Online Payment Platform Selects Luxembourg-based Banking Circle to Enhance Marketplace Offering

Online Payment Platform, a payment service provider from the Netherlands, has selected Luxembourg-based payments expert and licensed bank, Banking Circle, to enhance its marketplace offering. 

Online Payment Platform is focused on providing a cost-effective and fast payment solution for over 170 marketplaces such as Nature.house and Marktplaats.nl from the Netherlands and eBay-Kleinanzeigen in Germany. It is also currently expanding into the United Kingdom and France. According to Banking Circle, one of the big challenges sellers using these marketplaces face is the speed of accounts settlement, with delays impacting cashflow.

To address this challenge, Online Payment Platform is using Banking Circle’s accounts in multiple currencies to gain access to various local clearing methods in a single solution. This is expected to help Online Payment Platform receive and make payments faster and cheaper as well as enhance internal processes. It is also using Banking Circle’s unique Virtual IBAN solution for accounts reconciliation.

As Maurice Jongmans, CEO Online Payment Platform explained, the partnership with Banking Circle enables the Dutch payment service provider to offer an important added value to its marketplace customers: “The marketplaces we support are dealing with thousands of merchants who are making and receiving numerous payments every day, to and from multiple countries and in multiple currencies. It is critical, therefore, that funds from acquirers can be paid out to marketplace sellers as quickly as possible and that the merchants’ profits aren’t undermined by fees or FX costs. By working with Banking Circle we are capitalising on its ‘real-time’ payments proposition which cuts out cost and time”.

Anders la Cour, CEO of Banking Circle, added: “Online Payment Platform has ambitious growth plans and we are delighted to be able to support these, both in terms of their plans to grow their geographic footprint and in the added value services they can provide. We have built a solution that allows businesses like Online Payment Platform to give their marketplace customers access to transparent, local payments and collections across borders, without the need for a physical presence or a relationship with a correspondent bank in that region. And that means increased speed of settlement as well as reduced cost”.

Available globally through SWIFT, Faster Payments, CHAPS, SEPA and local clearing, Banking Circle solutions are currently available to Payments businesses in 25 currencies with more currencies and local capabilities planned. Smoother, faster reconciliation is targeted through dedicated multi-currency Virtual IBANs in multiple jurisdictions, aimed at delivering improvements across reconciliation, consolidation, risk management, operational efficiency, transaction processing and liquidity management.