website lead to third-party websites. Such links are only made available for information purposes. We have not reviewed the websites linked to this Website and are not responsible for their content. The use of such links occurs at your own risk. We recommend that you read the legal notices and privacy policy of the individual website and review how those websites protect your own personal data and – if accessing from a company – personal data of that company.
4. Security Measures
We hereby notify you of the danger emanating from viruses or other harmful software (malware) or from hacking, phishing or other comparable attacks. We recommend that you use antivirus software, a spam filter, and other software to protect your system (e.g., a firewall) and to keep them up-to-date. We reject any and all liability for manipulations of your IT system by unauthorized parties in connection with accessing our Website.
Phishing: fraudsters use "phishing" in order to obtain personal data. Should you receive a request by telephone, email, fax or SMS to provide any card data (e.g. the card number, expiry date) or any other confidential information, this may constitute a phishing attempt. Such requests often look deceptively authentic. Do not answer them, do not click any links contained in them, and do not open any attachments to such requests. If you have any doubt as to the authenticity of such a request, please call us.
5. Intellectual property rights
Swisscard and other brand names and logos on this Website (e.g., Credit Suisse, American Express, Mastercard, and VISA) are registered brands. Unless otherwise specified, the Website and all Content are protected by copyright. We reserve all rights (particularly copyrights and trademark rights) to the Website and to all Content and will exercise all legal opportunities to enforce these rights as necessary. The user receives no rights of any kind whatsoever to the use of images or other content or to brands or logos. Downloading, saving, copying, and printing individual pages and Content are only permitted for personal use. Such action does not transfer any rights to you. If Content is reproduced in whole or in excerpts in electronic or written form, expressly naming Us as the source is required. In addition, our express written consent must be obtained for any reproduction, further publication, or sale of Content.
II. Privacy Policy (Data Protection and Data Security)
We treat personal data which you provide to us and/or which We collect about you during the use of this Website or in the context of a customer or other business relationship ("Contractual Relationship") confidentially. Please note the special provisions on data protection included in the terms and conditions of business applicable from time to time and, where applicable, in separate data protection notices.
1. Data categories and sources
We process personal data received from you (e.g. with regard to the commencement of the Contractual Relationship or during the course of the Contractual Relationship) or in the course of the implementation of the Contractual Relationship (e.g. transaction-related data), in particular:
- basic data including personal details (e.g. name, address and other contact details, date and place of birth and nationality, data regarding third parties, e.g. authorized persons who are also affected by the data processing, contract number and account number);
- transaction-related data (e.g. information regarding the point of acceptance, transaction amount and date);
- data in connection with other secondary and additional benefits (e.g. insurance services or loyalty programmes connected to means of cashless payments, online services);
- data required for purposes of risk management (e.g. credit ratings, origin of assets);
- marketing data (e.g. preferences)
To the extent that this is required for us to provide our services, We also process personal data that We obtain from permissible public sources (e.g. commercial register, the press, the internet) or that is legitimately provided to us by other companies within the Credit Suisse or American Express group or from any other third party (e.g. a credit agency, the Central Office for Credit Information or a public authority).
2. Processing purposes
We process personal data in accordance with Swiss data protection laws:
a. In order to perform contractual obligations
Personal data is processed with regard to the conclusion of contracts with our customers as well as for purposes of fulfilling a contract. The purposes of the data processing depend primarily on the specific product (e.g. charge or credit card, merchant contract) and include, among other things, the performance of transactions. For further details regarding the purposes of the data processing, please refer to the applicable contractual documents and terms and conditions of business.
b. Based on statutory requirements
As a financial service provider We are subject to a variety of legal obligations (e.g. the Swiss Consumer Credit Act [Konsumkreditgesetz], the Swiss Money Laundering Act [Geldwäschereigesetz], applicable circulars issued by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA, tax laws).
Depending on the product/service, the processing purposes linked to these obligations include inter alia credit checks, ID and age checks, fraud and money laundering prevention, the fulfilment of control and reporting obligations under tax law as well as archiving obligations.
c. Based on your consent
Insofar as you have given consent for the processing of personal data for particular purposes, this processing is legitimate on the basis of your consent. Consent provided may be revoked in writing at any time.
The revocation of consent does not affect the processing of the data that has occurred until consent was revoked.
d. For other purposes
We are also entitled to process personal data for other purposes such as, for instance, in order to ensure IT security, for training and educational purposes, for internal administrative purposes and in order to enforce our rights and defend against any claims brought against Us.
We may compile customer, consumption and transaction profiles and, to that end, also link personal data with other data for purposes of processing the Contractual Relationship, complying with statutory obligations (e.g. to combat money laundering), risk management (e.g. prevention of credit defaults and fraudulent transactions) as well as for marketing purposes (e.g. to optimise offers and services for the customer)
3. Bringing in third parties / transferring data abroad
In the provision of our services, We work with third parties both within and outside of Switzerland (commissioned data processing). These third parties are subject to contractual and statutory confidentiality and data protection obligations.
When processing card transactions via the international card networks of American Express, Mastercard and VISA, data may be transmitted via third countries or processed in third countries. You acknowledge that data transmitted abroad may potentially not be protected to the same extent as under Swiss law.
Except where provided by our terms and conditions of business or by statute, We do not transfer any data to third parties for their own purposes.
4. Data processing / retention period
The duration of the processing and retention of personal data is governed by the statutory retention obligations and the purpose of the data retention.
5. Right of access and right to correction
Every data subject has the right to access personal data pursuant to article 8 Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (Datenschutzgesetz, "FADP") and the right to correction of any incorrect data pursuant to article 5 FADP.
Please direct any requests for information or correction (in writing and with a clearly legible copy of a valid ID card) to:
Swisscard AECS GmbH
Request for information
Neugasse 18
P.O.Box
8810 Horgen
6. Security of Data Transfers
Please note that data transmitted over a public network such as the Internet or an email service can be viewed by anyone. We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of messages or documents transmitted through such open networks. If you disclose person-related information over an open network, you should be aware of the fact that third parties can potentially access this information and consequently can collect and use the data without your consent. Cardholder data and means of identification (e.g., card number, card expiration, verification number [CVC/CVV], PIN) should therefore never be transmitted by email. Your data will be transmitted encrypted for specific services, but not the name of the sender and the receiver. Third parties can thus reach conclusions as to existing or future charge card / credit card relationships or other business relationships. Even if the sender and recipient reside in the same country, data transfer across such networks frequently also occurs without monitoring via third countries, i.e., including countries that may in some circumstances not offer the same level of data protection as that offered in Switzerland.
Your data could be lost during transmission or could be intercepted by unauthorized third parties. We assume no responsibility for the security of your data during its transmission via the Internet and reject any and all liability for indirect and direct losses. We request that you use other means of communication if you consider this necessary or reasonable for reasons of security.
7. Data processing in the use of this Website
We automatically collect anonymised user data when you visit this Website. This information helps Us to determine in aggregated form how visitors use the Website and how often and how long they visit individual pages. Personal data in non-anonymized form (e.g., name, address, email address, or telephone number) relating to you (or in case of companies, also to your company) is acquired and processed only when you have provided this information to Us (e.g., when you access password-protected areas of this Website or send us an email).
8. Cookies
All websites of Swisscard AECS GmbH use cookies for statistical purposes and in order to improve user experience and online advertising campaigns. One of the cookies that We use primarily serves the operation of portions of the Website and was already placed. This Website does not function without these cookies.
8.1 Cookies and their purpose on our websites
Cookies are small files that are stored on your device in order to track your visit to the Website and your preferences when you navigate between various pages and sometimes in order to store settings in between your visits. Cookies assist website developers to collect statistical data to determine how often persons visit certain parts of the Website and assist in developing customised websites that are more useful and user-friendly.
We use the cookies that we store on our Websites for the following purposes:
- Recording the number and type of visits on the Website and its sub-pages so that we can determine whether and what parts of the Website must be improved;
- Displaying personalised Content on this Website or for Remarketing adverts
- Display of personalised adverts and offers;
- Storing of settings in between your visits;
- Collecting statistical data on the number of visitors and their usage habits and to improve the speed and performance of the Website pages.
8.2. Cookies of third parties and partners on our websites
Occasionally we use third-party services in order to improve user experience and our online advertising campaigns. In order to enable these third parties to provide their services, we may integrate their plug-ins and components. These components can likewise use cookies for similar purposes. Neither such third parties nor Swisscard have access to the data collected by the respective other party through the use of cookies.
We use cookies in order to display adverts of Swisscard to its partners when you visit websites of third parties with whom we have a marketing relationship.
These third parties may collect anonymised information regarding your use of our and third-party websites and provide this anonymised data to us, including but not limited to geographical details, your user behaviour on a website or the names of websites on which you were shown advertisements.
We use this information in order to display more relevant and useful advertisements and to improve the effectiveness of our advertising measures.
8.3. Deleting cookies
You can decide against using cookies at any time by deleting the cookies that were set by the Website and by blocking any other cookies. This is possible using the settings in your Internet browser. However, not all parts of this Website will function without cookies.
9. Tracking technologies on our websites
IP anonymisation was activated on this Website: the tracking code was extended in order to allow the anonymised collection of IP addresses (known as IP masking).
9.1 Services from Google:
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics to automatically collect anonymised user data when you visit this Website. This information helps Us to determine in aggregated form how visitors use the Website and how often and how long they visit individual pages.
Google DoubleClick Digital Marketing Suite
This Website uses DoubleClick Digital Marketing Suite, a web analysis service from Google. DoubleClick sets cookies when you look at an advertisement or click on an advertising banner from Us that is located on partner websites. This occurs in order to display banners that are more interesting to you. Using the cookie, we can register specific data regarding the interaction of your browser with a particular overlay. It also records whether you have looked at an advertisement, clicked on it, and whether this resulted in registration with Us. The data are collected and stored in anonymized form. If you do not wish for this information to be collected, you can deactivate the use of cookies in your browser.
Google Adwords
This Website uses the online advertising program "Google Adwords" to improve the Website and its advertising activities and in that context, conversion tracking. The cookie for conversion tracking is set when a user clicks on an advertisement placed by Google. These cookies become invalid after 30 days and are not used for personal identification. If the user visits particular pages of this Website and the cookie has not yet expired, We and Google can detect that the user has clicked on the advertisement and was forwarded to this page. Each Google AdWords customer receives a different cookie. Therefore, cookies cannot be tracked across the websites of AdWords customers. The information obtained using the conversion cookie is used to prepare conversion statistics for AdWords customers that have decided for conversion tracking. The customers receive the total number of users that have clicked on their advertisement and were forwarded to a page provided with a conversion tracking tag. However, they do not receive any information that allows the user to be personally identified.
9.2 Services of Social Media platforms
Facebook Pixel
This Website uses the Facebook-Pixel of Facebook for statistical purposes. A cookie is used to understand how our marketing measures are received on Facebook and how they can be improved. You can disable this function on your user account on Facebook.
Facebook advertising campaigns and their administration
Picture reference
Image sources: Fotolia, iStockphoto