Monneo joined Accept my IBAN to combat IBAN discrimination

By Joy Dumasia

Monneo, a UK-based provider of virtual IBAN accounts and for eCommerce merchants and B2B clients, has joined Accept My IBAN, the coalition of European businesses in the fight against the illegal practice of IBAN discrimination.

IBAN discrimination occurs when an EU bank or company refuses to accept or send a payment to/from a customer’s International Bank Account Number (IBAN) because it (the IBAN) is from a different EU country to which the bank or company in question is based.

IBAN discrimination has been outlawed since 2014, but just five months from the launch of Accept My IBAN, over 1000 complaints of IBAN discrimination have been received, proving the practise is still widespread.

The Accept My IBAN initiative, spearheaded by Wise, brought together a range of businesses, including banks, financial technology companies and even the e-Residency of Estonia programme. The companies represent millions of consumers and businesses across the EU who live and work internationally and have experienced financial friction.

Monneo Managing Director, Lili Metodieva, said: “Through our platform, we connect to multiple banks in Europe and the UK to provide IBAN accounts to EU eCommerce merchants who in turn use them to receive settlement funds from their EU acquiring banks. However, we recently started experiencing some EU acquirers refusing to accept our customers’ IBANs for no other reason than Monneo is regulated in the UK. Apart from being inconvenient to both ourselves and our customers, there is no regulatory or legal ground for this, so we were eager to join the coalition and are proud to now be a part of it.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that Monneo, a virtual IBAN and eCommerce bank account provider, has announced its partnership with iDenfy, a global identity verification service. iDenfy will help Monneo meet its goals of providing all its clients with the most reliable and efficient onboarding process.