The Munich fintech Ivy aims to enable companies to accept account-to-account payments in real time via banks through an API, thereby bypassing intermediary transaction fees. This is because each intermediary receives a share of every transaction, which results in transaction fees of around 1–3 percent. Merchants who want to collaborate 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 shop systems such as Shopify, Shopware, Magento, or WooCommerce.
Payments via bank instead of credit card
Ferdinand Dabitz, co-founder of Ivy, is confident:
“In ten years, payments worth trillions of dollars will be made via bank instead of by card – a major shift that Ivy will drive forward. Over 60 regions worldwide are currently introducing instant bank payment infrastructure. Ivy brings these regional and different structures to a harmonized interface for real-time payments.”
In parallel to integration as a payment method at checkout, the Munich fintech has also developed instant payouts, refunds, payment by link, affordability checks, and enhanced KYC (Know Your Customer) products as well as transaction monitoring and a customizable risk suite.
In addition to Creandum, the current seed round also involved 10xFounders, Jens Lapinski of 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 Flink), Christian Grobe and Matthias Knecht (founders Billie), Martin Blessing (former CEO Commerzbank), and Nico Rosberg (F1 world champion).
“We save money with every transaction”
Drykorn, a global fashion retailer and Ivy customer, explains:
“For us, implementing Ivy was a no-brainer. We save money with every transaction, and our customers are absolutely thrilled about it. Integrating Ivy and connecting its endpoint with our existing workflows was a simple matter of just a few 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 since developed into a global movement, with rails becoming increasingly mature around the world. With its product, Ivy significantly outperformed its competitors on all relevant metrics – conversion, acceptance, success rates. We believe the team has found a winning offering.”
Ivy customers can also pass on some of their savings to their customers to give them an additional incentive to skip expensive cards and wallets. The Munich fintech’s global API is currently available in Europe, the US, the MENA and SEA regions.
