How Deblock operates as a SEPA participant relying on Mambu
Deblock had to build all the capabilities consumers expect from any bank in addition to its core crypto differentiation, including sending and receiving SEPA payments.
- FTE saved
- weekly transfer increase per user
- proactive support from Mambu
DEBLOCK
About the customer
Deblock, the first current account that accepts both euros and cryptos. Licensed as a digital asset service provider (DASP) with French capital markets regulator AMF and as an electronic money institution by French banking regulator ACPR, Deblock enables anyone to manage their money as they wish while having the option to pay in cryptos or euros.
Deblock product usage is constantly growing, with an average 5% weekly transfer increase per active user.
The challenge
Bridging the gap between the crypto and euro worlds
With the ambition to compete with traditional banks, Deblock had to build all the capabilities consumers expect from any bank in addition to its core crypto differentiation, including sending and receiving SEPA payments.
Providing a state-of-the-art SEPA payment experience is especially critical for Deblock as the crypto payment experience is intrinsically excellent.
Through his previous position as Head of Core Payments and Banking Partnerships at Revolut, Deblock’s Co-founder and CFO Aaron Beck had firsthand knowledge and experience of the complexities of integrating with a SEPA sponsor bank, maintaining this integration, and operating as a SEPA indirect participant.
“We understood the complexity of implementing an XML solution with a sponsor bank for our desired SEPA solution. Using XML and the sponsor bank's host-to-host connectivity is inherently cumbersome and consumes precious engineering resources on matters unrelated to our customer outcomes,” shared Aaron Beck, Deblock’s Co-founder and CFO.
To provide this state-of-the-art SEPA payment experience alongside French IBANs under Deblock’s own bank code, they decided to become SEPA indirect participants from day one.
The solution
Modernising into a bank with the soul of a fintech
The implementation actually consisted of three different implementations, one for each SEPA scheme: SEPA credit transfer, SEPA instant credit transfer, and currently SEPA direct debit.
Mambu Payments co-led the entire integration project with the sponsor bank, from obtaining the documentation to developing the integration between Mambu Payments and the sponsor bank to the final test and certification of the end-to-end Deblock, Mambu Payments, and sponsor bank integration.
Mambu Payments also managed unexpected, undocumented behaviours from the sponsor bank and built these fixes directly into the integration. Such issues included the lack of automated updates of payment status from the sponsor bank or the sponsor bank’s lack of support of officially SEPA-supported characters.
“SEPA payments are obviously a critical product for Deblock. Users today expect to have the ability to make a bank transfer to and from their current account. It's a basic but critical feature. As we launched in France, we wanted to provide French IBANs to our customers from the beginning.”
- Anthony van der Pluijm, Head of Product at Deblock
The result
Modern, customer-centric financial products
In the year ahead, Deblock will be doubling down on the French market, which has a thriving crypto consumer market. On the regulatory side, Deblock is looking to obtain the French crypto licence that would allow it to further advertise its product and better address the rest of Europe, as it is seeing strong demand for non-French customers.
On the product side, the Deblock team is building the 10% remaining capabilities to achieve full parity with leading current account and crypto providers, ensuring Deblock can become their users’ primary provider in both domains. “Using Mambu Payments has enabled us to free up approximately 1.5 FTE (between engineering and operations) from the build and management of the indirect SEPA arrangement. This FTE can then spend time on ensuring optimum customer outcomes,” adds Aaron Beck, Deblock’s Co-founder and CFO.
“From our first discussion with the Mambu Payments team, they showed excellent expertise on bank connectivity and SEPA payments, and it became obvious that Mambu Payments was the best fit for us.”
- Anthony van der Pluijm, Head of Product at Deblock.
About Mambu Payments
Mambu Payments is a modern payments hub with native straight-through processing, orchestration, liquidity, and reconciliation. It delivers real-time, compliant payment flows into any core system. With managed connectivity to local and global schemes and composable payment workflows, financial institutions can launch faster, reduce costs and stay compliant at scale.
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