Question 1

Do you have a customer complaints procedure in place?

Accepted Answer

At Freemarket, we always aim to provide you with the best standards of service when using our product.

Our customer service representatives are available at all times to help with your inquiries. Freemarket recognises that in rare circumstances, our service might not have lived up to your expectations. If this is the case, we sincerely apologise if you feel that we have let you down. We will continue to do all in our power to make things right with you.

Freemarket has a complaints mechanism in place to make sure that we handle complaints and enquiries properly as a fully regulated business. Our regulators at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) have provided suggestions and regulations that have guided the creation of the complaint procedure below.

The Head of Compliance will acknowledge and investigate each complaint. A complainant must first submit their complaint to Freemarket, and if they are dissatisfied with the outcome, they may be permitted to submit their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman. You may not be able to file a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman if you agree to our corporate terms and conditions.

To ensure that we have an audit trail and that we have all the facts to help us understand your case, we request that you email support@wearefreemarket.com with the details of your complaint, including your account number (beginning with an ‘A’).

We will then:

Send you written acknowledgement that your complaint has been received;
Contact you further should we require any additional details;
Fully investigate your case and your concerns, followed by issuing a detailed response including an explanation of our decisions and reasons for said decision. If you remain dissatisfied with our response, you have the right to forward your concerns to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Please note: we always encourage you to allow us to undergo our internal complaints procedure before referring your concerns to the Financial Ombudsman.

Email: complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk
Mail: The Financial Ombudsman Service (UK), Exchange Tower, London, E14 9SR
Phone: 0800 023 4567

Question 2

How safe is my money?

Accepted Answer

As a condition of its authorisation as an API by the FCA, Freemarket is required to protect and keep safe its customers’ funds. Specifically, Freemarket must comply with the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (PSRs). These regulations stipulate that APIs must have appropriate and well-managed safeguarding arrangements to ensure client funds are not subject to any other claim and that in the event of insolvency, are returned to the client in full, and in a timely and orderly way.

This is set out in detail within:

PSRs regulation 23; and
Chapter 10 of the FCA Approach Document

Freemarket is not a bank; your account with Freemarket is a payment account rather than a bank account. The funds provided to Freemarket for the purposes of making a payment are not eligible for depositor protection via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Question 3

How long does it take to register?

Accepted Answer

The registration process can vary per account, after we will conduct our mandatory compliance checks, once satisfied, an account can be created on the platform for you to use.

Question 4

Can I turn off notifications?

Accepted Answer

All clients are currently set to receive notifications as their default setting.

If you message your Relationship Manager or support@wearefreemarket.com, we can switch this for you.

Question 5

How can I change my name and password?

Accepted Answer

The platform allows you to change your name and password on the top right corner once you’ve logged in. Following this, your user details will appear on the screen, and you’ll be able to edit your username, email address and phone number. If you wish to amend your password, you’ll need to know the existing password in order to change it. If you don’t know your password, then you can receive an email link resetting your password to the registered email address. Once done, you’ll be ready to use the platform for all your payment solutions.

Question 6

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 7

How can I withdraw the balance from my account?

Accepted Answer

You might receive a notification via email requesting that you withdraw the funds in your account. There's a simple fix if you have no way of doing so.

We regularly require that each and every one of our clients through a re-verification process. Our compliance team will contact you if your account has been suspended or has entered the re-verification phase and ask you to submit certain evidence for them to assess so your account may be authorised and the option to withdraw funds made available once more.

Question 8

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 9

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 10

How do I make frictionless & instant payments from my account?

Accepted Answer

The option of creating a payment is straightforward when making a transaction from your account. If you have an account with us, you may transfer funds between accounts easily and at no extra charge. How you maintain funds to increase cashflow is a component of cash management.

With the aid of Freemarket, we are able to optimise cash flow and working capital across a number of markets and jurisdictions, with global, domestic and worldwide collection capability. One integration and connection can improve your treasury requirements and offer value for each of our clients and their underlying clients that serve them.

You can use the platform at any time to make payments or transactions. However, because our banking partners don't work weekends and we don't make payments on the weekends, our settlement timeframes may be affected.