Industry standards are broken
Argyle is calling for the modernization of financial services built through the practices of buying, selling, and reselling payroll data without a worker’s knowledge or permission. In an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission, Argyle outlines why we believe consumer permissions are the future. We are asking the FTC to investigate outdated models that presume aggregators own a consumer’s personal information, and that data protection and privacy is merely about security instead of one’s right to data ownership.
At Argyle, we recognize that employment data is owned by the individual it represents. This might seem obvious, but for 70-plus years, consumer data has been sold by credit agencies to just about anyone. The addition of non-authorized employment data is the latest information to be collected, packaged, and resold without an individual’s knowledge.
Argyle believes the era of non-consent is over. That’s why we create tools with user-based permissions and data transparency to be a part of the solution.
It starts and ends with user consent
You choose who can access your employment data, how long they have access to it, and if (or when) you want to revoke that access. We make it easy for you to control who sees what and when.
We use strict data protections and protocols
In line with our responsibilities as a Data Transfer Agent, we have strict security policies in place to safeguard our users’ privacy. For a high-level look at what we do to ensure our users’ ongoing protection, you can learn more about our security protocols here.
Control over data retention and removal
Argyle gives all users complete control over the retention and removal of their own data. To that end, we make our user-permissioned data available to our customers for a period of 30 days after the expiration or termination of the master service agreement. All data is then permanently removed from Argyle’s server, and any user can request the removal of their personal data at any time by contacting our support team at datadelete@argyle.com. A user’s data will never be retained or transferred without their consent.
We put everyone on equitable footing
Employment data is at the foundation of our society. It’s required documentation if you want to rent or buy a home, purchase a car, apply for a new job, or get a loan. But businesses haven’t always looked at everyone’s applications the same way: the employment data of workers with nontraditional backgrounds can be harder to access or interpret. With Argyle, the employment data of every worker—salaried, hourly, gig, freelance, or contract—is accessible and standardized, opening new doors for more kinds of workers, and opening financial access that can meaningfully change lives.
It takes a village
We’re proud that Argyle’s payroll connectivity is helping shape modern lending practices, but no one company alone can shift legacy dynamics. That’s why we’re proud be part of shifting industry standards with peers like Certree—whose recent letter to the FTC also called on them to investigate non-permissioned data collection. Together, we’re all developing new consumer financial plumbing. Ultimately, this new infrastructure is empowering consumers (and workers) to leverage their data, moving us closer to universal financial access.
We call for standards
The future of data privacy is data in the hands of the individual, but only if we make user consent both an industry and legal standard. That means forward-looking and innovative businesses along with employers who view data access as a basic right, should be working with consent-based services like Argyle and our peers.
The time has come to put data back into the hands of the individuals it represents.
You can read more about how we believe FICO is failing today’s modern consumers here.
And you can read our full letter to the FTC here.
