Top 5 payment gateways for crowdfunding platforms

Igor Berezhnoy
Igor Berezhnoy Business Analyst
7 minutes to read

In crowdfunding and online investment, payment solutions offer more to conventional payment processing and often include online KYC and AML checks, e-wallets, and scheduled payouts.

If you decided to build a crowdfunding platform for non-profits, PayPal or Stripe will work very well as donations do not require sophisticated identity checks.

However, if it’s debt- or equity crowdfunding – the flows and functionality have to be more advanced, fast, and bullet-proof.

In this article, we present a list of some of the best payment gateways for crowdfunding platform we can suggest. Let’s get things underway.

Goji: ideal for swift investing

Goji is one of the most attractive top payment gateways for crowdfunding websites, direct lenders, investment managers, and FinTech firms.

Goji offers solutions for funds distribution, management, and custody.

The coolest thing about Goji is that it provides technology for both complex investment platforms and specific aspects of the investment process – regulation issues, IFISA and SIPP accounts, execution of debt-based securities, etc.

IFISA accounts are a source of competitive advantages for companies from the direct lending domain as it allows investors to receive tax-free interest on invested funds.

Other features of Goji include:

  • integration via a white-label platform or RESTful API;
  • the security of the infrastructure is provided through Virtual Private Cloud (VPC);
  • the scalability of the cloud-based infrastructure;
  • HTTPs encryption for high data protection;
  • developer-friendly environment;
  • sandbox version for the product testing;
  • advanced disaster recovery methods.
goji-modular-solution-for-crowdfunding-platforms Top 5 payment gateways for crowdfunding platforms
Goji modular solution

Given all the opportunities of Goji, we strongly recommend this ISA manager for investment companies who are about to select a payment gateway for crowdfunding.

Recently we’ve integrated the websites of two our partners, Shojin and CapitalRise, with the Goji technology.

CapitalRise states that switching to a new cash provider has accelerated the investment process, provided investors with more flexibility, and made the platform management more straightforward.

Want to integrate crowdfunding payment solution with your investment platform? Give us a buzz.
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MangoPay: third-party payments guru

MangoPay claims to be an exemplary payment gateway for crowdfunding as well as marketplaces and sharing economy. The solution allows crowdfunding sites to quickly deal with multiple currencies and multiple payment methods accepting debit and credit cards, bank and Direct Debit transfers.

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Source: Mangopay

GoGetFunding uses Mangopay to accept donations instantly with credit and debit cards or PayPal.

MangoPay is an iconic example of a one size fits all crowdfunding payment services for equity, donation, lending, and reward-based platforms.

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Source: Mangopay

First off, when using MangoPay, online entrepreneurs can decide how long the funds may be escrowed and define specific refund rules.

Beyond that, it’s one of the crowdfunding payment solutions that enable the platform owners to set a certain point of time when the fees will be collected depending on the project type, specific campaign and amount donated as criteria.

Remember to abide by the provider’s KYC and fraud rules on top of European banking legislation when using the renowned crowdfunding payment processing method.

Good news, however, is that MangoPay has a large support community that can bail you out when creating custom-tailored payment flow and choosing among the best third-party payment gateways.

One more thing: as one of the leading crowdfunding payment gateway providers, MangoPay compliance squad can assess the flow to ensure it is aligned with the business goals of a company.

MangoPay fees

MangoPay charges no setup fees and tailors its pricing policy per the currency used to transact and the type of payment with cash-in costing 1.8% + €0.18 per transaction. Starting from €100,000 monthly volumes, the crowdfunding payment provider offers discounts that differ for each type of currency.

When it comes to KYC, MangoPay, as an electronic money issuer, has several levels of checks:

  • Light validation for annual cash-ins under €2,500 for cash-in and €1,000 cash-outs per contributor.
  • Regular validation for yearly amounts starting with €2,500 for cash-in and €1,000 for cash-out per user.
  • Strong validation is performed if customers are under suspicion or financial terrorism and money laundering etc.
We have integrated multiple crowdfunding platforms with Mangopay and tuned the financial flow according to specific business flows.
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LemonWay: global payments with ease

Lemonway is a crowdfunding payment provider that promises a secure solution for any activity including crowdfunding.

Wonder why LemonWay delivers on its pledge?

This crowdfunding payment gateway focuses on European reward-based, lending as well as an equity model enabling transactions in Euro, British pounds, and Czech crowns.

Lemonway can boast of its accreditation in 29 EU states as well as 21 countries outside of it. LemonWay accepts the most popular methods such as SEPA, PayLib, iDeal, Visa and MasterCard.

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Remarkably, being one of the leading payment services for crowdfunding, the company harnesses the power of AI to define the filters and the blocking thresholds in line with crowdfunding business.

LemonWay customises the variables in its proprietary algorithms and analyses the data to bust suspicious transactions, an unusual amount of money for a donor, country-specific factor, emails etc.

Besides, LemonWay brings together both first-rate blacklist and its records to perform such checks in crowdinvesting, where knowing who you deal with is essential.

What makes LemonWay the best payment solution for crowdfunding platforms is its automatic identification of users that meets the European standards of AML/KYC, third-party payments, general data protection regulation (GDPR).

The company’s experts are well-aware of recent changes in the regulatory base of 29 European countries aimed at controlling financial markets.

What’s more, LemonWay is developer-friendly and allows extending its base functionality thanks to their versioned API.

Top features of LemonWay:

  • feature-rich APIs that let clients overview and track users’ activity and monitor commissions earned;
  • payment account management for advanced automation of AML/KYC procedures, transactions tracking and funds transferring;
  • customisation of payment pages that help clients improve their conversions;
  • a smart dashboard for monitoring client performance and detecting fraudulent activity;
  • personal support tailored to the business needs of any client;
  • secure servers and innovative technologies for providing top-notch protection for customers.

Lemonway is our strategic partner in developing scalable and robust solutions for FinTech companies. Reach out to us if you’d like to learn more about Lemonway solutions for your crowdfunding platform.

Lemonway fees

Depending on the monthly turnover, the costs for cash-in start from 1.2% + €0.18 and a monthly service fee for European users and 2.8% + €0.18 for the rest of the globe. Cash-out is free for SEPA zone while the rates are individual and vary depending on the country of origin.

The approximate verification time at LemonWay is 24 hours for individual and up to 48 hours for corporate accounts. However, to speed up the compliance check, customers can contact the support centre.

If a backer is rejected a document by KYC experts, the comments are available in detail in the comment field of the concerned material and seen by the platform owner but not by the applicant.

GoCardless: a smart digital way to collect payments

GoCardless enables a smooth and secure transaction for crowdfunding campaigns. GoCardless uses a single Direct Debit system to take the pledges from the donor’s bank account once the campaign is the success.

Once users create an account, the crowdfunding payment provider might request a copy of the ID to perform internal checks. GoCardless enables programmers to automate processes and configure logic around crowdfunding platform goals to guarantee smooth flows.

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Source: GoCardless

To take payment collection to the next level, in 2015 GoCardless joined the ties with Mangopay to offer the best payment gateway for a crowdfunding platform and marketplaces for Eurozone clients.

One of our projects, the DonateMySchool website, is integrated with the GoCardless payment gateway that’s used for recurring payments.

GoCardless fees

GoCardless has several payment plans to choose from. The website suggests Standard, Plus, and Pro plans so those who decide to adopt the solution pay from 1% per transaction but not exceeding £2 with no monthly fee on top.

As many other crowdfunding payment services and transaction processors, GoCardless offers special conditions for GoCardless Pro users.

Crowdfunder, for instance, uses both GoCardless and PayPal offering rewards to supporters who decide to support any of the ongoing projects financially. Apart from the platform fees, GoCardless charges 0.5% of each contribution.

With KYC compliance in mind, GoCardless, for example, does not accept the same document when performing two separate identity verifications. The crowdfunding payment provider requires a new joiner to pay 1p (or €0.01) to proceed further with verification to check if details for the payout bank account match the ones related to GoCardless accounts.

LenderKit: flexible crowdfunding and investment software for any business model

LenderKit is the JustCoded project that also has an embedded Goji and LemonWay payment gateways.

It’s a platform for building real estate crowdfunding portals, debt-based, P2P lending and equity fundraising websites from scratch.

The solution comes in a bundle with numerous features:

  • powerful platform management interface with analytics, dashboards, and investment management;
  • automated KYC/AML checks for smooth investor and borrower onboarding;
  • third-party integration via APIs;
  • built-in secondary market;
  • GDPR compliance;
  • e-wallets;
  • responsive and mobile-friendly design;
  • ready-made themes.

lenderkit-white-label-crowdfunding-online-investment-platform Top 5 payment gateways for crowdfunding platforms

Bottomline

If you are an online entrepreneur who considers running a crowdfunding startup, choosing a reliable crowdfunding payment solutions ally is of vital importance.

The simple truth is when you are to weigh several options and are at a loss which crowdfunding payment services to go for, consider projected transactions per month, different currencies you’re to deal with, type of user experience offered, and guaranteed support you might need.

Dealing with payment services for crowdfunding can be no picnic if you miss out on an important point.

If you need a broader view of types of crowdfunding payment methods, our team of subject matter experts has been around the block for years.

We have successfully delivered numerous projects with varied crowdfunding payment processing solutions, so we are always glad to share our lessons learnt and help you out with the challenges you might have.
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