Legal

Privacy Policy

Ainsworth Payments LLC|Effective September 18, 2026

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

Ainsworth Payments LLC (“Ainsworth,” “we,” “us”) is an independent sales organization. We help businesses apply for merchant accounts with sponsor banks, acquirers, and payment processors. We also work with referral partners and agents who introduce merchants to us.

This policy explains how we handle personal information when you:

  • visit ainsworthpayments.com (the “Site”);
  • use the Ainsworth Merchant Portal at merchants.ainsworthpayments.com (the “Portal”);
  • apply for a merchant account through us, whether online, through a referral partner, or on paper;
  • apply to become a referral partner or agent, or work with us as one; or
  • contact us for any other reason.

This policy does not cover the sponsor banks, acquirers, processors, and other companies that receive your application. They handle your information under their own privacy policies.

We do not collect, process, or store payment card data. We are not part of the payment flow. Your customers’ card numbers never pass through our systems.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

On the Site. When you submit an application form on the Site, we collect your name, email address, phone number, company name, website, the industries you work in, your current processing situation, approximate monthly volume, how you heard about us, and anything you write in the notes field. Agent applicants also tell us their current ISO and typical deal flow.

In the Portal, when you apply for a merchant account.

  • Business information: legal name, DBA, addresses, tax ID number (EIN), entity type, website, a description of what you sell, fulfillment and e-commerce details, processing history, and expected volumes.
  • Information about owners, officers, and control persons: name, title, ownership percentage, home address, phone number, email address, date of birth, Social Security number, citizenship status, and government ID details such as a driver’s license or passport number, issuing state or country, and issue and expiration dates.
  • Bank account information: bank name, account holder name, routing number, and account number for the accounts used for deposits and fees, plus a bank contact if you provide one.
  • Documents: bank statements, processing statements, voided checks, formation documents, government-issued photo ID, and other documents a bank requests.
  • Signatures: your electronic or handwritten signature on the merchant application and related agreements.
  • Messages: messages you exchange with us in the Portal about open items on your application.

If you are a referral partner or agent. We collect your contact and company details, the agent agreement you sign, tax forms such as IRS Form W-9, and the information we need to pay you.

Information we receive from others

  • Referral partners and agents who submit an application on your behalf or help you complete one, including through our Partner Intake API.
  • Sponsor banks, acquirers, ISOs, and processors, who tell us the status and outcome of your application, ask follow-up questions, and send account setup details such as your merchant ID.
  • Payment gateways and processors, after your account is open. We receive daily totals for each merchant account: counts and dollar amounts of sales, refunds, chargebacks, authorizations, and declines. We receive totals only. We do not receive transaction-level records or cardholder data.
  • Your public website. We review the public pages of your business website to check them against bank and card-network requirements.
  • Our e-signature provider, which gives us a signing record: the signer’s name and email address, IP address, and the times a document was viewed and signed.

Information collected automatically

In the Portal we use two cookies, and both are essential. One keeps you signed in. The other is short-lived and remembers the email address you used to sign in, so you don’t have to retype it. We also keep security records: IP addresses used to limit repeated sign-in requests and to log downloads of secure document packages, and an audit trail of actions taken in each account. If the Portal hits an error, we receive a technical error report. We strip form contents, cookies, and request headers from those reports before they leave the Portal. When you sign a document inside the Portal, our e-signature provider may set its own cookies.

On the Site we use a cookieless analytics service. It counts page views and records general information such as the referring site, browser and device type, and approximate location derived from your IP address. It does not use cookies and does not follow you to other websites.

We do not use advertising cookies or ad trackers on the Site or in the Portal. Because we do not track you across third-party websites, the Site does not change its behavior in response to “Do Not Track” signals.

3. How we use information

We use personal information to:

  • evaluate, prepare, and package your merchant account application, and check it for completeness and for compliance with bank and card-network requirements;
  • submit your application to the sponsor banks, acquirers, and processors that fit your business, and respond to their follow-up requests;
  • verify identities and businesses, and help prevent fraud and other prohibited activity;
  • set up, service, and monitor merchant accounts, including watching refund and chargeback levels after an account is open;
  • operate and secure the Portal, including sign-in, audit logging, and troubleshooting;
  • communicate with you about your application, your account, or your inquiry;
  • manage our relationships with referral partners and agents, including calculating and paying compensation;
  • comply with laws, card-network rules, and our agreements with banks, and to enforce our agreements and resolve disputes; and
  • understand how the Site and Portal are used so we can improve them.

Automated tools. We use automated tools to read information from documents, to check applications for missing or inconsistent information, and to review merchant websites. Our staff review the results. People at Ainsworth decide whether and where to submit an application. The banks and processors that receive it make the approval decision.

4. How we share information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for targeted advertising.

We share personal information in these situations:

  • With sponsor banks, acquirers, ISOs, processors, and payment networks. This is the core of our service. When you ask us to place your application, we send the application, supporting documents, and owner information to one or more of these institutions. They may use it to verify your identity, obtain credit reports, screen against government sanctions lists and card-network databases, and make underwriting decisions. They act under their own privacy policies and agreements with you.
  • With your referral partner or agent. If a partner referred you to us, that partner can see the status of your application. A partner you work with may also view and help complete your application on your behalf. A partner cannot sign for you.
  • With service providers that work for us. These include providers of cloud hosting and databases, secure document storage, email delivery, electronic signature, document reading and automated review tools, error monitoring, analytics, security, and backup, as well as our professional advisers. They may use the information only to provide services to us.
  • With our sister company, QuickRefund. If you ask about or enroll in QuickRefund’s pre-dispute automation service, we share your business and contact information with QuickRefund so it can set up and support that service.
  • For legal reasons. We share information when we believe it is needed to comply with a law, regulation, legal process, or a request from a regulator, card network, or sponsor bank with audit rights. We also share it to protect the rights, property, or safety of Ainsworth, our customers, or others, and to detect and prevent fraud.
  • In a business transfer. If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that deal.
  • At your direction, or with your consent.

5. How long we keep information

We keep application information, documents, signed agreements, and the related audit trail for as long as we have a relationship with you. After that, we keep them for as long as needed to meet legal, tax, bank, and card-network record-keeping requirements, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements.

Technical records are kept for much shorter periods. Sign-in links are deleted about 30 days after they are used or expire. Records used to limit repeated sign-in requests are deleted within about a day. Routine notification and system records are deleted within 30 to 90 days. Download records for secure document packages are deleted after about 180 days. Encrypted backups are kept on a rolling schedule of up to 12 months, so deleted information can remain in backups until they expire.

6. How we protect information

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information. Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. The most sensitive fields, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, government ID numbers, tax ID numbers, and bank account numbers, get an additional layer of encryption inside our database. Documents are kept in private storage with no public links, and every download passes an access check. Access to the Portal is limited by role, and changes are recorded in an audit trail. When we deliver application packages to a bank, we use password-protected links that expire.

No system is perfectly secure. If you believe your Portal account or your information has been accessed without authorization, contact us right away.

7. Your choices and rights

  • Review and update. You can review and update most of your application information in the Portal. Contact us for anything you cannot change there.
  • Access, correction, and deletion. You may ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. We will verify your identity before acting and will respond as required by the laws that apply to us. We may need to keep some information to meet legal, bank, and card-network requirements. We also cannot recall information that a bank or processor has already received. Those institutions keep it under their own policies.
  • Email. Emails about your application or account are part of the service. If we send marketing email, it will include an unsubscribe link.
  • State privacy laws. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state law. We will honor those rights to the extent the law applies to us, and we will not treat you differently for exercising them.

To make a request, email us at the address under Contact us.

8. Children

The Site and Portal are for businesses and the adults who own and operate them. They are not directed to anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

9. Where information is processed

We operate in the United States, and the information we collect is stored and processed in the United States.

If you apply from Canada. Your personal information will be transferred to and stored in the United States, where it is subject to U.S. law and may be accessible to U.S. courts and authorities. We will also share it with the Canadian acquirer that receives your application. You may ask us for access to your personal information or ask us to correct it by contacting us at the address under Contact us.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here and change the effective date. If a change is material, we will also notify Portal users by email or with a notice in the Portal.

12. Contact us

Ainsworth Payments LLCinfo@ainsworthpayments.com