Ensuring your users can effortlessly reload their accounts is essential to the success of your financial application. This guide explores the variety of methods Verestro offers to facilitate user account reloads on your platform. We'll break down the nuances of different reload options and provide valuable insights to enhance the user experience within your fintech application.
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Many people use terms like "payment account," "IBAN," and "card" interchangeably, but they actually have distinct meanings. This blog post will shed light on these terms and explore the various ways to reload a payment account, essentially adding funds to a card.
Understanding the Payment Terminology
Payment Account - it is a place in the system of a payment institution, which holds information about money stored for a particular customer. Just it - a kind of record ID in a payment institution. It is not IBAN, it is not a card.
IBAN - it is a payment account number in the international banking standard. This number helps to make money transfers to the payment account.
Payment Card - it is another number (PAN - Primary Account Number in the terminology of Mastercard and VISA) connected with a payment account and usually with another payment instrument. A payment card is a tool to pay with money on a payment account and sometimes it is a way to transfer money to a payment account. Actually, we do not know situations where a payment card works without a payment account. In some countries (like USA) usually a payment account is not used in common discussions, but in fact there is always a payment account linked to a payment card.
Methods of Reloading a Payment Account
Once we know these 3 definitions, let's think about ways to transfer money to a payment account, which in other words could mean ways to reload a payment card. There are several ways we can use:
Bank Transfer to IBAN - in this case the user sends money from an external bank account to our payment account using an IBAN associated with a payment account. Usually it is a very easy, fast and effective way to transfer money in case of domestic transfers. It can be a costly way to reload the account if the customer is abroad.
Payout to Card - In this case, the user is sending money from another bank or money transfer organization using a payment card number issued by our issuing partner. The customer uses Mastercard Moneysend or VISA Direct to transfer money from another account to their Verestro payment account. It is usually a very fast but not cheap way to transfer money.
Card-to-Card Transfer is used when the user provides another Mastercard or VISA card at an external service and transfers money to a card issued by our issuing partner. In this case, the funding card (card issued by another bank) is debited and our payment card is credited, which means that money will appear on the payment account soon.
PSP, Google Pay or Apple Pay - in each of our partners' wallets we can provide a functionality called Paytool that enables recharging another card and sending money directly to the user's payment account. In this situation, the funding card is charged as if it were an eCommerce transaction. The user's payment account can be quickly reloaded.
Partner Reload - In many cases, our partners can use their own funds to reload a user's payment account. Examples of such situations are credit institutions issuing cards and reloading the payment account with a loan amount. A similar example could be issuing cards for insurance claims - in such a situation our partner (insurance company) loads money onto the user's card and sends the card to the insured person. Usually such reloading is done through MasterBalance, which is an account that we hold for our partners and which contains their money. This account can be used for reloading as it is usually used for transaction processing.
Reload by Crypto Assets - in some cases it is possible that our partners send crypto assets and we will convert them into FIAT currencies in cooperation with our partners to reload the user account.
Open Banking - our partners can use Open Banking PIS (Payment Initiation) messages to transfer funds to the user's payment account. We can help with such reload tools using our Paytool product.
The Future of Money Transfers
Verestro is constantly exploring and implementing new methods for convenient and efficient money transfers. This blog article has equipped you with the knowledge to choose the most suitable reload option based on your business needs.
The future of money transfers is all about speed, security, and accessibility. Fintech-as-a-service (FaaS) enablers will continue to play a central role in this evolution by providing innovative solutions like open banking integration, real-time cross-border payments, and instant account top-ups via digital wallets. FaaS will empower businesses to offer their users a frictionless money transfer experience, fostering financial inclusion and reshaping the global payments landscape.
Follow our blog and stay tuned for further updates on new money transfer solutions we are working on.
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