The information in this page does not constitute legal advice. It only provides an overview of Adyen's compliance guidelines for financial products. For additional, non-legal clarifications about this content, reach out to your Adyen contact.
When you communicate Adyen's financial product offerings in your platform, you must comply with Adyen's guidelines for collateral material. In this context, we define collateral material as all communication that your users or prospective users receive in relation to the services that Adyen offers through your platform's interface.
Collateral materials include, but are not limited to:
- User interface pages of your platform, such as application flow, customer dashboard, and support pages
- Communication to your platform's users
- User statements
- Advertisements in any form of media
- Accompanying materials for card distribution, such as carriers, pin mailers, and proprietary packaging
- Proofs of physical or virtual cards
- App store description and screenshots of your platform's application
All your collateral material must comply with the general and product-specific guidelines. To ensure this, you need to submit your material to Adyen for review before publishing and distributing it.
General guidelines
Adyen's general guidelines for collateral materials are based on guidelines from regulatory entities. Expand the sections below for the details per topic.
Marketing of the products and services
For all applicable collateral materials, agreements, and disclosures, you must:
- Clearly and accurately present the benefits and limitations of the service.
- Accurately and adequately describe the Terms of Service.
- Present information that is reasonable and factual. If you make claims that require additional data to support them, show or disclose the source of this additional data.
- Adjust the material to the target customer.
You must not:
- Misrepresent the benefits and availability of the service, or present it in an incomplete way.
- Make claims, representations, or statements that are purposefully misleading to the target customer.
- Specify or imply that a credit check is performed to determine a user's eligibility for a product.
Testimonials
If you use testimonials or endorsements in collateral materials:
- The testimonials must be from real customers that use the service they are talking about.
- You must obtain written permission to use the testimonial or endorsement.
- If any money was paid to the user for the testimonial or endorsement, you must include a disclaimer stating this fact.
Required disclosures
For all applicable collateral materials, you must:
- Clearly disclose all limitations or conditions on the terms or availability of a service. This includes the countries or regions where the product is offered.
- Clearly and timely inform the users of any fees, penalties, or other costs that you may charge them. You must also explain the reasoning.
- Present any disclosures using a text format that is easy to read. Use a font size that is large enough to read and a font color that contrasts with the background. We recommend that you:
- Use an 8-point font for paper materials.
- Use a 10-point font for online materials.
- For footnotes, use a font size that is no more than 2 points smaller than the font size of the text body.
You must not:
- Present disclosures in footnotes.
- Present important disclosures surrounded by other, less important disclosures or information.
Contact information
Provide contact information of your business, for example: phone number, website address, or email address.
Forbidden content
Your collateral materials must not use language or images that include:
- Profanity
- Sexual or political subject matters
- Offensive racial or religious subject matters
- Defamatory language about other companies or financial services
Vocabulary to avoid
The following table shows examples of words you must avoid using in your collateral materials.
| Words to avoid | Reason |
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We must check a user's eligibility for using a product. If you use these or similar terms, you must clearly state the limitations, conditions, or restrictions on the offering. |
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Do not use this word if there are charges, costs, or fees for using the product. |
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Statements that include these or similar words can be exaggerated, unfounded, and hard to prove. |
Product specific guidelines
In addition to the general guidelines for collateral material, Adyen has specific guidelines for each financial product. Expand the sections below for the details per product.
Business accounts
The following table provides additional guidelines for collateral material related to the business account product.
| Guideline | Required for EU | Required for US | Required for UK |
|---|---|---|---|
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Do not use "bank" or "banking" in your website name or infer that your platform itself is the provider of the bank account. |
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Do not use "open a [YOUR_platform_NAME] bank account" or similar language. There must be a disclosure stating that your platform is not a bank and that the account is a business account provided by Adyen N.V. |
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Any FAQ must explain that the accounts are held at Adyen N.V. |
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Your fees or other terms and conditions relating to the account must be clearly disclosed. |
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Indicate that the account is not for personal, family, or household purposes. Do not use consumer use cases in marketing materials. |
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Disclose the USA PATRIOT Act before you collect an individual's personal information. |
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Provide the following disclosure:In the EU, Adyen N.V. is registered with the Dutch deposit guarantee scheme register and eligible funds up to EUR 100,000 are legally protected by the Dutch deposit guarantee scheme. |
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Disclose that the account is not FDIC insured, using the approved statement below:Adyen Business Bank Accounts in the United States are not insured by the FDIC and are not guaranteed by the Federal Government. If Adyen places deposits in a cash sweep program utilizing FDIC-insured depository institutions, such deposits may be covered by FDIC insurance up to applicable limits in accordance with the FDIC rules, including those relevant to the aggregation of multiple accounts. |
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Issuing
The following table provides additional guidelines for collateral material related to the Issuing product.
| Guideline | Required for EU | Required for US | Required for UK |
|---|---|---|---|
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The text used for the name of your card program and the text used for the name of the card scheme must be the same size. |
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The language must not suggest that the card is related to a bank or bank account. |
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When you show or portray a scheme's logo or brand mark, you must show an issuing statement. Depending on the scheme and the location of your program, you can use the following statements : EU:
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Physical and virtual cards must comply with any scheme standards regarding required elements, prohibited elements, and card images. See the brand guidelines for more details. |
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When using cards in any marketing material or advertisements, you must comply with the scheme and card image standards. See the brand guidelines for more details. |
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Disclose the USA Patriot Act before you collect an individual's personal information. |
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For Prepaid Card Programs: DO Use language promoting the benefits of the card, for example:
Using phrases such as:
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For Business Card Programs: DO Indicate that the card can be used for business or commercial needs, but cannot be used for personal, family, or household purposes. AVOID Phrases like:
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Collateral material must truthfully reflect the scope of the card program and specifications agreed upon in the Card Service Agreement. |
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Any use of the Visa and Mastercard brand marks must not degrade, devalue, denigrate, or cause injury or damage to the schemes or marks in any way. |
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Do not use "bank" or "banking" in your website name. |
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If your platform uses the word "bank" or "banking" in any materials, you must include a disclosure stating that the card program is not bank-related and that the program is provided by Adyen. |
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Guidelines for brand marks
Each card scheme has guidelines for the brand marks that you use when offering their products.
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Branding guidelines for Visa
Visa defines marks as any word, name, design, symbol, distinctive sign, animation, sound, haptic, other designation, or any combination thereof, that Visa adopts to identify its goods or services.
See the Visa Product Brand Standards for detailed branding guidelines.
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Branding guidelines for Mastercard
Mastercard defines marks as the names, logos, sounds, animations, haptics, visual depictions, trade names, logotypes, trademarks, service marks, trade designations, and other designations, symbols, and marks that Mastercard owns, manages, licenses, or otherwise controls and makes available for use by Adyen and other authorized entities in accordance with a license.
See the Mastercard Branding Requirements for detailed branding guidelines.
Capital
The following tables provide additional guidelines for collateral material related to the Capital product as used either for business loans or cash advances.
Business loans
| Guideline | Required for EU | Required for US | Required for UK |
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Disclose that Capital is provided by Adyen N.V. |
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Cash advances
| Guideline | Required for EU | Required for US | Required for UK |
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Do not misrepresent a cash advance as a loan. |
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Do not make reference or compare to other loan products or products that have a credit element. |
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Disclose that Capital is provided by Adyen N.V. |
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Submit your material to Adyen
Before publishing and distributing collateral material, you must:
- Submit the material to Adyen for review and pre-approval.
- Apply any changes that Adyen asks for.
- Re-submit the material to Adyen for approval.
If later changes do not impact the description or marketing of the Adyen product or service content, you do not need to re-submit the material for approval. Similarly, you can use approved content in multiple collateral materials.