Privacy Policy & Cookie Information

1. Who We Are

Alternative Payment Methods is operated by Competitive LLC. When this policy says "we," "us," or "our," we mean Competitive LLC. This website is an informational publisher covering payment methods, payment providers, and payment technology for businesses and consumers researching modern payments.

2. What Information We Collect

APM does not require account registration, and we do not process financial transactions. We collect only the following categories of information:

• Contact form submissions — your name, email address, subject, and message, submitted voluntarily through the form at /contact/.
• Web analytics — when you consent to analytics cookies, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) collects: anonymized IP address (truncated), page views, referrer URL, browser type and version, operating system, device type, approximate geographic region (city level, derived from anonymized IP), and interaction events (e.g. scroll depth). This data is collected only after you explicitly accept analytics via the cookie consent banner.
• Advertising-related data — this site participates in Google AdSense. When you consent to advertising cookies via the cookie consent banner, Google may set advertising cookies (see Section 5.4) and use your interaction data (such as cookie IDs, approximate region derived from IP, and which ads were shown) to serve and measure ads, subject to Google's personalization controls. Ads are shown whether or not you consent; personalized ads appear only after consent, while rejected users see non-personalized limited ads in line with Google's Consent Mode v2 limited-ads policy.
• Server logs — our hosting provider (Cloudflare Pages) automatically records your IP address, request timestamps, browser user agent, and requested URL in server access logs for security and operational purposes. These logs are retained by Cloudflare and are not processed by us for analytics purposes.

We do not collect: names, phone numbers, payment card data, government-issued identifiers, precise location data, biometric data, or health information. We do not use device fingerprinting.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the information described above for the following purposes only:

• Responding to your inquiries — contact form submissions are processed solely to reply to your message. We do not add you to any mailing list or marketing funnel from contact form submissions.
• Understanding and improving our content — GA4 analytics data helps us understand which pages are most useful, how readers find our content, and where our coverage has gaps. This improves the quality and relevance of our guides.
• Serving and measuring ads — Google AdSense serves ads on this site and measures ad performance. When you consent to advertising cookies, ads may be personalized based on your prior activity, as described in Section 5.4. When you do not consent, Google serves non-personalized limited ads (no advertising cookies, no ad personalization based on prior activity).
• Security and abuse prevention — server logs help us identify and block malicious traffic, DDoS attacks, and spam.

We do not use your information for profiling outside of ad personalization explicitly described in this policy, or for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects about you.

4. Legal Bases for Processing

If you are in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, or any jurisdiction that requires a lawful basis for processing personal data, we rely on the following:

• Consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)) — for all analytics cookies and GA4 data collection, and for all advertising cookies and personalized-ad serving. You must click "Accept" in the cookie consent banner before analytics are activated or personalized ads are served. You may withdraw consent at any time via the "Your Privacy Choices" link in the footer or by clearing your cookies. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.
• Legitimate interest (GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)) — for server logs (security and operational purposes), and for responding to contact form submissions (you initiated the communication and have a reasonable expectation of a response).

If you are not in the EEA or UK, we process the same information on the basis of your implied consent by using the site and submitting forms.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

This section describes the cookies we use and what they do.

5.1 Analytics cookies (Google Analytics 4)

When you accept analytics in the Google consent management dialog, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) sets the following cookies:

• _ga — stores a unique identifier to distinguish visitors. Expires after 13 months. Set by google-analytics.com.
• _ga_ — stores session state and collects data for GA4 reporting. Expires after 24 hours. Set by google-analytics.com.

GA4 is configured with anonymized IP addresses (your IP is truncated before storage), Google Signals is disabled, and Advertising reporting features are disabled. GA4 does not track you across devices, does not build cross-device advertising profiles, and no GA4 data is used for ad targeting. Impression and click interactions with AdSense ads may still appear in GA4's standard event reports for performance measurement. Your approximate geographic region (city level) is inferred from the anonymized IP at collection time and is not stored with your GA4 data.

5.2 Consent Mode v2

This site uses Google Consent Mode v2, a framework that allows the GA4 and AdSense tags to load without setting cookies or collecting personalized data until you explicitly consent. In the default state (before you make a choice in the Google consent dialog), all analytics and advertising storage categories are set to denied. No analytics or advertising cookies are set until you accept in the Google consent dialog. If you reject, the denied state persists: Google AdSense serves non-personalized limited ads (no advertising cookies, no prior-activity-based personalization, no use of cross-site activity for ad personalization), and no GA4 analytics data is collected.

5.3 Advertising cookies (Google AdSense)

This site displays ads served by Google AdSense. The specific cookies set depend on whether you consent and on the types of ads Google serves.

If you accept all cookies, the AdSense ad delivery network (DoubleClick) may set the following advertising cookies on your device:

• __gads / __gpi — unique identifiers used to store and recall your ad preferences and prior interactions with ads. Set by doubleclick.net domain. Persist up to 13 months.
• IDE — unique identifier used by Google to measure and personalize ads. Set by doubleclick.net. Expires after approximately 13 months.
• test_cookie — set by doubleclick.net to check whether your browser supports cookies. Expires after approximately 15 minutes.
• Additional short-lived cookies may be set by individual ad creative domains for the duration of an ad interaction.

With consent granted, Google uses these cookies to:
(a) remember that you have seen a particular ad;
(b) measure ad performance, including impressions, clicks, and conversions attributed to ads;
(c) limit the number of times you see the same ad;
(d) personalize ads based on your prior activity across this and other sites that use Google ad services, in accordance with Google's advertising cookie policy.

If you reject cookies, Google AdSense does not set advertising cookies on this site. Ads are still shown — under Google's Limited Ads framework they appear non-personalized: contextual (based on the page content you are viewing and coarse-grained approximate region), without using prior cross-site activity to tailor ads to you.

You may also opt out of personalized ads at any time through Google's Ads Settings page or through Google's Ads Settings dashboard. For EEA users, Google offers the Consent Wizard preference controls.

5.4 No other first-party cookies

Beyond the cookies described in Sections 5.1 (GA4 analytics) and 5.3 (AdSense advertising), and the third-party cookies that may be set by affiliate partners (see Section 6.3), we do not use any strictly necessary cookies, functional cookies, or social media cookies on this site. All cookies on this site are set only with your consent (or, in the case of non-personalized limited ads under Consent Mode v2, without cookies as described in Section 5.3).

5.5 Changing your cookie preferences

You can change your cookie preferences at any time by clicking "Your Privacy Choices" or "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" in the footer of any page \u2014 either link re-opens the Google consent management preference center, where you can accept, reject, or modify your choices. You may also clear cookies through your browser settings at any time, after which Google will show you the consent dialog again on your next visit.

6. Third-Party Recipients

We share information with the following third parties for the purposes described below:

6.1 Google LLC (analytics & advertising processor)

GA4 data (when you consent) is processed by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California 94043, USA. Google processes this data as our data processor under a Data Processing Addendum. We have signed Google's Standard Contractual Clauses (Module 2). Google automatically routes EU/UK/EEA visitor traffic through EU servers by default.

Google LLC also operates Google AdSense on this site. Google acts as an independent controller for its ad-serving activities (Google's role under the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework TCF v2.2). For the operation of Google AdSense, Google's Privacy Policy and Advertising Cookie Policy apply. Google uses cookies identified in Section 5.3 to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other sites, when you have consented. You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google Ads Settings. For a plain-language explanation of how Google uses data collected from this site, see How Google uses data when you use our partners' sites or apps.

6.2 Cloudflare, Inc. (hosting and CDN)

This website is hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Cloudflare automatically processes your IP address and request data to deliver the site and provide security services. Cloudflare's privacy policy applies to this processing: cloudflare.com/privacypolicy.

6.3 Affiliate partners

Some links on this site are affiliate links (see our affiliate disclosure below). If you click an affiliate link and sign up for a service, the affiliate partner (e.g. Stripe, Klarna, PayPal, Adyen, and others) will receive a referral that you came from this site. The affiliate partner may set their own cookies subject to their own privacy policies. We do not control, and are not responsible for, the privacy practices of affiliate partners.

7. International Data Transfers

Your information may be transferred to and processed in countries outside your own. Specifically:

• GA4 data — Google automatically routes EU/UK/EEA visitor traffic through EU servers by default, though this does not guarantee 100% intra-EU isolated storage. US visitor data may be processed in the United States. For EU/UK/EEA visitors whose data is transferred outside the EEA, Google relies on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (Module 2) and the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), under which Google is self-certified.
• Cloudflare — Cloudflare may process requests from any global location. Cloudflare operates under its own Standard Contractual Clauses and Privacy Shield successor frameworks.

If you are in the EEA or UK, you have the right to request information about the specific safeguards applied to your data transfers (see Section 9 below).

8. Data Retention

• Contact form submissions — retained only as long as reasonably necessary to respond to your inquiry. We do not maintain a database of contact form submissions.
• GA4 analytics data — event data is retained for a maximum of 14 months, after which it is automatically deleted by Google.
• Server logs — retained by Cloudflare for security and operational purposes per their default retention period (approximately 30 days for free-tier logs).
• Consent records — your cookie consent preference (accept/reject) is stored locally in your browser and is not transmitted to us. It is retained for 6 months, after which you will be asked again.

9. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:

GDPR / UK-GDPR (EEA and UK residents)

• Right of access — request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Right to rectification — request correction of inaccurate personal data.
• Right to erasure — request deletion of your personal data ("right to be forgotten").
• Right to restrict processing — request that we limit how we use your data.
• Right to data portability — receive your personal data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Right to object — object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Right to withdraw consent — withdraw analytics consent at any time via "Your Privacy Choices" in the footer. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us via the contact form. We will respond within 30 days.

California residents (CPRA / CCPA)

If you are a California resident, you have the following rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA):

• Right to know — request disclosure of the categories and specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you.
• Right to delete — request deletion of your personal information.
• Right to correct — request correction of inaccurate personal information.
• Right to opt out of sale or sharing — we do not sell your personal information for monetary consideration, but we may share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes through Google AdSense (Section 5.3) when you consent. To opt out of such sharing for personalized ads, click the "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link in the footer of any page, or click "Reject" in the cookie banner, or opt out directly at Google Ads Settings.
• Right to non-discrimination — we will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CPRA rights.

To exercise your CPRA rights, contact us via the contact form.

Other jurisdictions

If you are located in Canada (PIPEDA), Brazil (LGPD), or any other jurisdiction with applicable data protection laws, you may exercise rights equivalent to those described above by contacting us via the contact form.

10. Global Privacy Control (GPC)

We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal. If your browser sends a GPC header (Sec-GPC: 1), we treat this as an opt-out of analytics data collection and of personalized advertising. Your GA4 and AdSense consent will default to "denied": no analytics cookies are set, no advertising cookies are set, and Google AdSense serves non-personalized limited ads only (Section 5.3). You must explicitly accept in the Google consent dialog to override the GPC signal and enable personalized ads. This opt-out applies regardless of your jurisdiction.

11. Children's Privacy

This site is not directed at children under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us via the contact form and we will delete it promptly.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The "Last Updated" date at the top of this page indicates the most recent revision. Material changes will be noted on the site. Continued use of the site after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Affiliate Disclosure

Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you sign up for a service through an affiliate link, we may receive a commission at no additional cost to you. This does not influence our editorial content. All content remains editorially independent. For details, see the affiliate disclosure in our site footer.