Privacy Policy

The purpose of this Policy is to inform you about how African Bank processes your personal information by, inter alia, collecting or collating, receiving, recording, storing, updating, distributing, erasing or destroying, disclosing and/or generally using your personal information for banking services related purposes.

• African Bank strives to observe, and comply with, its obligations under POPIA as well as internationally accepted information protection principles, practices and guidelines when it processes your personal information.
• This Privacy Policy applies to personal information collected by African Bank in connection your interactions with African Bank and/or any of the Services offered by African Bank. This includes personal information collected from you in any of the following ways –
  • when you visit any of our Branches, interact with our Call Centre, and provide your personal information to African Bank;
  • when you use any Services and provide us with any of your personal information in connection therewith; and/or
  • when you access our Website.
    • This Privacy Policy does not apply to the information practices of Third-Party companies (including, without limitation, their websites, platforms and/or applications) which we do not own or control; or individuals that African Bank does not manage or employ. These Third-Party sites may have their own privacy policies and terms and conditions and we encourage you to read them before using those Third-Party sites.
    • Information that does not identify you, such as anonymous or aggregated data, is not covered by this Privacy Policy. We may collect, use and disclose such information in order to evaluate and improve our service offerings; communicate to our service providers, advertisers and affiliates, or for other purposes without limitation. For example, African Bank gathers and analyses information of the visitors to its Website. It then uses this information to monitor which areas of the Website are most frequently visited, which assists African Bank in continuing to develop a value-added service. This information is gathered so that any individual’s personal information, behaviour or patterns cannot be identified.
    • African Bank will always (i) collect your personal information in a fair, lawful and reasonable manner to ensure that it protects your privacy; and (ii) have a lawful basis for processing your personal information.
    • To enable African Bank to service your requirements and inform you of new products and services, African Bank may need to collect personal or other information that you have submitted to us via our Branches, the Services, or the Website.
    • Should you decide to sign up or register to use any of our Services, whether you do so at one of our Branches or via our Call Centre, or visit our Website, we may require you to provide us with personal information which includes (but is not limited to) –
      • your name and surname;
      • your bank statements and other financial statements, identity documents, proof of residence documentation, physical address, postal address, tax certificate (including tax number);
      • your email address;
      • your mobile number;
      • your identity number; and
      • your date of birth.
    • When you provide us with your personal information, whether you do so via our Website or through any of our Branches, you are required to provide us with complete and accurate information about yourself. By doing so, you warrant that the information provided is correct. Also, where you give us personal information about another person, you warrant that you have that person's express permission to give us their personal information and that person has given their express consent to us processing their personal information (or where that person is a child, you have that person's parent or legal guardian's express permission to give us their personal information and that person's parent or legal guardian has given their express consent to us processing the person's (i.e. the child's) personal information). In the event that any of the personal information you provide to us changes, you shall notify us of such changes as soon as reasonably possible.
    • You agree that African Bank may make enquiries to confirm and verify any information provided by you in any application form.
    • You may choose to provide additional personal information to us, in which event you agree to provide accurate and current information, and not to impersonate or misrepresent any person or entity or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with anyone or anything.
    • African Bank collects personal information directly from you and/or from Third-Parties, and where African Bank obtains personal information from Third-Parties who collect such information directly from you, African Bank will ensure that it obtains your express consent to do so or will do so as otherwise permitted under POPIA or as otherwise permitted by applicable laws. Examples of Third-Parties from whom African Bank may collect your personal information include –
      • other African Bank entities;
      • our retail and/or online partners in our customer loyalty rewards programmes;
      • regulatory bodies, industry ombudsmen, government departments, and local and international tax authorities;
      • other banks with whom we are required to transact in the ordinary course of business;
      • law enforcement bodies;
      • credit reference agencies;
      • fraud prevention agencies;
      • attorneys, tracing agents, debt collectors, and other persons that assist with the enforcement of contracts that we may conclude with you (such as credit agreements);
      • trustees, executors or curators appointed by a court of law;
      • payment processing service providers, banks and other persons that assist with the processing of your payment instructions, such as card scheme providers (including VISA and MasterCard);
      • companies providing services to African Bank; and
    where African Bank makes use of publicly available sources of information.

• Should African Bank need to collect and process your personal information for any reason including to fulfil a legal obligation (such as in-relation to anti-money laundering) or to perform an obligation under the terms of a contract that African Bank may have with you, and you fail to provide the personal information when requested, we may be unable to perform our obligations under the applicable law or the contract we have or are attempting to enter into with you.
• In such a case, African Bank may have to decline to provide you with the relevant Services, and you will be notified where this is the case.

• African Bank acknowledges that it is not allowed to process special personal information unless it is generally or specifically authorised to do so under POPIA.
• African Bank further acknowledges that it may not generally process any personal information concerning a child and will only do so where it has obtained the consent of the parent or guardian of that child or where it is permitted to do so in accordance with applicable laws.

• African Bank will only process your personal information for a specific, lawful and clear purpose (or for specific, lawful and clear purposes).
• It will ensure that there is a legal basis for the processing of any personal information. Further, African Bank will ensure that processing will relate only to the purpose for and of which you have been made aware (and where relevant, consented to) and will not process any personal information for any other purpose(s).
• Subject to clause 4 below, we will not, without your express consent or any other legal basis for processing your personal information –
  • use your personal information for any purpose other than for the following purposes:
    • to provide services, products and functionalities to you (including access to African Bank products and value-added services);
    • opening and managing your account and profile for any of our Services;
    • complying with our legal obligations pertaining to financial crimes, including the monitoring and enforcement of anti-money laundering and financing of terrorist activities (and related activities) under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act No. 38 of 2001;
    • to comply with our regulatory and risk and compliance requirements (including directives, guidelines, and rules issued by regulatory bodies such as the South African Reserve Bank);
    • to identify you and verify your physical address, employment status, source of income, and other similar information;
    • to comply with codes of conduct and industry agreements;
    • to provide income tax-related information to the South African Revenue Service (SARS);
    • to conduct affordability assessments, credit assessments (i.e. assessing whether you qualify for credit, or an increase or decrease of your credit limit) and credit scoring;
    • to enforce any contract that we have concluded with you (such as a credit agreement), when you are in default or in breach of the terms and conditions of such contract. Enforcement actions may include tracing you through the use of a tracing agent and/or instituting legal proceedings against you;
    • investigating and detecting any unlawful activities in relation to your account linked to any of the Services. Examples of such unlawful activities include fraudulent conduct and money-laundering activities. This may include the processing of special personal information, such as alleged criminal behaviour on your part or the supply by you of false/fraudulent information when opening an account with us;
    • to comply with auditing and reporting requirements, as well as related information requests;
    • to process payment instructions (such as debit orders) and instruction received via payment devices (such as debit cards);
    • analysing information in order to identify new trends and develop new products and services;
    • to contact you regarding current or new competitions and other promotional products or rewards or any other goods offered by us or any of our divisions and/or partners (unless you have not agreed to receive marketing material from African Bank);
    • to evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing activities;
    • to conduct research, training and statistical analysis in order to improve our services; and
    • in order to receive services from any of African Bank's service providers or agents, whether such service providers or agents are situated within or outside of the borders of South Africa; or
  • disclose your personal information to any Third Party other than for the purposes as set out below:
    • to our employees and/or third party service providers who assist us to interact with you via any of our platforms or Services, email or any other method, in relation to your account or profile linked to any of our Services, and thus need to know your personal information in order to assist us to communicate with you properly and efficiently;
    • to our divisions and/or partners (including their employees and/or third party service providers) in order for them to interact directly with you via email or any other method for purposes of sending you marketing material regarding any current or new goods or services, new features, special offers or promotional items offered by them (unless you have not agreed to receive marketing material from African Bank);
    • to law enforcement, government officials, credit bureaux, fraud detection agencies or other third parties when we believe in good faith that the disclosure of personal information is necessary to prevent physical harm or financial loss, to report or support the investigation into suspected illegal activity, or to investigate violations of this Privacy Policy; and
    • to our service providers (under contract with us) who help with parts of our business operations (fraud prevention, marketing, technology services etc.). However, our contracts dictate that these service providers may only use your information in connection with the services they perform for us and not for their own benefit.

We may use or disclose your personal information if such use or disclosure is required in order to comply with any applicable law, subpoena, order of court or legal process served on us, or to protect and defend our rights or property. In the event of fraudulent activity, African Bank is entitled to disclose relevant personal information for criminal investigation

• We will ensure that all of our employees, Third Party service providers, divisions and partners (including their employees and third-party service providers) having access to your personal information are bound by appropriate and legally binding confidentiality obligations in relation to your personal information.
• African Bank is committed to providing secure online services. As such, African Bank protects the transmission of your personal information, when completing online application forms, by way of encryption. African Bank's Internet servers are protected by firewalls and intrusion detection systems. Access to information on these servers is restricted to authorised personnel only.
• African Bank will –
  • treat your personal information as strictly confidential, save where we are entitled to share it as set out in this Privacy Policy;
  • take appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that your personal information is kept secure and is protected against unauthorised or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage, alteration, disclosure or access;
  • provide you with access to your personal information to view and/or update personal details;
  • promptly notify you and the Information Regulator in writing if we become aware of any unauthorised use, disclosure or processing of your personal information;
  • provide you with reasonable evidence of our compliance with our obligations under this Privacy Policy on reasonable notice and request; and
  • upon your request, promptly return or destroy any and all of your personal information in our possession or control, save for that which we are legally obliged to retain.

• Personal information that we collect from you is stored in a secure environment and is not available to any person outside African Bank (except as set out in this Privacy Policy).
• We will not keep your personal information longer than the period for which it was originally needed, unless we are required by law to do so, or you consent to us keeping such information for a longer period.
• In terms of POPIA, African Bank may retain personal information for longer periods for statistical, historical or research purposes, and should this occur, African Bank will ensure that (i) it has implemented appropriate security measures to mitigate the risk of such personal information being breached and generally to ensure that such personal information will continue to be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the applicable laws; (ii) personal information it processes is relevant and minimal in relation to those purposes; and (iii) it does not publish any personal information which has been used for historical, statistical or research purposes in a manner which identifies you.
• Once the purpose for which the personal information was initially collected and processed no longer applies or becomes obsolete, African Bank will ensure that the personal information is deleted, destroyed or de-identified sufficiently so that a person cannot re-identify such personal information.
• African Bank will never sell or make your personal information available to any Third Party other than as provided for in this Privacy Policy.

• You can request, in writing, to review any personal information that African Bank holds about you, including personal information that African Bank has collected, utilised or disclosed.
• African Bank may request you to provide sufficient identification to permit access to, or provide information regarding the existence, use or disclosure of your personal information. Any such identifying information shall only be used for the purpose of facilitating access to or information regarding the personal information.
• African Bank will provide you with any such personal information to the extent required by applicable law and any of African Bank's policies and procedures which apply in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act No. 2 of 2000 ("PAIA").
• You can challenge the accuracy or completeness of your personal information in African Bank's records at any time in accordance with the process set out in African Bank's PAIA Manual for accessing information.
• If you successfully demonstrate that your personal information in our records is inaccurate or incomplete, African Bank will ensure that such personal information is amended or deleted as required (including by any Third Parties).

• African Bank may disclose personal information to Third-Parties and will enter into written agreements with such Third-Parties to ensure that they process any personal information in accordance with the provisions of this Privacy Policy and Examples of such Third Parties include –
  • those parties listed in paragraphs 6.7 and 9.3.2 above;
  • the South African Revenue Service (SARS) (to which we may disclose income tax-related information);
  • persons to whom we have ceded our rights or delegated our obligations, such as in the context of a sale of any or all of African Bank's business; and
  • courts of law or tribunals (that require the personal information to adjudicate referrals, actions or applications).
• African Bank notes that such Third Parties may assist African Bank with the purposes listed in paragraph 9 above – for example, service providers may be used, inter alia, to: provide telephone support, assist in the provision of IT or marketing products or services, notifying you of any pertinent information concerning African Bank, the Services and/or for data storage.
• African Bank will only disclose your personal information to Third Parties with your consent or, if African Bank is unable to rely on your consent to do so for any reason whatsoever, as otherwise permitted by applicable laws.
• Further, African Bank may also send personal information to a foreign jurisdiction outside of the Republic of South Africa in order to achieve the purpose(s) for which the personal information was collected and processed, including for processing and storage by Third-Party service providers.
• When personal information is transferred to a jurisdiction outside of the Republic of South Africa, African Bank will obtain the necessary consent to transfer the personal information to such foreign jurisdiction or may transfer the personal information without the necessary consent where African Bank is permitted to do so in accordance with the applicable laws.
• You should also take note that the processing of personal information in a foreign jurisdiction may be subject to the laws of the country in which the personal information is held, and may be subject to disclosure to the governments, courts of law, enforcement or regulatory agencies of such other country, pursuant to the laws of such country.

• Whilst we will do all things reasonably necessary to protect your rights of privacy, we cannot guarantee or accept any liability whatsoever for unauthorised or unlawful disclosures of your personal information, whilst in our possession, made by third parties who are not subject to our control, unless such disclosure is as a result of our gross negligence or fraud.
• If you disclose your personal information to a third party, such as an entity which operates a website linked to any of our Services or Website or anyone other than African Bank, African Bank shall not be liable for any loss or damage, howsoever arising, suffered by you as a result of the disclosure of such information to the third party. This is because we do not regulate or control how that third party uses your personal information. You should always ensure that you read the privacy policy of any third party.

African Bank reserves the right to amend this Privacy Policy at any time. All amendments to this Privacy Policy will become effective when the updated version is posted on the Website. Unless otherwise stated, the current version viewed on the Website shall supersede and replace all previous versions of this Privacy Policy.

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should  be addressed to [email protected].