Crowdpartners chooses OPP for payment automation and compliance with crowdfunding regulation

• Collaboration enables automated processing and intraday payments
• Crowdpartners improves their ability to respond to increasing KYC and AML requirements
• Easier expansion of (international) payment options
  
  

Crowdpartners is a crowdfunding service platform (CSP) for investors and borrowers. Founded in 2014, the company aims to make investing in companies accessible to everyone. To automate the underlying payment process, comply with the new crowdfunding regulation and better address increasing KYC and AML requirements, Crowdpartners sought a reliable payment service provider. Online Payment Platform (OPP) proved to be the best match.

Before working with OPP, Crowdpartners itself handled the payment traffic between users of the platform. For this, it had a third-party money account. “This way of working ultimately had limitations for us," says Thomas de With, CEO of Crowdpartners. “For example, it was not possible to make and process intraday payments this way. When investors registered for a project through the website and made a payment, it was only manually processed once a day through our third-party money account. Time-consuming and inefficient."

Another important reason De With cites for partnering with a payment service provider (PSP) is the new crowdfunding regulation. This new regulation sets stricter requirements for crowdfunding platforms to handle payments, among other things. For example, the crowdfunding platform must comply with PSD2 regulations and must therefore either apply for an exemption or a license from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). A third option is to engage a payment service provider, who thus takes over the payment traffic and the licensing requirement.

For Crowdpartners, working with a payment service provider was the most logical option. De With: "With this, we not only meet the legal requirements, but also benefit from additional advantages. Thanks to OPP, we can now process payments from investors in real time and automatically. Also, with the cooperation, we are better responding to the increasing requirements for KYC and AML. With OPP, this is more intelligently digitized and continuously optimized. You have an extra pair of eyes, so to speak, that make sure we have a reliable community and that our platform is not abused for fraudulent activities."

Moreover, by using OPP's payment services, Crowdpartners has again ensured that the balances and cash flows from investors to the projects - and repayments and interest payments from the projects to the investors - are clearly separated from those of Crowdpartners.

Migration to new platform

Another important aspect in working with a PSP was proper interfacing with Crowdpartners' new platform. "We were planning a migration to a new platform. That platform also had to be linked to the PSP's solution. For this, we looked very carefully at what the various PSPs both in the Netherlands and abroad had to offer."

OPP's solution proved the best technical fit for the requirements at hand. De With also noticed that it is nice to work with a company that is also physically nearby. "Linking our platform with the payment system is essential in our entire chain as a service provider. That is why it is important to get to know the partner you work with well. Proximity is important then. Also, communication with the team at OPP is easy and very approachable. Partly because of this, the implementation and migration ultimately went well. For this, OPP had also drawn up an integration plan. We are now looking together at how we can further optimize various processes. Think of the customer experience, but also about improving internal processes such as reporting and communication. It's nice to be able to collaborate with OPP on these improvements."

Easily add new payment options

The fact that OPP is flexible and, together with the customer, continuously looks at how it can make the solution even better, works great for Crowdpartners. Instead of developing new things themselves, in-depth expertise and innovative solutions can be used. For example, Crowdpartners can now add new payment options both in the Netherlands and abroad much more easily.

"With OPP we are making it easier for potential investors across Europe to open an account and invest while in the future we will also be lending internationally like in Germany and Belgium, for example," says De With. "Being able to process payments across Europe in real time is another important added value of OPP. We have been able to realize most of the wishes we had. Of course, there is always room for improvement, so we will continue to work with OPP to see how we can innovate even further."