France-based Banking-as-a-Service provider Swan has decided to introduce local IBANs in European countries such as Germany and France. Swan is an embedded finance fintech, and its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) allows businesses to add banking functionality to their product.

Swan's APIs allows European businesses to integrate banking services, such as accounts, cards, and IBANs, into their own product. The fintech is a Principal Member of Mastercard and an Authorised Financial Institution regulated by the ACPR. Following the rollout of local IBANs in France and Germany, the company plans to do the same with Spanish IBANs as part of its expansion efforts across Europe.

In the official press release, Swan representatives revealed that rolling out IBANs with local country identifiers is part of their hyper-localisation strategy. They also emphasised that, while not many finance providers are willing to take this approach, they hope to leverage local IBANs to expand their customer base. The same representatives explained that there is no qualitative difference between different IBAN country codes in Europe.

However, a German IBAN, for instance, represents an important trust factor for both German companies and individuals. Moreover, German IBAN identifiers are an important success factor for companies that offer payment services in Germany. According to the official press release, more than 90% of Swan’s German customers want to use IBANs with a German identifier.

IBANs are international bank account numbers that are assigned to single accounts within the SEPA network (Single Euro Payment Area). This unique identifier allows financial service providers such as Swan to provide payment services securely to their destinations throughout Europe. Swan leverages its Banking-as-a-Service platform to enable tech companies to easily provide accounts with IBANs to their own customers.

Previous developments from Swan In November 2022, Netherlands-based bookkeeping programme Tellow has partnered with Swan to allow customers to open accounts and order payment cards from their bookkeeping software suite. Following the partnership, Tellow released a series of virtual payment cards with worldwide coverage issued by Mastercard and compatible with ApplePay and GooglePay. Physical cards could also be ordered and could be delivered within three business days, according to the official press release.

In December 2022, Germany-based e-mobility payments company pay33 has partnered with Swan to launch the first European payment-enabled mobility card in the form of a white-label app for the e-mobility market. pay33 has launched its B2C smart mobility card with payment features and annual savings of over EUR 800. The company also allowed its customers to access an extensive electric vehicle charging network across Europe and to pay directly with the pay33 Mastercard debit card.

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