Augustin Dobre, Twispay: We crossed the 1 million transactions threshold for the first time last year

Powered by a nifty API that is easy to integrate and extremely developer-friendly, Twispay, a brand owned by Capital Financial Services, enables businesses to process payments in any currency from customers across the globe, through virtually any payment method. To find out more about how Twispay works, Business Review talked to the company’s CEO, Augustin Dobre

By Aurel Constantin

What is the difference between Twispay, which is licenced by Visa and Mastercard, and other payment platforms?

Capital Financial Services, the institution that operates the Twispay brand, is an e-money financial institution—the first such institution that was ever approved by the Romanian National Bank, in 2013. Unlike most traditional payment processors, we are strictly regulated and benefit from Visa and Mastercard principal memberships. This status enables us to be autonomous and process card transactions independently, in a straightforward manner, without requiring a sponsoring financial institution. Moreover, since our license is passported across the European Economic Area, we may offer our services to merchants across the continent and support e-commerce operators in implementing their cross-border strategies.

What advantages do Twispay services provide to e-commerce customers compared to other payment services?

When choosing a financial institution regulated by the Romanian National Bank, as opposed to a traditional payment provider, e-commerce operators enjoy several benefits, the most prominent being a high level of financial security. This happens because e-money financial institutions are required to have safeguarding accounts. These ensure that each e-shop’s revenue is separated from Twispay’s operational funds and that the e-tailer is their sole beneficiary. No company creditor may access sums in the safeguarding accounts. Twispay has safeguarding accounts with 3 Romanian banks and the German subsidiary of JP Morgan. The Twispay payment gateway also provides a series of benefits, such as a solid analytics module and excellent implementation support. Our platform’s administration panel enables marketers to have a real-time view of their customer statistics. Since the gateway was created inhouse by the Twispay DevOps team, we offer 100 percent free, in-house customisation services and customer support. Another im- portant differentiator for Twispay is the fact that we work with e-shop operators to help them increase conversions and reduce the number of failed payments. We identify the reason for any failed transaction and communicate it to the merchant. In this case, if, for example, a payment doesn’t go through because the customer has entered the wrong card details or CVC code or because of insufficient funds, we can automatically send an email to that shopper and invite them to try again using another card or using a payment link.

How many transactions did Twispay process for customers last year?

Last year was the first year when we crossed the 1 million transactions threshold. For a fintech that has operated in this industry for only 5 years, this is an excellent result, especially since most of our customers have come to us organically.

What was the average value for each transaction?

The average value per transaction has been around EUR 40, which is significantly lower than the 2021 figure. This is a sign that we have diversified our portfolio, having enrolled many retailers that are new to ecommerce. Now, we have quite a varied list of 300-400 B2B clients in different industries, from tech startups to sellers of music and video equipment, insurance providers or F&B delivery companies. Some of our customers include AV Store, French Revolution, My Geisha, and even NFT platform XOXNO. This was our first Web3 client, an NFT platform that allows users to purchase nonfungible tokens using traditional fiat currencies. With XOXNO, we bridge the gap between the metaverse and what we know as the real world.