It is 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.

Credit-control and cashflow plagues all SMEs, 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 checkout solutions, subject to high fees and slow settlement times, Crezco processes payments up to £1,000,000 in real-time for free!

‍Wait, free? How so?

Unlike other payment solutions, Crezco does not use card schemes like Visa or Mastercard. We process account-to-account payments and have directly integrated with over 400 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 so our ‘cost of goods sold’ is non-existent. If it doesn’t cost us, we think it shouldn’t cost you. As crazy as that might sound, you used to pay to send an SMS, but no longer do with instant messaging. We thought we’d make payments equally cheap and convenient.

“Nothing comes from nothing”. Once again, how is Crezco free?

We are a VC backed fin-tech. More than anything on our balance sheet, our most valuable asset is happy customers. With happy customers the rest comes easy (relatively). Having acquired over 5,000 customers, we have since built further premium (“paid-for”) value-added products. Crezco was the first company to implement recurring account-to-account payments. We are also one of three companies to sign an agreement with the NatWest for variable-recurring-payments and will shortly be introducing cross-currency payments too. This is our monetisation strategy.

What are account-to-account payments?

Account-to-account (open banking) payments move cash from one account, say your client’s account with HSBC, directly to another account, perhaps your account with Barclays, via domestic payment rails, like Faster Payments. There are no middle clearing, settlement and merchant accounts which need to settle the funds first. Payments are instant, free and frictionless and there is no need for customers to share debit card or account details.

How does it work?

Crezco integrates with your favourite accounting software providers, like Xero, QuickBooks, QuickFile and Zoho. We recently won Xero’s Emerging App of the Year. Just connect Crezco to your chosen accounting software and go back to work as normal. Each sent invoice will now have an embedded payment link attached. Your customers click the link to make an account-to-account transfer. No need for your customers to enter card details or manually process the payment, which leaves room for human error and inertia, as long as the invoice is under £1,000,000, Crezco will process the payment in real-time for free and handle the reconciliation within your accounting software. Our clients call it a “no brainer”. You increase the convenience for your customers, and save yourself time and money.

‍If it is as good as you say, why wasn’t it invented already?

The short-answer is technological innovation. The online payments we are familiar with run on payments rails owned by Visa and Mastercard created over fifty 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 account-to-account payments which do not rely on Visa and Mastercard. Open banking is entirely new payment technology. Accountants will be familiar with open banking from the data feeds it provides, but the payment aspect is more recent. Crezco has been one of the first companies to bring this technology to market, particularly targeting the invoice payment space. Visa and Mastercard could do this, but they’re probably not willing to give up on all those fees.

‍Okay, so what are the five key benefits of Crezco?

Get paid faster: adding a Crezco payment link to your invoices increases convenience for your customers, eliminates human error and settles payments in real-time

Reconcile automatically: Crezco reconciles all your payments within your accounting system immediately, saving you hours of administration

Save on fees: Crezco is the only payment solution to settle payments under £1,000,000 instantly for free - it’s only the premium optional products Crezco charges for

Onboard clients: Crezco has built a partnership dashboard for accountants to easily add and manage their clients, helping them save time and money

Fraud protection: Crezco has built a proprietary machine-learning data analytical system, called Sentinel, protecting against invoice fraud, push-payment fraud and chargebacks