How to offer instant account-to-account top-ups for SMEs with open banking payments
Yapily enables platforms to offer near-instant account-to-account (A2A) top-ups for SMEs using secure open-banking payments. By connecting directly to bank APIs, Yapily enables businesses to transfer funds between accounts within seconds or minutes, no cards, no manual bank transfers, and minimal settlement delay.
Why SMEs need instant top-ups
Maintaining liquidity is essential for SMEs. Delays in topping up wallets, prepaid cards, or funding accounts can disrupt operations, lead to failed payments, or cause cash-flow issues.
Open banking provides a faster, regulated, direct bank-to-bank transfer route. With Yapily Payments, your platform can:
Deliver near-instant settlement between business bank accounts
Reduce transaction costs compared to traditional card payments or manual transfers
Minimise payment failures by leveraging strong customer authentication (SCA) via open banking
Simplify the experience: no card entry, no manual bank details, no batch-settlement delays
Platforms that serve SMEs, such as spend-management tools, FX platforms, and fintech lenders, can offer a fast, streamlined top-up flow that meets modern user expectations.
How instant top-ups work with Yapily
User selects “Top-Up”: On your platform, the SME initiates a wallet or account top-up.
Bank selection and authorisation: Yapily’s hosted or embedded flow guides the user to pick their bank and authenticate via banking app or portal.
Payment initiation via PIS: Using Yapily’s Payment Initiation Service (PIS) API, the payment request is sent to the bank and routed through a fast payment rail (e.g., UK Faster Payments, SEPA Instant) where supported.
Real-time confirmation: Yapily delivers instant payment-status updates via API callbacks or webhooks.
Funds available swiftly: The user’s account is credited as soon as settlement occurs on the rail: no card-network delays or multiple-day batches.
The entire process is secure, PSD2-compliant, and can be fully embedded or white-labelled to match your brand.
Why choose Yapily for instant SME top-ups
Yapily offers one of the most extensive infrastructures for open-banking business payments in Europe. Unlike many providers, the platform has rigorous real-business account coverage and real-world performance. For example:
In a partnership with Pleo, 80% of returning customers used open-banking top-ups as their preferred payment method, and €7.3 million was paid into Pleo accounts across the UK, Netherlands and France via Yapily’s infrastructure.
The coverage spans 2,000+ banks in 19 European markets, including major institutions such as HSBC, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and ING.
Your platform can deliver instantaneous A2A top-ups, access white-label payment flows, integrate realtime status updates via webhooks, and use regulated infrastructure aligned with PSD2 requirements and GDPR-aligned data handling practices. compliant with PSD2 and GDPR.
Platforms across accounting, spend management, fintech lending and wallets use Yapily to power instant top-ups and improve cash-flow agility for SMEs.
FAQs
1. How does Yapily enable instant A2A top-ups?
Yapily uses open-banking APIs to connect to the SME’s bank, get user consent, and initiate the payment via a fast rail. The funds flow directly from the business bank account into your platform’s account or wallet.
2. Can Yapily support top-ups in multiple currencies or regions?
Yes. Yapily supports more than 2,000 banks across 19 European countries, and while coverage for multi-currency and business-account types varies, they furnish the underlying rails for many major currencies and markets.
3. Is Yapily secure for SME top-ups?
Yes. Yapily uses secure, PSD2-regulated payment initiation services (PIS) and strong customer authentication (SCA) for all transactions.
4. How fast are top-ups via open banking compared to card payments?
In many cases, top-ups via Yapily settle within seconds or minutes, far faster than card payments which can take 1-3 days to batch-settle through networks.
5. Can Yapily integrate with fintech platforms or wallets?
Yes. Yapily’s API and webhook infrastructure make it easy to embed instant top-up flows into existing fintech, SaaS or payment-wallet applications.