Privacy Statement BTC Direct
This is the Privacy Statement of BTC Direct Europe B.V. and its affiliated entities. In this statement we explain, among other things, why we collect and use personal data, which data this is and what rights you have when we process your personal data.
This Privacy Statement applies to all personal data that BTC Direct processes. BTC Direct Europe B.V. and its affiliated entity Churchwood Partners B.V. may process your personal data for the purposes described in this statement.
We process your data with due observance of the requirements of the relevant privacy legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and additional national regulations. This means that we store as little data as possible, we do not store your personal data longer than is legally permitted and no longer than is necessary for the purposes the data was collected for.
We do everything we can to protect your personal data as best as possible and to transparently communicate to you how we process it. Below you can read how we ensure this.
Personal data and legal basis
Personal data is any information about an identified or identifiable natural person. This includes, for example, your name, address, telephone number, date of birth or e-mail address. Customer or bank account numbers also fall under personal data. Personal data may only be processed if there is a basis for this.
BTC Direct processes personal data on the basis of various legal grounds. For example, under the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft), BTC Direct has some legal obligations for which the processing of personal data is necessary.We may also use certain information about you (name, account number, age, nationality, IP address, etc.) to detect and prevent fraudulent activities and criminal offences on our platform. For example, we investigate transactions that deviate from normal transaction patterns or transactions that have characteristics of money laundering or terrorist financing.
In addition, BTC Direct is subject to tax reporting obligations. As a crypto-asset service provider, we are required under the European rules on the automatic exchange of tax information on crypto-assets (Directive (EU) 2023/2226, also known as DAC8) and the Dutch legislation implementing them to collect, verify and annually report certain information about you and your transactions to the Dutch Tax Administration. This processing is necessary in order to comply with a legal obligation.
We also have to process certain personal data for the execution of the agreement you concluded with us for the provision of products and services.
Besides that, we process personal data when there is a legitimate interest for business operations, its optimization, and the achievement of commercial objectives provided that your interests do not outweigh ours. Examples of legitimate interests include: providing information and/or services to individuals who visit our website for marketing purposes (promotional campaigns, sending newsletters, displaying offers and information, sending user information, service messages or other electronic messages on the BTC Direct website and app), for development and analysis purposes to further develop and improve our website, app and services, for statistical analysis and market research to measure, analyse and improve (the effectiveness of) our marketing activities and interactions, internal reporting on our marketing activities so that various departments involved have more insight into the effectiveness and improvement opportunities of our marketing activities, sharing relevant information about (among other things) the crypto market, market volatility, important developments, or new applications with customers via Churchwood Partners B.V. Churchwood Partners B.V. processes personal data for informational purposes (such as crypto news and market developments). You can withdraw your consent at any time by unsubscribing from this mailing list.
Our legitimate interest also covers the use of automated and AI-supported tools that allow us to carry out our work more efficiently, more consistently and with greater care.
Finally, we process your personal data if you have given us permission. If you have given your permission, we or Churchwood Partners B.V. may send you marketing communications. Consent is obtained per entity. You can withdraw this consent at any time (per entity). However, this does not affect the lawfulness of the use of your data prior to withdrawal. If you wish to withdraw your consent, we will no longer process the personal data that we process on the basis of your consent and will delete this data.
Your personal data
We process your personal data in order to provide you with the best possible service and to comply with our legal obligations. The personal data we process includes:
- Identification data: we verify your identity at the time you register your account. This data may include your first name, last name, residential address, country, email address and identification documents.
- Account information: we collect and use your personal data during the customer relationship. This data may include information about your transaction profile and any other information that may be relevant to (continue to) use our services.
- Financial information: we need to process your transactions to enable the use of our service. For this, we process your payment details and collect and store information about your transactions and account status within the platform. In addition, we may ask you for proof of the origin of funds or your source of assets.
- Tax data: in order to comply with our tax reporting obligations, we record the country or countries in which you are a tax resident, your tax identification number, where and when you were born, and the transactions you have carried out per calendar year and per crypto-asset. We ask you to confirm this information yourself.
- Data used to prevent fraud and to strengthen the security of the platform: we process personal data in order to detect and prevent fraud and other criminal offences. We do this to protect the safety of our customers and of our platform. We may use scoring methods to assess and manage risks. These methods are supportive only. If the outcome could lead to a measure that affects you, a member of our staff always reviews it first.
- Data to prevent fraud and promote the security of the Platform: we process personal data to detect and prevent fraud and other criminal offences. We do this to protect the security of our customers and of our platform. We may use scoring methods to assess and manage risks.
- Data we use to communicate with you: we use your personal data to communicate with you about our services in various ways (for example, by phone, email, chat). When you contact us, we can use the data stored in your account to answer your questions or complaints. Telephone conversations may also be recorded.
- Data to improve our services and our platform: we may process your personal data to analyse performance and increase functionality, conduct market research, to investigate customer satisfaction, to fix errors, and to improve the usability and overall quality of our platform.
- Data used for direct marketing purposes: we may process your personal data to provide you with information that we think will be of interest to you. In all those cases, we will give you the opportunity to opt-out of our direct marketing activities.
- Data used for purposes for which you give us consent: we may ask your permission to process certain personal data for a specific purpose. You will always be informed in these cases.
Sharing with third parties
In certain cases we share your personal data with third parties. This happens, for example, when we use the services of other companies and individuals who perform certain activities on our behalf. These third parties are carefully selected and, if necessary, we enter into agreements with them to ensure that they provide at least the same level of protection as described in this Privacy Statement. Below you will find some cases in which your data can be shared with a third party:
- We use third parties with respect to IT services, such as hosting services or IT development services.
- We use third-party services to send automatic newsletters and to analyse customer engagement with our product.
- Our customer service department uses software to quickly and efficiently handle your questions.
- To process payments and transactions on our website we work with several payment services providers, crypto partners and banks.
- We use identity verification software to verify the legitimacy of your identification documents.
- We use automated customer screening and transaction monitoring to comply with our AML requirements.
- We use software suppliers whose services include automated or AI functionality, for example to organise, search or summarise data. These parties process your personal data solely on our instructions and under a data processing agreement, and may not use your data to train their own models.
- With your consent or on another valid legal basis, we may receive KYC data previously collected by another service provider, or share our KYC data with another service provider, so that an identity verification can be reused and you do not have to go through the entire KYC process again. For this purpose we may use a KYC service provider such as Sumsub.
- Our affiliated entity, Churchwood Partners B.V., can share relevant information about (among other things) the crypto market, market volatility, important developments and/or new applications.
In addition, we can disclose certain information to third parties when it is required by law, to enforce our terms of use and other agreements, to protect our rights, property or safety, and to protect our customers and others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations in the context of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
It can also be the case that we share your personal information with the government. This can happen if certain government institutions require this information for the performance of their duties. The police or judicial authorities may also need certain data in the event of fraud or other illegal activities. Finally, certain supervisory authorities have access to personal data in the context of an investigation.
Storage location and transfer outside the European Economic Area (EEA)
We store your data within the European Economic Area (EEA). However, some of the data we collect may be transferred or stored outside the EEA, for example because one of our external service providers is located there. In such case, we ensure that this is done securely, in accordance with this Privacy Statement and as permitted by applicable data protection legislation.
If we transfer personal data to countries outside the EEA, we will only transfer that personal data if we can make agreements with these parties about the secure processing of your data.
Storage period
We will not store your personal data for longer than it is necessary. However, for some data, there are retention periods established by law. For example, we keep data regarding financial administration for at least seven years and the Wwft has a retention period of five years. Personal data that we process on your consent will, in principle, not be retained after you have revoked your consent.
Cookies
We use cookies and similar technologies to analyse the use of our website and to improve our services.
Processing is carried out solely on the basis of your consent, which you can modify or withdraw at any time via your cookie settings. For more information about the cookies and technologies we use, as well as your available choices, please refer to your cookie settings.
Your rights
In line with the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the right to have your personal data removed. You have the right to access, correct and supplement your personal data. You also have the right to object to the processing of your personal data if it can no longer be used. In addition, you may have the right to have your personal data erased if they should no longer be used, to restrict its processing in certain circumstances and/or to request copies of the information kept in electronic form. We will assess your request in line with the General Data Protection Regulation. Would you like to do so? Please send an e-mail to: privacy@btcdirect.eu. In addition, users of this website have the right to submit a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
Please note that your right to erasure and your right to object do not apply to personal data that we are required to process or retain on the basis of a legal obligation, such as the data we process for our obligations under the Wwft and for our tax reporting obligations.
How to contact us
You can get in touch with us in different ways, namely via email, via our live chat, by phone and via the contact form on our website. Have you contacted us in one of these ways? Then we will store the data we need to process your request, such as your telephone number, e-mail address and name.
For more information:
BTC Direct Europe B.V.
Kerkenbos 1025, 6546 BB Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Changes
We might update this Privacy Statement from time to time. We advise you to check this statement regularly to stay informed about these changes.