Also referred to as indirect access or indirect scheme access, the agency banking model provides firms with a route to offer accounts and payment services to their customers without requiring the resources and costs associated with joining a payment scheme directly.    

Yes, we can provide your business with both Accounts and Clearing. We’ll help you choose the right account for you and your customers from our range of operating, customer segregated, client money and multi-currency accounts. 

For clearing and payments, we connect directly to the UK payment schemes: Faster Payment System (FPS), Bacs (including Direct Debit) and CHAPS. 

Agency banking supports firms through the provision of accounts and access to payment schemes. ClearBank Embedded Banking solution takes agency banking to the next level, offering interest-bearing, FSCS eligible current accounts, savings accounts and Cash ISAs to your customers. 

ClearBank offers: 

• Operating accounts
• Customer segregated accounts
• Client money accounts 

All GBP funds in these accounts are held safely at the Bank of England and all euro funds in these accounts are held safely at the European Central Bank. 

Operating accounts are designed to hold your operating funds. In other words, the money you use for the day-to-day running of your business, for example paying suppliers or employees. You can have one operating account, or several different operating accounts to manage different parts of your business. 

Customer segregated accounts sit alongside your business operating accounts, keeping customer funds in a different account than your own. You can choose to use real customer segregated accounts or at least one real account with up to 6 million virtual customer segregated accounts. 

Client money accounts allow you to receive and hold money for (or on behalf of) your customers. These accounts separate your customers' CASS 7 investment funds from your own operating accounts. You can choose to use real client money accounts or at least one real account with up to 6 million virtual client money accounts. 

Safeguarding ensures that your customer's money is held separately from your operating funds. For e-money institutions (EMIs) and payment institutions (PIs), having at least one safeguarded account in place is a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) requirement. 

Safeguarding gives your customers peace of mind knowing that their money would be protected if your business were to become insolvent. You can receive an FCA-compliant safeguarding letter from ClearBank proving your regulatory compliance in relation to the account. 

Yes, our customer segregated accounts sit alongside your business operating accounts, keeping customer funds in a different account than your own. 

While we don’t provide business bank accounts, we build accounts and payment infrastructure for financial institutions that do through our Embedded Banking offering. For example, we work with Tide to so they can provide their customers with FSCS protected business bank accounts.  

A real account is an account that actually holds money. Real accounts have balances that are credited or debited, as well as their own account number and sort code. 

A virtual account is a mechanism to allocate money to a pot within a real account. That means funds don‘t actually move and the account number works like a reference number. You might think of them as redirecting money to and from a real account in real-time, but they don’t settle any transactions or carry their own balances. 

Put simply, a real account actually holds money. A virtual account, on the other hand, is a ledger to see the transactions against a real account. If you think of a real account as a centralised location where all customer money is held, virtual accounts are the filters that help financial institutions keep track of it. 

A virtual IBAN (virtual International Bank Account Number) is a virtual account number that functions in the same way as a regular IBAN (International Bank Account Number). While a regular IBAN is a 1:1 match to a real bank account, with a virtual IBAN you can have multiple unique vIBANs that all hold balances within the same overall real account. This enables payments to be easily routed and reconciled in different ways, depending on a business’ needs. 

An IBAN account number format consists of up to 34 alphanumeric characters. IBANs don’t replace sort codes or account numbers. They are used to identify individual bank accounts for both incoming and outgoing international money transfer transactions whereas SWIFT / BIC codes are mainly used to identify a specific bank during an international transaction. 

The IBAN format is as follows: 

• A 2-letter country code (for example, GB for the United Kingdom or ES for Spain) 
• 2 digits which are used to validate the IBAN before a payment is processed 
• The BBAN (Basic Bank Account Number) for the specific account. This follows the protocols of the country the account is held in and can be up to 30 characters long. 

A BIC (Business Identifier Code), sometimes referred to as a ‘SWIFT code,’ is a set of either 8 or 11 characters that uses numbers and letters to represent a bank branch. It is a global standard used to identify banks and financial institutions for international payments, with each branch having a unique code. 

The format is as follows: 

• AAAA: 4-letter bank code that’s usually a shortened version of a bank’s name.
• BB: 2-letter country code that represents the country in which the bank’s located.
• CC: 2-character location code, pointing to the place where the bank’s head office is situated. It’s made up of letters and numbers.
• XXX: 3-digit branch code that specifies a particular branch of the bank, usually the bank’s headquarters. These last 3 digits are optional. 

In the Eurozone, you'll always need an IBAN and a SWIFT/BIC code to transfer funds. 

A SWIFT code is a set of 8 or 11 digits that represents a bank branch. It is the same as a BIC code, with the two terms being used interchangeably. 

Confirmation of Payee (CoP) is a name checking service for UK-based payments. Launched in 2020, it has now been successfully implemented by a number of UK banks, building societies and other payment service providers (PSPs). The service aims to give peace of mind when sending money, all whilst helping to reduce types of fraud and misdirected payments.

ClearBank doesn’t have any minimum volume requirements. 

A ClearBank multi-currency account enables you to hold several different currencies – each with their own balance – within a single account. 

Yes, ClearBank offers multi-currency accounts. 

Currently ClearBank supports 12 different currencies: GBP, USD, EUR, PLN, CZK, HUF, SEK, DKK, NOK, CHF, RON and CAD. 

We’re continuously adding more currencies to support our customers’ growing needs.