How do payment by bank transfers work?

Bank transfers

👉   How it works

👉   Main statuses of a bank transfer

👉   Make sure transfers are credited quickly

👉   Special cases

👉   Unidentified and uncredited transfers

👉   Refund a bank transfer

👉   Set up a dedicated IBAN

👉   Ibanisation of payment accounts

How it works

Once bank transfer payment (Money-In) is enabled, we will furnish you with an IBAN (given to all our partners) and a reconciliation code (typically the Matching Code of your platform followed by the external ID of the beneficiary payment account in the format MATCHINGCODE-IDEXT). You will be required to enter this information on your website or app during the payment process. This will ensure that we can accurately credit the received transfer to the appropriate payment account upon receipt.

The information your customers should provide when submitting a transfer request via their bank's website or app is listed below:

• Beneficiary name: Lemonway or Lemonway + Environment name
• Beneficiary IBAN: the IBAN that we provide you with
• BIC code of the Beneficiary's Bank (if requested): the BIC code that we provide you with
• Description: the reconciliation code following the format that we have provided (maximum 35 characters): ENVIRONMENTMATCHINGCODE-EXTID

Receiving a wire transfer and crediting it to the beneficiary's payment account results in the automatic creation of a transaction in your system environment with a Completed status (Type = Incoming/Method = Transfer/Status = Completed), and in fees being charged by Lemonway 👉Learn more about fees here

The most frequent causes of delayed credits or the inability of Lemonway to credit the incoming wire transfer to the beneficiary payment account are listed below:

• Beneficiary payment account in KYC status (e.g. KYC1 - not verified clients- or amount limits exceeded) prevents us from crediting the transfer received to the beneficiary payment account
• Beneficiary payment account/external ID that does not exist in your system
• The name of your system appears in the transfer description, but your customer does not specify the external ID of the beneficiary payment account
• There is no reference to the name of your system or of your external ID of the beneficiary payment account, preventing us from linking the bank transfer received to your platform
• The issuer's name is different from the account owner.

In the 3 first cases, you will receive, by email, a pending list every Tuesday and Thursday with the pending wires. If you want to add or remove someone from the list of addressees, please write a ticket.

Main statuses of a bank transfer

Bank transfers can have multiple statuses:

✅ Completed: the transaction was successful and the transaction amount is credited to the target payment account, increasing the account balance

If the transaction is incomplete and failed to be credited to the target payment account, it will not appear in the Dashboard.

Make sure transfers are credited quickly

Lemonway automatically checks the identity of the sender of an incoming wire transfer into your system against the identity of the holder of the destination payment account (excluding e-commerce, marketplace, and factoring-type activities for the debtor - no verification is required).

In order for an incoming wire transfer to be credited automatically to the destination payment account on D+1 (D = banking business day of receipt by Lemonway), it is essential that:

• The transfer originates from a bank account held by the holder of the beneficiary payment account (except in the event of joint bank accounts - details below).
• The transfer text contains the reconciliation code (MATCHINGCODE-EXTID).

In any case, an account must be KYC2 before it can be used by one of your clients.

Special cases

Joint accounts

From 1st September 2023, Lemonway no longer permits the creation of joint accounts to open payment accounts. Please consult this article to learn more.

Transfers issued by a company

A transfer originating from a company bank account can only be credited to a payment account held by a legal person. For verification purposes, you may be asked for the issuing bank account number to ensure that it is a corporate account.

Transfers originating from a sender without a payment account

In this particular case, there are two solutions:

1. If the payment account is not yet KYC2 (verified client) and has never received any payment funds: rename the account, and provide the corresponding necessary KYC documents
2. Create a new payment account in the name of the sender of the transfer and provide the external ID of the payment account to be credited.

Unidentified and uncredited transfers

In the case of a joint account or a transfer issued by a company, we will send you a list of received and unmatched bank transfers by email (twice a week), together with the action/decision expected from you in order for us to be able to credit the funds correctly. You have the option to receive a pending list (transfers waiting to be credited) every day. 👉 Contact Lemonway Support for more information.

Refund a bank transfer

If the transfer has been credited to the payment account

You will need to issue an outgoing transfer. 👉 Learn more about how to issue a transfer in our dedicated article

The transfer has not yet been credited to a payment account

You can request a return of funds which we need to process.

💡Contact us 👉 here with the sender's bank details to speed up the procedure. 

Set up a dedicated IBAN

Depending on the volume of your incoming wire transfers, it may be worth considering a dedicated IBAN/bank account with Lemonway.

A dedicated IBAN (a bank account in the name of Lemonway but whose details are not shared with other partners and are known only by you) allows you to:

• Maximize the amount credited: incoming bank transfers from your customers that do not include your platform name (and which we would thus be unable to identify in accounts shared by all our partners) are never "lost" and returned to the originators.
• Improve lead times for crediting: bank transfers received into dedicated bank accounts are treated as a priority. You are notified twice a week of unmatched/pending transfers, allowing you to take appropriate action (e.g. incorrect KYC status of the beneficiary payment account) promptly for faster crediting to the payment account.

💡 From now on, you will benefit from a dedicated IBAN account for new signatories. If you would like more information or would like to change your account type (you did not choose a dedicated IBAN account when you signed your contract), 👉 contact us

Ibanisation of payment accounts

We offer the option of linking an IBAN to a payment account. This is called a virtual IBAN, and it is still held by Lemonway. A virtual IBAN can only be connected to one payment account. Once you have generated this IBAN and sent it to your customer, he/she will be able to make a transfer using these bank details and on receipt, the transfer will be credited to the payment account automatically, subject to standard banking processing times. 

Ibanisation allows you to:

• Avoid pending transfers, since the transfer has been sent to a virtual IBAN linked to a payment account (which will always be the payment account to which the transfer will be credited)
• Streamline your transfer receipt process and, therefore, your business
• Limit discussions about transfers to be credited
• No longer have to provide your customers with your external identifier
• Benefit from faster reconciliation 

💡 You can provide some of your customers with virtual IBANs. Credits using a bank reconciliation code are still possible. The two processes are compatible.