Notice to California Residents

Last Modified: 2/29/2022

Version: 1.1

This Notice to California Residents (“ CA Notice”) let's California residents know how Merit International, Inc. (“Company,” “us,” or “we”) may collect, use, and share your Personal Information and the choices that are available to California residents who may use our Services, Site, or interact with us. This CA Notice is incorporated in our Company’s Privacy Notice which is available at https://www.merits.com/legal/privacy-notice (“Privacy Notice”), but only applies to individuals that are protected by and afforded rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) and California Civil Code Section 1798.83, the California Shine the Light law. If you have any questions about this CA Notice or our Privacy Notice, please reach out to us at privacy@merits.com.

Under California Civil Code Sections 1798.83-1798.94, if you are a California resident and your business relationship with our Company is primarily for personal, family or household purposes, you may request certain data regarding our disclosure, if any, of Personal Information to third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email message to privacy@merits.com with "Request for California Privacy Information" in the subject line of your email. You may make such a request up to once per calendar year. If applicable, we will provide you, by email, a list of the categories of Personal Information disclosed to third parties for their direct marketing purposes over the last 12 months, along with the third parties’ names and addresses. Please note that not all Personal Information sharing is covered by Section 1798.83-84’s requirements.

Under the CCPA, California residents are entitled to additional rights and protections as it relates to data privacy. This CA Notice serves to provide such additional information about our processing of your Personal Information.

Categories of Information We Collect

As defined within our Privacy Notice, “Personal Information,” means any information relating to you in identified or identifiable form such as your name, your email address, or your location data.

Under the CCPA, Personal Information means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular California resident or household.

Over the past twelve months, our Company may have collected the following categories of Personal Information about you from our Site, Services, third parties, Organizations, or other interactions you may have had with our Company:

Identifiers (such as your name, address, email address, and IP address);
Customer records information (such as your signature, identification number, financial information, and employment information);
Legally protected characteristics (such as age, citizenship, sex, veteran or military status);
Financial data (such as billing information);
Internet or other network or device activity (such as browsing history or app usage);
Location information (inferred from your IP address or location based services);
Professional or employment-related data (such as business affiliation, job title, and your work contact details); and
Other information that identifies or can be reasonably associated with you.

All of the categories of Personal Information we collect about you (defined below) come from the following categories of sources:

Information that you choose to give to us;
Information from Organizations that we work with to issue Merits to you;
Information that is automatically collected from you;
Information that we receive from apps and developers; and
Information that we receive from third parties.

Purpose of Collection

We use your Personal Information for a variety of purposes, such as:

To provide your with our Services;
To issue an Organization’s Merits to you;
To verify your identity so you can share your Merits with third parties;
To communicate with & send you communications about our Services, your Merits, and promotional offers (if you would like to modify your email notifications, please reach out to help@merits.com or use the unsubscribe link in the email to opt-out);
Engaging in transactions with Authorized Users;
Improving our Site and/or our Services;
Billing, account management, and other administrative matters;
Enforcing our Terms of Services and other Usage Policies;
To investigate and help prevent security issues and abuse; and
As required by applicable law, legal process, or regulation.

Who We Share Your Personal Information With and Why

We may share your Personal Information with third parties who perform services on our behalf for specific business purposes (such as providing hosting or maintenance services, customer relationship management, database management, processing payments, or supporting/improving the features of our Site or the Service). When we share information with third parties for a business purpose, we enter into a contractual agreement that describes the purpose and requires that the recipient keeps the information confidential and does not use it for any purpose other than performance of the contract. Over the past twelve months, we have disclosed the following categories of Personal Information for a business purpose:

Identifiers;
Customer records information;
Legally protected characteristics;
Commercial information;
Internet or other similar network activity; and
Professional or employment-related data.

We disclose your Personal Information for a business purpose for the following categories of third parties:

Our customers i.e. Organizations that we deliver our Services to;
Service providers;
Third parties to whom you, your agents, or Organizations authorize us to disclose your Personal Information to in connection with our Services.

Over the last twelve months, we have not sold any Personal Information.

Additional information about these third-party services providers can be found by reviewing our sub-processors at https://www.merits.com/legal/sub-processors. We may engage third-parties for analytics activities, please review our Privacy Notice at https://www.merits.com/legal/privacy-notice for more information about our analytics practices.

Your Rights as a California Resident

As a California resident, you have the right to:

Request and receive disclosure of our information collection practices over the past twelve months, including the categories of Personal Information we collect, the categories of sources of such information, our business purpose for collecting or sharing such information, and the categories of third parties with whom we share such information;
Request and receive a copy of the specific Personal Information we have collected about you during the prior twelve months;
Request that we delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your Personal Information subject to certain exceptions;
Request and receive disclosure of our information sharing practices over the past twelve months, including a list of the categories of Personal Information sold to third-party recipients that we disclosed for business purposes; and
Request that we do not sell your Personal Information.

How to Exercise Your Rights

As a California resident, you have rights related to our organization’s collection, disclosure, and use of your Personal Information over the past 12 months. We have created this CA Notice to help provide you pertinent information about our privacy practices. To exercise your rights under CCPA, please send an email to privacy@merits.com with “Request for California Privacy Information” in the subject line of your email or call us at 1-833-4MERITS.

Once we receive your request, we will ask you for some additional information to ensure that we can verify your identity and then we will respond to your request within a reasonable amount of time. We aim to respond to verifiable consumer requests within 45 days of receipt. If we need more time (no more than 90 days), we will inform you of the extension via email. If you have an account with us, we will reply back to the email address associated with your account. If you do not have an account with us, we will respond to the email address that we received from you when you sent in your request. Please be mindful that you can only submit two requests within a 12-month period.

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights under the CCPA.

Changes to this CA Notice

We reserve the right to amend this CA Notice at our discretion at any time. If this CA Notice applies to you, you are responsible for periodically visiting our Site, our Privacy Notice, and this CA Notice to check for any changes. The date that this CA Notice was last updated is identified at the top of this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or comments about this CA Notice, our Privacy Notice, or the ways in which we collect and use your Personal Information, your choices and your rights, please reach out to us at privacy@merits.com.