Crowdz looks to integrate Open Banking to improve its ability to drive equitable access to finance for small businesses.
Crowdz, which secured USD 10 million earlier in 2022, in an investment led by Citi and Global Cleantech Capital, will incorporate three GoCardless payment features powered by Open Banking to improve its payment and risk modelling capabilities. It will use:
Instant Bank Pay in the UK, US, and Europe to collect instant, one-off payments directly from a bank account, offering more payment options for both funders and sellers, plus a frictionless customer experience.
Verified Mandates in the UK, US, and Europe for greater fraud protection, providing more certainty and increasing confidence in the process.
GoCardless’ PayTo integration in Australia for instant payments and account verification.
Crowdz represents the latest Open Banking customer to sign with GoCardless following the fintech’s entry into the space with the launch of its first Open Banking-powered feature, Instant Bank Pay, in 2021. This year GoCardless raised its Series G funding round to accelerate its Open Banking strategy and announced the acquisition of Nordigen, the freemium Open Banking data provider, to combine broad Open Banking connectivity with bank payment expertise. In September 2022, GoCardless introduced Verified Mandates – which leverages AIS technology to prevent fraud – in France.
As part of the same strategy, GoCardless has also rolled out Variable Recurring Payments (VRPs), enabling financial providers to prepare for CMA as the ‘sweeping’ approaches. This means GoCardless’ ‘Instant Bank Pay’ feature supports one-off and recurring transactions through Open Banking.
VRPs are a type of Open Banking API, meaning that they work by using Open Banking rails to connect banks to Third Party Providers (TPP), like GoCardless, in a secure and standardised way. Functionally, they are similar to Direct Debit in that they enable recurring payments. However, unlike Direct Debit, with VRPs your customers authenticate their bank details right away, and straight from their online banking.
Crowdz offers an alternative financing solution for SMEs who often struggle to access capital via banks and lenders. Its proprietary risk assessment model, the SuRF score, enables more equitable financing than a traditional credit score through data. Crowdz's platform leverages blockchain technology for secure, transparent transactions.
To date, Crowdz has closed important deals, including providing the tech behind a Meta SME financing program, which has already provided diverse, minority-owned SMEs with more than USD 70 million in capital.
Crowdz is modernising invoice financing and invoicing practices, particularly for SMEs, to revolutionise the USD 9 trillion worldwide receivables market. Its technology enables small businesses to sell invoices to funders for financing, reducing cash flow bottlenecks and giving small businesses working capital to survive and thrive.
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