How Deblock seamlessly operates as a SEPA participant relying on Numeral as a fully-managed bank connectivity partner

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.

In this case study, Aaron Beck, Deblock’s Co-founder and CFO, and Anthony van der Pluijm, Head of Product at Deblock, walks us through Deblock’s journey to build and operate its SEPA payment rails with Numeral.

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. “Crypto payments arrive instantly. The public ledger adds unmatched transparency as everyone, including you, knows exactly the status of each payment while no intermediary can alter it”, says Anthony.

“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,” says Anthony.

Choosing the best partner for SEPA connectivity

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.

To build this connectivity, Deblock wanted to rely on a partner with strong SEPA expertise. They had this expertise internally, but building their connectivity in-house would have meant diverting product and engineering resources from other critical parts of the product.

“From our first discussion with the Numeral team, they showed excellent expertise on bank connectivity and SEPA payments, and it became obvious that Numeral was the best fit for us,” says Anthony. “When our engineers evaluated the solution, the architecture of the platform and the very well-written API docs made it very clear that Numeral was technically fit for purpose. It became a no-brainer for us,” adds Anthony.

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.

Numeral’s payments team-as-a-service

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.

Numeral co-led the entire integration project with the sponsor bank, from obtaining the documentation to developing the integration between Numeral and the sponsor bank to the final test and certification of the end-to-end Deblock, Numeral, and sponsor bank integration. Numeral 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.

“This project has been a true partnership with Numeral. Besides the technical integration, Numeral also co-manages the payment operations from a technical lens. Numeral is very proactive to technical issues that could arise, and helps to monitor, investigate and resolve payment incidents. I fully trust their judgement and it sometimes feels like we are part of the same company.” shares Anthony.

“Using Numeral 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.

Solidifying Deblock’s foundations and preparing a pan-European expansion

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.

To achieve these goals, Deblock is actively hiring across various teams. Have a look at their careers page if you are interested!