How GiftRound offers secure online group collections with Mangopay

GiftRound is an Edinburgh-based crowdfunding platform founded in 2018 by Craig Forsythe during his time on the RBS Entrepreneur Accelerator Programme, an initiative designed to support entrepreneurs and start-up businesses in Scotland.

GiftRound facilitates the creation of money pots for individuals and teams: over 800,000 colleagues, friends and family members across the UK use the platform to set up and contribute to group gifts. 

GiftRound’s mission:

• Provide a reliable, easy to use, secure online service that helps people collect money for group gifts. 
• Create engaging user experiences

The business model:

Setting up a collection and contributing to a money pot is free for users, as is the selection of an eGift card from selected outlets. The platform charges a 7.5% fee on totals collected when payouts are done via bank transfer. 

GiftRound’s challenges

• Complying with third-party platform regulations 
• Collecting and securing funds until they are ready to be distributed
• Providing its users with reliable pay-in and payout services
• Managing complex payment flows
• Preventing fraud
  
  

How Mangopay supports GiftRound

Managing payment flows is at the core of GiftRound’s activities, which is why the company needed a strong payment infrastructure capable of processing complex flows and handling its users' funds. GiftRound chose Mangopay’s solution based on our native expertise in building and managing crowdfunding payment flows, and launched its platform in June 2018.

This partnership enables GiftRound to

• Operate throughout the European Economic Area thanks to Mangopay’s EMI license.
• Be fully compliant with all relevant regulations and standards.
• Streamline the onboarding of new users with automated KYC processes.
• Create workflows tailored to the platform’s needs with Mangopay’s flexible e-wallet solution. GiftRound can create as many e-wallets as needed to collect fees and enable users to set up money pots. 
• Support the payment methods contributors prefer in the currencies they prefer. 
• Hold funds securely and in large amounts in Mangopay’s accounts until the end of a collection. 
• Split payments seamlessly and ensure the safe and timely payout to collection recipients
  
  

The results so far

Between 2021 and 2022, pay-in (payments into the Mangopay platform) increased by 40%. This continues their staggering development as they have grown by 134,473% since the platform first launched in 2018! 

Mangopay’s e-wallet solution allows GiftRound to instantly create one wallet per user, or as many as needed, in which unlimited funds can be stored for as long as required before being paid out to the beneficiary, either via bank transfer or in the form of a gift card. 

Digital certificates are used to verify all identities and transactions. This enables the platform to track the entire customer journey, ensure a seamless and transparent flow of funds, and mitigate risks of fraud. 

GiftRound can deal with customer issues on a case by case basis or identify recurring issues with Mangopay’s dashboard that perfectly connects front and back end operations. This ability to monitor all operations lends legitimacy to GiftRound and reassures their users.

Since GiftRound’s launch in 2018, the platform has had to comply with PSD2 as a third-party intermediary: Mangopay’s experts made sure implementation was fast and smooth, resulting in a reduced number of failed contributions.