Privacy policy
This policy applies to information that the companies in the World First group may collect about visitors to our website, companies and individuals who register for our services and continue to make use of our services and any other person who corresponds with us over the phone or in writing.
Our aim is to give you reassurance that any personal information will be used fairly and only for the purposes for which it was collected.
Please review this Privacy Policy prior to registering an account and providing us with your personal information. Client confidentiality is our main concern and through good practices we strive to ensure that:
- only information which is necessary for adherence to the regulations and/or improvement of our service is collected;
- personal information is collected fairly; and
- personal information is stored securely.
If you have any further questions about data protection with Worldfirst please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your dedicated dealer and we will do our level best to alleviate any of your concerns.
Information you provide to us
To open an account or use WorldFirst services, you will be asked to provide identifying information about yourself (e.g. name, address, and email address), your company and documents to verify the information provided.
In order to make payments, you will be asked to provide the information required to facilitate the payment – e.g. beneficiary information, bank account details and source of funds.
Through the course of our business relationship, we may ask for additional evidence in order for us to comply with our legal obligations – e.g. anti-money laundering regulations. These can include, but are not limited to, documents required to verify any information provided or evidence of source of funds.
Information we collect when you use our website or app
Our website uses cookies to provide you with a better experience on our website, for fraud prevention and to provide internet based advertisements. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them, please see our full Cookie policy.
The WorldFirst user community participants will have their sessions recorded to allow us to capture the feedback to improve our services and help with the development of new products. This will always be based on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
For the detection and prevention of fraud and cyber-crime, we will collect information, including session, device and IP address to help ascertain the legitimacy of the account login.
Public information
For non-registered users, we may contact you using publically available information or information from third parties, which you have consented to being shared, to let you know about products that could be relevant for your business.
Transactional information
Once your account is fully set up and you begin to transact with us we will collect, process and store your WorldFirst financial and transactional information. This information includes the amount, currency, type of transaction, source of funds, exchange rate, recipient name and bank details.
Information about you that we receive from third parties
To protect ourselves and our customers against fraud, we verify the information you provide with anti-fraud agencies and electronic identity verification services. In the course of verification, we receive and process information about you from such services.
Your communications with us
All calls are recorded and correspondence retained for the purposes of quality control and training, as evidence of transactions and to fulfil regulation requirements. Any information you disclose to us will be held on these recordings.
Individuals who are not registered users of WorldFirst
Connected parties
WorldFirst will collect information about connected parties to a WorldFirst client during the course of the business relationship from the client to comply with our legal obligations - e.g. directors or shareholders of a company.
Where customers provide this information, they are required to bring this Privacy Notice to the attention of the individuals concerned.
Beneficiaries
WorldFirst will collect information required to be able to send a payment to an individual, who may not be a WorldFirst client. This will include name and bank account details that are required by regulations to process the payment.
We use your personal information to allow us to process your registration, process any operations you may book through us and to maintain the accuracy of information on your account.
Registration and administration
We use your information to enable you to register with us. Once you have an account with us we will use your details to contact you and to reply to any queries or requests. We may use your information in the administration of your account, which includes us contacting you in order to update your account details (this assists us with keeping our records as up to date as possible) or in order to notify you of changes or improvements to our products or services that may affect our service to you.
Our products and services
We use your information in order to supply our products and services to you and to meet our contractual obligations to you. Additionally we may need to notify you of any changes relating to our products and services.
Prevention and detection of crime
WorldFirst is subject to strict anti-money laundering regulations which requires us to undertake due diligence on our customers. This may include the use of electronic verification tools. Where electronic verification is not possible we will require copies of identification documents and proof of address.
We may need to pass your information on to Governmental departments, regulatory bodies, the police/law enforcement agencies or to a court of law. This would be done, for example, to assist in the prevention of a crime (money laundering/fraud), to meet legal requirements or for other lawful purposes.
Marketing
We may use your information to keep you up to date concerning our products and services.
Client surveys help us to improve our services. We may send you emails inviting you to participate in surveys or asking for feedback on our services. The information may be shared with affiliated third parties in aggregate form only.
We may market our services to you through social media platforms using information you provide to us when you interact on our website or sign up for our services. We may pass this information onto third parties, such as Facebook, for this purpose. Please contact us if you do not want to receive these sorts of adverts by emailing marketing@worldfirst.com.
In case you joined our User Panel and aren't a client, you'll only receive communication regarding the Panel and will always have the option to unsubscribe.
Monitoring
We record all our telephone calls for security and training purposes.
We store all data electronically and physically in a secure manner to protect its confidentiality, integrity and availability.. Data is stored on servers which are protected by actively maintained firewalls. We make use of up-to-date anti-virus software and the servers have restricted physical access. We use world leading cloud providers to store all data within the European Union.
If you provide paper based documentation for the purpose of identity verification these will be stored electronically and the original will be destroyed securely or returned to you.
Transmission of data on the internet can never be completely secure. We do not and cannot guarantee security of information collected or transmitted electronically however, we take reasonable care to safeguard your personal information.
WorldFirst Group Companies
Within WorldFirst our systems are accessible to all of our group companies to ensure that your accounts are available to be serviced following the sun, including:
- World First UK Ltd (UK)
- World First Netherlands B.V. (EU)
- World First Pty Ltd (Australia)
- World First Asia PTE Ltd (Singapore)
- World First Japan K.K (Japan)
- World First Asia Ltd (China - Hong Kong)
We also share information with other companies within our corporate group. We will only share information in accordance with data protection laws and subject to strict controls on security and accessibility. The way information is accessed, processed and transmitted and our level of security remains consistent across the group.
Regulators
We may need to share your information with regulators or with law enforcement agencies.
Banking Partners
WorldFirst uses various banking partners around the world to ensure your payment can get to where it needs to go as quickly as possible. When you transact with WorldFirst, we may need to share your information with payment providers or banking partners outside of the EEA, such as intermediary or beneficiary banks – e.g. if you ask us to make a USD payment to China - Hong Kong the funds may be cleared through an intermediary bank in the US before reaching China - Hong Kong.
For transparency, verification and legal requirements, we are required to include certain information on the payment which could include:
- Your name
- Your date of birth
- Your address
- Beneficiary details
- Your national identity reference (e.g. passport)
Other Parties
We may share your information with trusted companies providing services to us under confidentiality agreements or to companies that assist us in meeting our obligations to you and our regulators e.g. the processing of card transactions or the verification of documentation. These companies do not have any rights to market other services with you.
These trusted companies may be outside your country of residence or the WorldFirst entity you transact with (and if you are an EEA resident, possibly outside of the EEA). WorldFirst will always ensure that the company is based in a country with adequate data protections under their law, or that we impose contractual obligations or require them to be certified with a framework of protection deemed suitable by WorldFirst. WorldFirst performs due diligence to ensure third parties are compliant with applicable legal and contractual requirements.
If you are a seller on an e-commerce platform, we may share information with those e-commerce platforms to help detect and prevent fraud, money laundering, dealing in counterfeit goods and other criminal or abusive behaviour. We provide information to allow such platforms to identify WorldFirst accounts used by their sellers, and then, for these specific accounts, provide information about the account holder and its associated persons, payments out of the account, other accounts linked to that account, and indications of suspicious activity on the account.
Also, we may share your information with any person acting on your behalf provided that you have given us the permission to do so.
You have the right to request details of the information we hold about you, a description of that data, the purposes for which it is being used and any parties with which we share your information.
We may charge you an administration fee for providing this information. Your request should be made in writing to the Data Protection Team at privacy@worldfirst.com for further information.
WorldFirst will only retain your information for as long as is necessary but usually no more than 6 years after the end of the business relationship.
We may amend this policy from time to time. If we make any substantial changes to the way we use your personal information we will notify you by posting a prominent notice on our website.