What are Virtual Accounts?

A virtual account* (also known as a vIBAN) is a digital account that can be used to accept and make electronic payments (e-money). We have combined our open banking API infrastructure with vIBANs provided by a regulated e-money issuer, along with the tools our customers need to operate their own virtual accounts and issue accounts to their own clients.

Yapily Virtual Accounts allows you to hold multi-currency accounts that can be used to collect funds and make instant payouts. It offers a range of features that can be used to power your payment processing including the handling of FX, refunds, reconciliation, and settlement.

Why do they matter?

The new product offering will help to unlock new open banking payments use cases and remove friction from the payments journey, accelerating the adoption of open banking payments as an alternative to cards as a result.

“Until now, open banking payments have been primarily focused on payment collection, fueling growth for single payment use cases such as account top-ups. But we know that business’ payments needs are much broader than that. This launch is yet another example of how we are helping our customers to unlock new use cases and growth opportunities.” - Roland Selmer, Chief Product Officer at Yapily.

How can Yapily Virtual Accounts help your business?

Yapily Virtual Accounts is enabling merchants and payment service providers to:

• Take control of fund distribution
• Improve visibility over payment status and cash flow operations
• Reduce complexity when collecting international or different types of payments
• Avoid high international payment collection fees
• Enable instant payouts and refunds in multiple currencies
• Enhance the customer experience
• Bring more flexibility to payments processes
• Save time, money, and resources on manual reconciliation

How does it work?

1. Accept domestic payments in GBP and EUR instantly

Managing payments when doing business internationally presents a huge challenge for merchants. Too often, the end-customer is charged with an international payment fee and receives non-competitive rates when paying an invoice in a different currency from their account currency. What’s more, lengthy settlement times are leaving merchants waiting for their money and the end-customer waiting for the delivery of their goods and services.

With Yapily Virtual Accounts, merchants in the UK and Europe can accept domestic payments in GBP and EUR instantly, improving the customer experience whilst avoiding high international payment collection fees.

2. Take payments from multiple payment schemes

While open banking payments are accelerating at pace - with YoY growth at 500% - we understand the need for businesses to offer a selection of payment methods to make payment collection as convenient as possible.

Combined with Yapily Payments, our customers can use a consolidated API for open banking payments, leveraging vIBAN capabilities to get real-time payment confirmation and issue instant refunds and payouts. Yapily Virtual Accounts works seamlessly with other payment methods supporting pay-ins and payouts from Faster Payments, CHAPS and BACS in the UK, SEPA in Europe, and SWIFT in both regions for international payments.

3. Split funds and deduct fees prior to final settlement

Instant payments are the lifeblood of the real-time payments revolution. However, if you participate in the transaction it can be hard to ‘take your cut’ when funds settle instantly.

Say goodbye to complex billing and retrospective fee collection at the end of the month, and say hello to taking control of the payment flow with Yapily Virtual Accounts. Collect funds and easily deduct fees and charges before sending to the final settlement account - all in one go. Making your processes more real-time than ever!

4. Divide payments across separate accounts by currency, business line, or merchant

Payment reconciliation is necessary to ensure that there is an accurate balance between recorded sales and payments received. For any business receiving a high frequency of payments, it can be difficult to keep track of each payment source, which is even more complex when accepting international payments. Any mismatch may highlight an accounting error, fraud, or issue in payment collection that can add strain to the finance team and their cash flow operations.

With Yapily Virtual Accounts, our customers can create any number of receiving accounts to implement an account structure that best meets their needs - giving more control and visibility of their payment flows and balances to ease reconciliation.

5. Enable instant payouts and refunds in multiple currencies

Issuing refunds can often be challenging for businesses. Now, merchants and businesses can use a consolidated API to collect open banking initiated payments and fulfil a refund using instant payment rails.

Even better, our Payment Notifications will provide confirmation that funds have settled to give our customers the certainty that the payment has been completed with full visibility of the payment flow.

Who is Yapily Virtual Accounts for?

The new product is unique in that it meets the needs of both the merchants using the product directly and the PSPs enabling this solution for their merchant customers.

Yapily Virtual Accounts is ideal for businesses that don’t need a full-stack banking account, but want the flexibility to collect money from customers or clients while benefiting from more control of the payment flow. This includes:

• Merchants - Expand globally and use vIBANS as domestic receiving accounts
• Payment Service Providers - Serve international merchants and reduce costs on cross-border payment collection
• Marketplaces & Platforms - Split funds and take commission before final settlement
• Investments & Crypto - Collect payments into separate vIBANS for each user to streamline reconciliation
• PropTech - Issue vIBANS for tenants and landlords to aggregate funds for easier reconciliation
• B2B Payments - Aggregate funds and payouts as a single payment in the final settlement account

Yapily Virtual Accounts are currently available in Beta with more features coming soon.

Curious about how Yapily Virtual Accounts could help your business?

Get in touch to find out more.

*We have partnered with an authorised Electronic Money Institution to open and operate your Yapily Virtual Accounts and supercharge your open banking payments experience