PayTech Awards 2022 Winner: Crezco – Best Real-Time Payments Solution for Business
Discover how to reduce late payments, fees and time-spent on admin tasks. Too good to be true? Our customers disagree…
Crezco: Get paid faster and reconcile invoices automatically with instant open banking payments
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the propensity to be paid is inextricably linked to the convenience of payment. Inconvenient payment methods, like manual bank transfers, are subject to human inertia and human error. Few businesses hurry to pay their suppliers, but if you introduce friction to the payment process you will easily lose their attention as they look to address something less painful.
Crezco does not create invoices but offers invoicing and accounting software services, like Xero, Zoho or QuickBooks, the opportunity to add ‘Pay now’ buttons on all sent invoices. Introducing a more convenient checkout cannot help those unable to pay, but it is a free option to make life easier for those who can.
Unlike card payment solutions, subject to high fees and slow settlement times, Crezco processes payments in real-time for free!
Wait, it’s free?! How?
Crezco does not use card schemes. We process account-to-account (A2A) payments and have directly integrated with over 500 banks and 500 million bank accounts in the UK and EU. There is an upfront cost to this, but not an ongoing cost.
We have no middleware payments suppliers like Visa or Mastercard so our ‘cost of goods sold’ is non-existent. If it doesn’t cost us, we think it shouldn’t cost you. Sounds crazy? Maybe, but you used to pay to send an SMS, but no longer do with instant messaging. We just make payments equally cheap and convenient.
5-star reviews don’t keep the lights on, so how do you make money?
Crezco is the first globally to have A2A payments work for cross-border transactions
More than anything on our balance sheet, our most valuable asset is happy customers. With happy customers the rest comes easy (relatively).
We’re a technology business in love with building innovative, customer centric payment solutions.
We were first to integrate A2A payments with invoices. We were first to offer recurring A2A payments. Alongside the NatWest Group, we are the first company to implement variable recurring payments (VRP).
We are now the first globally to have A2A payments work for cross-border transactions. With Crezco you can pay to, and be paid from, over 100 countries in over 50 currencies worldwide.
For handling the currency exchange, Crezco charges a small transaction fee in line with other cross-border solutions like Wise. The key difference is by leveraging open banking technology you do not need to make manual transfers to these third-party apps or e-wallet accounts to pay your international suppliers or employees.
All payments occur directly from your existing primary bank account.
These are some of the further premium (paid-for) value-added products we have also built. This is our monetisation strategy, but the innovation will not stop here. We’re forever looking to make payments faster, safer, cheaper and more convenient.
Why hasn’t this already been invented?
The short answer is: technological innovation. The online payments we are familiar with run on payments rails owned by Visa and Mastercard created over 50 years ago. The recent innovation from the payment tech giants, like Stripe and PayPal, has all been focused on providing a better user experience, like contactless payments.
However, the underlying infrastructure has not changed and so payments remain subject to high fees, slow settlement times and chargebacks.
Crezco is different. We are an open banking company making A2A payments which do not rely on Visa and Mastercard. Crezco has been one of the first companies to bring this technology to market, particularly targeting the invoice payment space for businesses. Visa and Mastercard could do this, but they’re probably not willing to give up on all those fees.
Where to next?
Crezco already has successful integrations with accounting software providers like Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho, and QuickFile. We are working very closely with other leading platforms to ship the benefits of A2A payments to their customers soon.
Before the introduction of open banking, A2A payments were not technologically possible. Now that they are, we must assure all invoicing, procurement platforms and e-commerce platforms can access them. How does a platform access A2A payments? Via Crezco’s API. It’s super easy.
By Ralph Rogge, co-founder and CEO of Crezco
About the author
Ralph Rogge is the co-founder and CEO of Crezco. With a background in both technology and payments, he saw the introduction of open banking payments as the missing technological innovation required to better address invoice payments.
At Crezco, he focuses on building a strong culture and awesome products. Ralph believes a product should be so intuitive you could use it with your eyes closed.
