Question 1

Can I apply for a Freemarket account?

Accepted Answer

You can create an account with us if you're an organisation. Our registration procedure is simple, and we make every effort to finish applications quickly and activate your account as soon as possible. With Freemarket, you can settle and reconcile funds more quickly and in real-time, access new markets and currencies, and have trust in your banking relationships.

For more information on our registration process, please click here.

When clients need to utilise the platform, we want to make sure that every account is configured for international payments. When your account is live and has cleared all compliance checks, we'll let you know.

Question 2

Can I cancel an order once it has been created?

Accepted Answer

All incomplete payment orders are able to be located in the platform under the transactions page. Select the exchange or withdrawal that you would like to cancel and proceed to view the details if the transaction is correct. Make sure you are under the scheduled tab on the platform to correctly cancel the exchange. To cancel the exchange, click on ‘Cancel Exchange’ at the top right of the page. If the transaction was funded, all the funds will be returned to your account.

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Note: all cancelled transactions appear in the ‘Cancelled’ tab in the transactions page.

Question 3

Can I get a MT103?

Accepted Answer

All banks and financial institutions utilise MT103, a SWIFT standard messaging protocol, as a globalised proof of payment document.

Although though it is no longer the quickest or cheapest means to transport money, SWIFT, which was first established in the 1970s, remains a trustworthy way to transfer funds between markets and jurisdictions. A bank or financial institution won't often provide you an MT103 receipt; if you do, it will likely cost you as the user. The MT103 provides you with a breakdown of the transaction, including information on the sender, the organisations handling the payment, the transaction's value, fees, and more.

Please contact Support for further information on this.

Question 4

Can I have a vIBAN for cross-border payments?

Accepted Answer

What is a vIBAN?

A virtual IBAN is an IBAN (International Bank Account Number) reference issued by a bank to allow incoming payments to be rerouted to a different, physical bank account.

Virtual IBAN accounts can be used to send and receive payments worldwide, allowing businesses to extend their value chain to provide settlement services to its global clients.

Freemarket and vIBAN accounts

Freemarket can request a vIBAN on the clients’s behalf to a bank for multiple currencies. This will allow the client to provide their own account number stating their own company name instead of Freemarket’s for B2B payments.

The request should be placed with a Relationship Manager. We will follow the internal compliance procedure to create the account on your behalf.

How does the vIBAN work?

From the client’s point of view, a virtual IBAN works in exactly the same way as a regular IBAN account – once they make a payment, their funds will end up in the physical bank account linked to the virtual IBAN.

The vIBAN account is made of:

Account owner name: the client’s name (to be provided by the client – must be the company registered company name or individual’s legal name).

BIC: A bank identifier code (BIC) is a unique identifier for a specific financial institution. This will be provided by the bank upon vIBAN creation.

In addition, the bank can provide:

Sort code: identifies both the bank (in the first digit or the first two digits) and the branch where the account is held.

Account number: the domestic bank account number.

Question 5

Can I have confidence in your safeguarding processes?

Accepted Answer

Freemarket undertakes an annual audit of its compliance with the PSRs 2017 safeguarding requirements.

For more information on our safeguarding processes please see our other articles on the subject here.

Question 6

Can I make a one time batch payment?

Accepted Answer

You can quickly, correctly, and effectively send payments to many recipients in different currencies by uploading a single file. Every 30 days, you will be prompted to authorise the beneficiaries using the platform's 2FA feature.

Each payment on the file must abide by the reachability, message content, and file rules. Payments that are halted during an investigation are removed from the file, and the remaining payments continue to be processed as usual.

Although uploaded files will be processed throughout the day, we advise using the standard FX procedure for one-time transactions that aren't multi-currency.

For more information of our batch payment process please click here.

Question 7

Can I make a payment from my Freemarket account?

Accepted Answer

Your Freemarket account does allow you to send and receive money. This may be a pooled account or vIBAN account that accepts payments or makes payments to the beneficiaries. You may start to make payments right away by setting up an account and confirming payments on it.

A variety of online payments can be made using your Freemarket account, but they must be within our risk tolerance and not breach sending or receiving funds to or from countries where we do not have support. Being a regulated company, we take this seriously and update it frequently. Our operations team occasionally blocks specific payments that violate this.

How you want to send a payment may differ, by which scheme and channel, this could be SWIFT, SEPA, FPS and so on. Each payment has different costs, receipts (transaction message) and reporting.

SWIFT: this is used to send or receive international payments via the SWIFT payment network.
SEPA: SEPA stands for Single Euro Payments Area and it's a payment type used to transfer euro within the EEA.
SEPA Instant: allow you to send 100,000 per transaction, they are available 24/7, 365 days a year, and take no more than 10 seconds to reach payee’s account from the payer’s.
FasterPayments: for the majority of UK-based payments Faster Payments is in place for bank-to-bank payments and designed to speed up the process of sending money. It has a limit in place of £1m per transaction.
Target2: is the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system with payment transactions being settled processing euro payments.

If more funds are required for the payment in the platform, add them to generate a new payment. By navigating to the add funds area towards the top of the page's main menu, you may add funds to your account. Choose the currency of the funds you want to use for the payment from the add funds page, and the necessary bank information will then show up. After the funds have arrived in your account and are available for allocation, you will get an email confirmation.

After you have the funds, establish a new payment to continue, go to the transactions page, choose the beneficiary of the money (the beneficiary information will appear if it has already been used), and authorise the payment.

Question 8

Can I register multiple accounts for one user?

Accepted Answer

We've created an easy-to-follow step-by-step guide on how a single user can register and access multiple accounts using the same login information.

STEP 1: We will email you a unique registration URL link for each and every company you are looking to register to your login email address and account. You will be prompted to log in once you click each link.

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STEP 2: ** You will be instantly taken to a 'Verify Account' screen where you will be asked to enter the company details and information needed in five easy steps for the new business registration.

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STEP 3: Once you've completed registering your companies, you can navigate to your main Dashboard on your account and select the 'Your Registrations' option where you can view the status of any outstanding registrations.

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STEP 4: Please click the 'Continue Registration' option if you haven't finished the registration process yet. You'll be able to pick up where you left off and continue the application. The registration will appear as pending if it is being reviewed.

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You will only be able to keep track of the progress of registrations that you made since registrations are connected to the person who began the process.

Contact support@wearefreemarket.com or your Relationship Manager if you require any more help or have any queries.

Question 9

Can I remove a beneficiary?

Accepted Answer

On the platform, you can suspend a beneficiary; however, all outstanding transactions to the beneficiary will be cancelled. To completely remove the beneficiary from your viewpoint, then please message us and we can get that sorted for you.

Question 10

Can I transfer between two accounts held at Freemarket?

Accepted Answer

Moving money across accounts allows for instantaneous settlement. This transfer within the account is quick and painless. The intra-account capability on the Freemarket platform can be advantageous when moving to another account since it allows for seamless money movement across accounts.

Be careful not to mix up inter account transfer with a intra-account transfer.

Inter account transfer – this allows you to move funds internally between accounts that you own. This type of transfer will go through our compliance checks before it settles.
Intra-account transfer – is when you can move money between accounts at the same financial institution or are keeping the funds within the same ecosystem, this allows us to instantly settle funds. A transfer of this kind we can operate straight-through reconciliation and doesn’t have to pass any additional compliance checks.

By keeping the funds within Freemarket we don’t have to use any payment schemes so it’s more cost-effective for the sender.