Segregated Account, Money Custody.

In any Crowdlending or Crowdfactoring platform, whether you're an investor or a company, one of the essential steps after registering, uploading the necessary documentation, and signing the contracts is transferring funds from a bank account to that platform. But do you know exactly where you're depositing your money and with what guarantees? What is it used for, if it's reinvested and where? What happens to your money in case of insolvency?

To address these questions and provide security, the Law 16/2009 of November 13th on payment services requires that clients' money be held in Segregated Accounts.

So, let's see what a Segregated Account is.

We will understand its meaning well if we consider that to segregate is to separate. We are talking about separating or segregating accounts as a security measure.

Security segregation originated in the United States in the 1960s due to problems in the securities markets. When a broker or "brokerage" went bankrupt, they could not return the securities to their clients because their accounts and their own were not separated. Over time, it has been extended to other institutions and financial platforms.

In this sense, a segregated account keeps clients' funds completely separate from the company's funds; the money cannot be used for speculation, will be excluded from any potential bankruptcy proceedings, and will be perfectly safeguarded in the hands of its owners. These accounts are usually held in trusted external banks and ultimately covered by the Deposit Guarantee Fund up to an amount of one hundred thousand euros.

Given the increasing need in the market for these types of accounts, various entities have emerged to provide this service. Specifically, at INVERSA, we work with PAYMÁTICO, entity number 6861 registered in the Special Registry of Payment Entities of the Bank of Spain with Authorization since July 2013.

Paymático is hosted within a National Bank but maintains its own identity that allows it to safeguard and custody the funds on behalf of the rightful owners and offer a service for automating payment processes such as transfers, direct debits, and card payments. The latter are made through the secure payment gateway Redsys used by most banks.

In conclusion, thanks to this outsourcing, the money is identified as belonging to a particular client, completely independent of the company's assets, offering the highest security guarantees.