Who Swan is
Swan is a Paris-based company founded in 2019 that lets other companies offer accounts, cards and payments inside their own products. It is an electronic money institution authorised by France's ACPR, and its accounts come with local IBANs from several EU countries.
Software platforms use it, from accounting and treasury tools to property management, HR, insurance and travel apps, to give their users accounts without becoming a bank themselves. That is why it is one of the banking-as-a-service providers our Accounts & IBANs module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Accounts & IBANs
Holds your customers' accounts as e-money accounts with a local IBAN from the country chosen at onboarding, and runs SEPA Credit Transfers, SEPA Instant and direct debits. Swan verifies every account holder as part of its onboarding.
How the connection works
One connector in the Accounts & IBANs module talks to Swan's GraphQL API with OAuth 2.0 tokens, and receives Swan's webhooks, which carry a secret you set so the module can reject any request without it.
The customer onboards
The module starts a Swan onboarding for the person or company, and the customer completes it while Swan runs the identity or business checks.
The account opens
Swan creates the account holder and the account. Once the account is fully verified, its main IBAN is available, from the country chosen at onboarding.
Money arrives
Swan books an incoming SEPA transfer and sends a Transaction.Booked webhook. Webhooks carry little data on purpose, so the module fetches the details from the API.
The ledger books it
The module posts the transaction to the ledger and the customer's statement within seconds.
Money goes out
A transfer is a sensitive operation, so the customer confirms it with Swan's strong customer authentication. It can go as SEPA Instant, and an instant transfer can fall back to a standard one when the receiving bank cannot take it.
Next to other providers
Swan suits euro accounts with a local IBAN per country. The module talks to it through the same interface as every other banking partner, so the app, the ledger and the statements look the same whichever partner holds an account.
Changing partner later leaves the app unchanged, though customers receive new IBANs under the new partner, a move we plan with you.
When Swan fits best
A strong fit when
- Your users are businesses, freelancers or individuals in the EU, and you want to offer them accounts inside your product.
- You want local IBANs, French, German or Spanish for example, depending on the customer.
- You want the provider to run identity checks and payment consent as part of its regulated role.
Also worth a look
- Treezor, another French e-money institution offering banking-as-a-service.
- Solaris, if you want a bank with a full licence behind the accounts.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Swan account and contract in place, for the account countries and customer types you plan.
The onboarding
We set up Swan's onboarding for individuals or companies, the account country behind each IBAN, and how customers confirm payments with Swan's strong customer authentication.
The keys
The OAuth client credentials and the webhook secret stay in your platform's secrets, and any webhook without the right secret is rejected.
A full test run
Everything runs first in Swan's sandbox, where its Event Simulator creates incoming transfers and other outside events on demand.
