User story - Starfish Accounting

Challenge

Late payments is a burden for the majority of businesses and it has a lot to do with the convenience of making a payment. Finding an easy-to-use, secure and instant payment solution that doesn't charge exorbitant payment fees can be difficult, but it's key to success in cash flow management.

We started off back in the day taking cheques and bank transfers which is slow and tedious and paying checks into the bank is a misery. Historically we used Stripe and Paypal, both worked well but the fees are quite noticeable.

Starfish Accounting understood that they had to embrace technology so they moved from taking cheques and bank transfers to digital payment solutions like Stripe and PayPal. Unfortunately, these payment providers charge fees inherent in their activities. Starfish Accounting, as a pioneer in the adoption of new technology, wanted to find a less expensive solution that could work with their accounting software so they could take advantage of the automatic reconciliation process and easily set it up for their clients as well.

Solution

Starfish Accounting chose Crezco because of its account-to-account payment solution. With Crezco, they can collect payments instantly online and for free. They can do this directly via Xero thanks to Crezco's seamless integration, which also reconciles invoices automatically. This saves unnecessary admin time.

We love Crezco, it reconciles automatically in Xero, it's easy for our clients to use and the money appears in our bank account instantly. We rolled-out Crezco to our clients and they love it too!

Customers do not need to share their debit card or their bank account details online, they are instead securely redirected to their bank account to authorise the payment via strong customer authentication. As the money moves from one bank account to another, card fraud is eliminated, as are any fees, delays and chargeback risks.

We are pretty excited about the future with Crezco. We started to trial Accounts Payables which link in to our accounting software and it's just so much easier than going through and having to login to online banking.

Starfish Accounting needs to collect payments from their clients but they also need to pay invoices and employees. Crezco's account-to-account payments help them easily make bulk payments with just one single click and take advantage of the automatic reconciliation process. As they roll out the solution to their clients, Crezco's international payments will also help their customers receive or make single and bulk payments worldwide with low fees. Crezco is a real alternative to Wise for international payments.

Results

Using Crezco's instant account-to-account payment solution, Starfish Accounting received great customer feedback who appreciated the ease-of-use and the accrued security implied by open banking. They receive domestic payments for free instantly, enjoy the automatic reconciliation process and see payments arrive in their bank account faster than ever before. Crezco is the best Stripe alternative for businesses.

Customers who use Crezco, based on advice from Starfish Accounting, are happy to save money on fees and to be able to offer the easiest way to make payments to their clients.

One client was reliant on Stripe as his main payment processing method and moves to use Crezco and on an average month, he has saved £1,000 per month in payment fees.

Payments must be executed properly so customer support is also extremely important. If something goes wrong, Starfish Accounting wants to be able to speak with someone to help resolve the issue as soon as possible. They also want to provide feedback to help improve the product to better meet their needs and are happy to have their feedback taken into consideration by the Crezco's team.

Working with the Crezco team is a really nice experience, they are super responsive, they are also super keen to have feedback on product and I can already see the development work that's going in. The Crezco team is just fantastic.

Next steps

Starfish Accounting started using Crezco's bulk payments solution and they love it so far. Finding it easier and quicker to use than having to login to online banking, they will continue to use it until they are confident enough to recommend it to their clients.

They will continue to serve their customers better and try new ideas and technologies. Accounting tech is a fast-growing industry and Starfish Accounting want to stay on top of it for them, but also for their clients.

The best thing about our business is the opportunity to run with new ideas, to try different things and see what works, so using Crezco is a fantastic example of that.