User story - LilyIris Accounting

Challenge

After successfully using Crezco to collect payments from their clients and having recommended Crezco to their clients to make domestic payments too, LilyIris Accounting has new problems to tackle for their clients in order to improve their payment processes and, more specifically, their international payments.

As an accounting firm, LilyIris Accounting handles payments on behalf of its clients, but using high-street banks has proven to be cumbersome. They need to juggle between bank accounts, enter the data manually and hope they didn’t make a mistake when entering the data or use the right bank account.

This process can be time-consuming and burdensome, leading to stressful situations. To compound matters, banks charge high fees and do not show the real exchange rate they are using, making it difficult to ascertain the exact costs.

“We had one client specifically who was making payments outside of the UK, in USD, to one of the traditional high-street banks. It was quite a large amount of money. Fees were quite high, exchange rates weren’t particularly great, and it wasn’t beneficial for them to do it, but it was essential based on their business model.”

LilyIris Accounting needed a simple, secure and cost-effective payment solution to make international payments on behalf of their clients to save time on payments, remove the risks of human error and reduce the fees associated with international payments.

“Another client had European staff who went home and wanted to be paid in Europe. The fees for transferring money out of the UK are quite substantial, and the exchange rates aren’t particularly great, especially with traditional banks, so it made it quite expensive for these members of staff to be able to go work back in their home countries and be paid in their home countries."

Already using Crezco to collect payments and help her clients make domestic payments, Sam was naturally interested when Crezco released their international payments solution and decided to test it out.

Solution

With Crezco account-to-account payment solution, LilyIris can help their clients seamlessly make payments in 37 currencies to 180 countries. Crezco collects the funds in the local currency and automatically converts the currencies with transparent exchange rates and low fees to settle locally with foreign suppliers and employees.

“They also noticed a difference in what they were receiving each month in their salaries and happy staff makes a happy employer.”

Crezco also helps with the payment processes, as Sam and her team can prepare the payment link and share it with their client for approval. This makes it super easy, fast and error-free for both sides as LilyIris doesn’t have to switch between client’s bank accounts and clients just need to click the payment link, log into their bank account and accept the payment request.

“Aside from the exchange rate and the fee savings, the process is a lot slicker when sending an international payment through Crezco. We have a two-step authorisation through the high-street banks, and we can send a link to the client for them to approve, and there is a lot more time saved in that.”

Results

LilyIris Accounting helps their clients save money as Crezco often provides a better exchange rate than the banks as well as lower fees. With Crezco, there are no hidden fees, which means Sam and her clients can see in real-time how much they will pay and how much the suppliers or employees will receive in their local currency. Crezco charges a small 0.3% - 0.35% fee (depending on the currency), while banks can often charge between 1% and 3.7%!

“When Crezco released the international payments module, we did notice a substantial difference in the exchange rate. The difference in the fees was also noticeable; I think we calculated that it was about four times the fees with the high-street banks as we are now paying with Crezco.”

This is equivalent to 85% saving on international payment fees! Saving money is nice, but when running a business, saving time is also a major win. Being able to prepare batch payments and simply sharing the link with clients makes the entire process seamless and straightforward.

“We calculated roughly 2% were saved on making the international payment, but also there is a huge time saving that we’ve generated for us and for our clients with using the payment batches and being able to send the link across and not having to chase people to get the information or the payment actually done.”

With this partnership, LilyIris Accounting joins thousands of companies using Crezco today to simplify, accelerate and secure their international payments.

Next steps

LilyIris will continue to serve their customers by helping them with quality advices but also by helping them to set up software that will make their businesses even more efficient.