The Munich-based Fintech Ivy aims to enable businesses to accept real-time account-to-account payments via banks using an API, thus avoiding transaction fees charged by intermediaries. Each intermediary receives a share of each transaction, resulting in transaction fees of approximately 1–3 percent. Merchants who want to work with the startup don't need to change their existing payment settings. Ivy's Pay by Bank option can be added to any checkout directly via the API or as a plugin for all established e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Shopware, Magento, or WooCommerce.
Payments by bank and no longer by credit card
Ferdinand Dabitz, co-founder of Ivy, is certain:
"In ten years, trillions of dollars' worth of payments will be made by bank rather than card—a major shift that Ivy will drive. Over 60 regions worldwide are currently implementing an instant bank payment infrastructure. Ivy brings these regional and diverse structures into a harmonized interface for real-time payments."
In addition to integration as a payment method at the checkout, the Munich-based fintech has also developed instant payouts, refunds, payment via link, affordability checks and advanced KYC (Know Your Customer) products, as well as transaction monitoring and a customizable risk suite.
In addition to Creandum, 10xFounders, Jens Lapinski from Angel Invest and leading business angels such as Jeppe Rindom (founder/CEO Pleo), Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert and André Schwämmlein (founder Flix), Oliver Merkel (founder of Flink), Christian Grobe and Matthias Knecht (founders of Billie), Martin Blessing (ex-CEO of Commerzbank) and Nico Rosberg (F1 World Champion).
“We save money on every transaction”
Drykorn, a global fashion retailer and Ivy customer, explains:
"For us, implementing Ivy was a no-brainer. We save money on every transaction, and our customers absolutely love it. Integrating Ivy and connecting its endpoint to our existing workflows was a simple matter of minutes."
And Simon Schmincke, General Partner at Creandum, says:
"Account-to-account payments are just getting started. What began with Open Banking in Europe has now evolved into a global movement, with Rails becoming increasingly mature around the world. With its product, Ivy significantly outperformed its competitors across all relevant metrics—conversion, adoption, and success rates. We believe the team has found a winning proposition."
Ivy companies can also pass on a portion of the savings to their customers, giving them further incentive to forgo expensive cards and wallets. The Munich-based fintech's global API is currently available in Europe, the US, MENA, and SEA.
