Privacy Policy

Last updated October 21, 2021

The Short & Sweet Version

  • We use a third party services called Plaid and Moov to securely connect with your financial institutions and facilitate the services we provide
  • Your bank username and password are never stored
  • Transaction data is stored on secured Google Cloud Servers
  • We do not sell data

Introduction

Thanks for choosing The Beans. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with our privacy practices and let us know if you have any questions. Before getting into the details, we’d like to highlight some of the key principles behind it. These principles are important to us because we know they’re important to you.

Please read this Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”, “Policy”) carefully before using the thebeans.io website (the “Service”) operated by The Beans Inc. (“us”, “we”, “our”, or the “Company”). This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information (as defined below) when you use our Service. 

We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy. We use your Personal Information for providing and improving the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. 

Information We Collect

When you open an account, we may ask you to provide us with certain ‘Personal Information’ that can be used to contact or identify you, verify your identity, address or other information or to manage risk and compliance throughout our relationship. We collect this information for the purpose of providing the Service, identifying and communicating with you, responding to your requests/inquiries, and improving our services. ‘Personal Information’ means data that identifies you and is associated with a specific person. ‘Personal Information’ does not include information that is anonymous, aggregated, or is no longer identifiable to a specific person.

When you are using the Services, we collect information about your account transactions and trust relationships and we may collect information about your computer or other access device for fraud prevention and other similar purposes. When you visit the website, we also collect your IP address, and standard web log information, such as your browser type and the pages you accessed on our website. We also may collect certain geo-location information which permits us to limit where The Beans is available and focuses our growth in certain geographies. If you do not agree to our collection of this information, you may not be able to use our Service.

We are committed to providing a safe, secure and all around great service. Therefore, we may also obtain information about you from third parties such as identity verification, fraud prevention and similar services. Finally, we may collect additional information from or about you in other ways not specifically described here.

We do not knowingly solicit or collect information from any individuals under the age of 18. Use of Information Collected by Us Our primary purpose in collecting Personal Information is to provide you with a safe, effortless, personalized, and joyful experience. We may use your Personal Information to: provide the services and customer support you request; improve our services and the content and layout of our website; send you updates about new products and services that we are offering to customers; compare information for accuracy and verify it with third parties; perform other services as authorized by you; and perform other duties as required by law. We may use your financial information to facilitate social comparisons of spending patterns and other personal financial matters. Sharing Personal Information We do not share your Personal Information with third parties for promotional or marketing purposes. However, we may share your Personal Information with: Law enforcement, government officials, or other third parties if we are compelled to do so by a subpoena, court order or similar legal procedure, when it is necessary to do so to comply with law, or where the disclosure of personal information is reasonably necessary to prevent physical harm or financial loss, to report suspected illegal activity, or to investigate violations of the this Privacy Policy or the Terms of Service, or as otherwise required by law. Third party service providers who assist us in providing services to you or who provide fraud detection or similar services. Service providers under contract who help with parts of our business operations (for example, fraud prevention, payment processing, or technology services). Our contracts dictate that these service providers only use your information in connection with the services they perform for us and not for their own benefit.

Email Information

In order to provide email only services to you, we will parse only the emails in your inbox which are tagged ‘finance’ or ‘receipts’ by Google. These receipts are parsed by a natural language engine to extract the transaction information and nothing else. This process is done exclusively by computers.

Account and Payment Information

We use Plaid Technologies, Inc. (“Plaid”) to gather users’ data from financial institutions. By using our service, you grant us and Plaid the right, power, and authority to act on your behalf to access and transmit your personal and financial information from the relevant financial institution. You agree to your personal and financial information being transferred, stored, and processed by Plaid in accordance with the Plaid Privacy Policy (https://plaid.com/legal). During the registration process, you will be asked to enter your online banking credentials. By submitting your credit or debit card account information through the Services, you expressly consent to the sharing of your information with third party merchants who will help to facilitate the Services, billing processors and payment processors. 

We use Plaid to securely connect to more than 15,000 financial institutions across the U.S. These credentials are not stored by us in any way. We do not have your complete credit or debit card account information, store your credit or debit card account information, or have direct control over or responsibility for your credit or debit card account information. Your credentials are sent through Plaid to your bank or credit card provider, which sends back an encrypted token to us. Plaid and any other third party service providers that we may use to facilitate in the delivery of the Services may store your credit or debit card account information so you can use our Services in the future. We cannot guarantee that transmissions of your credit or debit card account information or personal information will always be secure or that unauthorized third parties will never be able to defeat the security measures taken by us or our third-party service providers. We assume no liability or responsibility for disclosure of your information due to errors in transmission, unauthorized third-party access, or other causes beyond our control.

Protection and Storage

We store and process your Personal Information and electronic copies of all correspondence using third party servers located in secure data centers in the United States. This information is protected by physical, electronic and procedural safeguards in compliance with applicable US federal and state regulations. We also use computer safeguards such as firewalls and data encryption, we enforce physical access controls to our office and files, and we authorize access to personal information only for those employees who require it to fulfill their job responsibilities. The security of your Personal Information is important to us, and we strive to implement and maintain reasonable, commercially acceptable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information we store, in order to protect it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure. Despite our efforts, we cannot guarantee that personal information may not be accessed, disclosed, altered or destroyed by breach of our administrative, managerial and technical safeguards. Therefore, we urge you to take adequate precautions to protect your personal data as well, including never sharing your user password with anyone. If we learn of a systems security breach, we may attempt to notify you electronically so that you can take appropriate protective steps. By using the Service, you agree that we may communicate with you electronically. We may post a notice on the website if a security breach occurs. We may also send an email to you at the email address you have provided to us. Depending on where you live, you may have a legal right to receive notice of a security breach in writing. To receive free written notice of a security breach (or to withdraw your consent from receiving electronic notice of a security breach) you should notify us via email at: help@thebeans.io.

Log Data

We collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Service (“Log Data”). This Log Data may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics. In addition, we may use third party services such as Google Analytics that collect, monitor and analyze this type of information in order to increase our Service’s functionality. These third party service providers have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information. Cookies and Web Beacons “Cookies” are small data file identifiers that are transferred to your computer or mobile web browser that allow us to recognize your browser or mobile device and transfer information about you and your use of our Services. We use cookies to collect information in order to improve our services for you. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. The Help feature on most browsers provide information on how to accept cookies, disable cookies or to notify you when receiving a new cookie. If you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some features of our Service and we recommend that you leave them turned on.

We, and third parties with whom we partner, may also deliver a file known as a web beacon, pixel or pixel tag (“Web Beacons”) to you through our Services from an ad network. Web Beacons are small, invisible graphic images that may be used on the Service interface or in emails relating to the Service to collect certain information and monitor user activity on the Service interface, such as to count visits, understand usage effectiveness and to determine if an email has been opened and acted upon. Web Beacons allow ad networks and service providers that we use to provide anonymized, aggregated auditing, research and reporting for us, for advertisers and our other partners. Web Beacons also enable ad networks to serve targeted advertisements to you when you visit other websites. Because your web browser must request these advertisements and Web Beacons from the ad network’s servers, these companies can view, edit, or set their own cookies, just as if you had requested a web page from their site.

Service Providers

We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service, to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Service-related services and/or to assist us in analyzing how our Service is used. These third parties have access to your Personal Information only to perform specific tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use your information for any other purpose.

Electronic Fund Transfers (EFTs) and Account Balances

The Beans, Inc. partners with financial services software company Moov and banking services provider Veridian Credit Union, NCUSIF Insured, to offer you electronic fund transfers (EFTs). By creating a The Beans, Inc account and initiating bank deposits or withdrawals, you agree to Moov terms of service, https://moov.io/legal/platform-agreement/. You must comply with the Partner Terms when creating or using your The Beans Essential Savings Account. The Partner Terms may be modified from time to time, and the governing versions are incorporated by reference into these Terms of Service. Any term not defined in this section but defined in the Partner Terms assumes the meaning as defined in the Partner Terms. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO READ AND UNDERSTAND THE PARTNER TERMS BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN TERMS AND CONDITIONS CONCERNING YOUR THE BEANS, INC ACCOUNT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LIMITATIONS, REVERSALS, AND ARBITRATION PROVISIONS, AND YOUR RELEVANT RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES.

Communications

We may use your Personal Information to contact you with newsletters, marketing or promotional materials and other information that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving any, or all, of these communications from us by following the unsubscribe link or instructions provided in any email we send.

Compliance with Laws

We will disclose your Personal Information where required to do so by law or subpoena or if we believe that such action is necessary to comply with the law and the reasonable requests of law enforcement or to protect the security or integrity of our Service.

Links to Other Sites

Our Service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.

California Marketing

Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.84, California residents are entitled to ask us for a notice identifying the categories of personal information which we share with our affiliates and/or third parties for marketing purposes, and providing contact information for such affiliates and/or third parties. If you are a California resident and would like a copy of this notice, please submit a written request via email to help@thebeans.io.

Children's Privacy

Only persons age 18 or older have permission to access our Service. Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 13 (“Children”). We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from children under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and you learn that your Children have provided us with Personal Information, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Information from children under age 13 without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

Changes

This Privacy Policy is effective as of 10/2/2017 and will remain in effect except with respect to any changes in its provisions in the future, which will be in effect immediately after being posted on this page. We reserve the right to update or change our Privacy Policy at any time and you should check this Privacy Policy periodically. Your continued use of the Service after we post any modifications to the Privacy Policy on this page will constitute your acknowledgment of the modifications and your consent to abide and be bound by the modified Privacy Policy.

If we make any material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you either through the email address you have provided us, or by placing a prominent notice on our website. Defining what changes constitute a “material change” shall be done at our complete discretion. Restrictions and Monitoring of Our Partners.

Your use of the these Services may be subject to separate agreements you may enter into with other third party service providers that we may use to facilitate in the delivery of the Services. These third parties include, but are not limited to: Plaid, Twilio, or Facebook.Your use of the these Services may be subject to separate agreements you may enter into with other third party service providers that we may use to facilitate in the delivery of the Services. These third parties include, but are not limited to: Plaid, Twilio, or Facebook.

Contact

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at help@thebeans.io.