Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

BidMyCapital ("BidMyCapital", "BMC", "we", "us" or "our") operates bidmycapital.com and related application pages, including quiz.bidmycapital.com.

BidMyCapital is a referral and financing-matching service. We are not a lender. We collect information from business owners who are seeking financing and introduce them to independent financing providers who may be able to help. All credit, underwriting, pricing and funding decisions are made by those providers, not by us. See our Terms of Use for the full description of our role.

This policy applies to information we collect through our websites, application forms, telephone calls, text messages and emails, and from the third-party sources described below.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

When you submit a financing request or otherwise contact us, we may collect:

• Identifiers — your name, business name, email address, telephone number, and business or mailing address.
• Business and financial information — industry, time in business, entity type, annual or monthly revenue, average bank balance, existing debt or advances, requested financing amount, intended use of funds, and similar details.
• Credit-related information — a self-reported credit score range, and where you separately authorise it, information obtained from a consumer reporting agency or business credit bureau.
• Documents you choose to upload — for example bank statements, tax returns or financial statements.
• Communications — the content of emails, text messages and web-form messages you send us, and call recordings or call notes where recording is disclosed and permitted by law.
• Consent records — the date, time, IP address, page URL and exact disclosure text shown to you at the moment you gave consent to be contacted, which we retain as evidence of that consent.

Information collected automatically

• IP address, approximate location derived from IP address, device type, operating system, browser type and language.
• Pages viewed, referring and exit URLs, time on page, clicks, form progress, and dates and times of visits.
• Identifiers stored in cookies, pixels, local storage and similar technologies. See Cookies, tracking and advertising.

Information from other sources

• Marketing and lead sources — if you reached us through an advertising partner, comparison site, affiliate or other lead source, that source may pass us the information you gave them, together with the consent record from their page.
• Financing providers — providers we introduce you to may tell us whether they were able to make an offer and whether a transaction funded, so that we can report on outcomes and calculate compensation.
• Data and verification vendors — services that help us validate a telephone number or email address, detect fraud, or append business firmographic data.

3. Why we collect it

We use personal information to:

• Assess which financing providers in our network are a plausible match for your stated needs and profile.
• Transmit your financing request to those providers so they can decide whether to make you an offer.
• Contact you about your request by telephone, text message and email, in accordance with the consent you gave and our Consent and Communication Terms.
• Verify the information you supplied, prevent fraud and abuse, and maintain the security and integrity of our systems.
• Maintain records of consent, suppression and opt-out requests, and meet our obligations under telemarketing, consumer-protection and privacy law.
• Measure and improve our website, our advertising, and the quality of the matches we make.
• Send you marketing about our own services where permitted, subject always to your right to opt out.

4. How we share information with financing providers

Sharing your information with financing providers is the core purpose of this service. When you submit a financing request and agree to the consent disclosure on the form, we may transmit the information you supplied to independent financing providers, brokers, funders, lenders and capital-markets advisors in our network so that they can evaluate your request and contact you about it.

• Only selected providers receive each request. We do not send every request to every company in our network. We select recipients based on the financing product you asked for, your state, your industry, your revenue and time in business, and each provider's stated appetite and eligibility criteria.
• A single request may be shared with up to 50 providers. That is the maximum for any one submission. In practice most requests are shared with far fewer.
• The providers are independently owned and operated. They are not agents, subsidiaries or affiliates of BidMyCapital. Once your information reaches a provider, that provider is an independent controller of it and its own privacy policy governs what it does with it. We do not control their retention, use or onward disclosure.
• The current list of companies that may receive a financing request is published at Participating Financing Providers, with links to each provider's own website where available.

Other recipients

• Service providers. Hosting, telephony and SMS delivery, email delivery, CRM, analytics, fraud prevention and professional advisors, each acting on our instructions.
• Advertising and analytics partners. See Cookies, tracking and advertising.
• Legal and safety. Where required by law, subpoena, court order or regulator, or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, or to protect the rights, property or safety of any person.
• Corporate transactions. In connection with a merger, acquisition, financing or sale of all or part of our business, subject to this policy continuing to apply to the transferred information.

We do not sell your information to companies unrelated to your financing request — for example, we do not sell your details to general consumer-marketing list brokers. However, sharing your information with financing providers in exchange for compensation may be treated as a "sale" or as "sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising" under some state privacy laws. See State privacy rights and Your Privacy Choices.

5. Compensation for referrals

6. Cookies, tracking and advertising

We and our partners use cookies, pixels, tags, SDKs, local storage and similar technologies to operate the site, remember your progress through a form, measure traffic, and measure and target advertising.

• Strictly necessary — needed to deliver the site, balance load, secure forms and prevent abuse. These cannot be turned off through our site.
• Analytics — help us understand how the site is used and where visitors drop out of a form.
• Advertising and conversion measurement — used by advertising platforms to attribute a sign-up to an advertisement and to show you or similar audiences further advertising. This may involve sending a hashed version of your email address or telephone number to the advertising platform.

You can control cookies through your browser settings, and most advertising platforms offer their own opt-outs. Industry opt-out tools are available at optout.aboutads.info and optout.networkadvertising.org.

Global Privacy Control. Where our site receives a Global Privacy Control (GPC) or comparable browser opt-out preference signal, we treat it as a request to opt that browser out of sale and sharing of personal information for targeted advertising, in the states where that signal must be honoured.

Do Not Track. Browsers vary in how they implement Do Not Track and there is no common standard, so we do not respond to DNT headers.

7. Data retention

We keep personal information only as long as we have a business or legal reason to. Our general practice is:

• Financing request data — retained for up to 36 months from your last interaction with us, so we can service the request, respond to disputes, and understand outcomes.
• Consent and disclosure records — retained for at least 5 years from the date consent was given or revoked. These records are our evidence that contact was authorised and are retained to defend potential claims.
• Opt-out, do-not-call and suppression records — retained indefinitely. We must keep your telephone number or email address on a suppression list in order to keep honouring your opt-out. Asking us to delete your data does not remove you from the suppression list, and we will tell you when we retain data for this reason.
• Website and analytics logs — typically retained for up to 25 months.
• Records required by law — retained for the period the applicable law requires.

Financing providers who received your information keep it under their own retention schedules. Deleting your information from our systems does not delete it from theirs. To have a provider delete your information, you must contact that provider directly.

8. Security

We use administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information, including TLS encryption of our websites and forms, access controls and least-privilege access for staff, encryption of data at rest where supported by our vendors, logging of access to systems containing personal information, and vendor due diligence and contractual confidentiality obligations.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. Please do not send sensitive identifiers to us by unencrypted email or text message.

9. State privacy rights

Depending on where you live and whether the applicable statute covers our business, you may have some or all of the following rights over personal information about you:

• Know / access — what we collect, use and disclose.
• Portability — a copy in a usable format.
• Correct — fix inaccurate information.
• Delete — subject to legal exceptions, including the suppression-list exception above.
• Opt out of sale or sharing and of targeted advertising.
• Limit use of sensitive personal information, where the applicable statute provides that right.
• Non-discrimination — we will not deny you service or give you a worse experience for exercising a privacy right.
• Appeal — if we decline your request, you may appeal, and in several states you may then complain to your state attorney general.

These rights generally apply to residents of states with comprehensive privacy statutes, including California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Tennessee, Minnesota, Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky and Rhode Island, subject to each statute's own scope, thresholds and effective date. Some statutes apply only to information about individuals acting in a personal capacity and exclude information about you in your capacity as an employee or owner of a business.

Notice of financial incentive and shine-the-light. California residents may also request information about disclosures of personal information to third parties for their direct-marketing purposes.

Authorised agents. You may use an authorised agent to submit a request. We may ask the agent for written proof of authority and may ask you to verify your identity directly.

To exercise any of these rights, use Your Privacy Choices.

10. Opting out of marketing and data sharing

You can stop hearing from us, and stop further sharing, at any time:

• Text messages — reply STOP to any message. Reply HELP for help.
• Email — use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any marketing email.
• Telephone — tell the caller you want to be placed on our internal do-not-call list, or call (814) 637-3076.
• Online — use our Communication Preferences and Consent Revocation form, which also lets you request that we stop sharing your information with additional providers.
• Email us — optout@bidmycapital.com.
• Post — write to us at the address in section 14.

11. Requesting access or deletion

Submit a request through Your Privacy Choices, or email privacy@bidmycapital.com, or call (814) 637-3076.

We will acknowledge your request within 10 business days and respond substantively within 45 calendar days, and we may extend that once by a further 45 days where reasonably necessary, telling you why. Before we act on a request we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity — usually by matching the telephone number or email address you give us against our records, and sometimes by asking for one further piece of information. We do not charge for a request unless it is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

12. Children's privacy

Our services are for business owners and are not directed at anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, contact privacy@bidmycapital.com and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we do we will change the "Last updated" date and version number at the top of this page. If the change materially affects how we use or share your information, we will provide more prominent notice. Continuing to use the site after a change takes effect means you accept the updated policy.

14. How to contact us

Our opt-out mailbox is monitored on business days. If you do not receive a response, please call us so that we can confirm your request was received.