Just last month, when I spoke to Leetchi CEO Celine Lazorthes in their offices about their iPhone app release, I could feel the air was buzzing in the offices about something greater, and it seems that MangoPay is exactly what all the buzz was about. A full stack online payment solution, MangoPay is the result of Leetchi’s having become an official European electronic money institution in December 2012, used to power their B2C social payments solution.
MangoPay’s functionalities have been designed with marketplaces, collaborative consumption (p2p), and crowdfunding platforms in mind. Mangopay integrates with internationally recognized payment methods like VISA or Mastercard, as well as local payment systems like Carte Bleue in France and ELV in Germany. Mangopay can manage bank transfers, one-click payments, or even be used to create white-label e-wallets, and is compatible on multiple devices (mobile, tablet, online) and in multiple currencies.
We were looking for a secure payment solution that corresponds to our needs of escrowing funds for third parties. MangoPay enables us to handle e‐wallets while being completely transparent towards our users and grants perfect legal compliance.
– Alex Boucherot, Ulule
Speaking with Celine about the topic last month, she mentioned that, once she had invested in getting a license to manage money transfers, other startups began coming to her and asking how she did, how they could do it, etc., and she realized that they might be able to expand their licence’s B2C use to something greater. Launching with 30 clients – Ulule, Vestiaire Collective, Zenwego, Payplug, Cookening, etc – MangoPay’s fees are 1,8% + 0,18€ per transaction, which line up pretty competitively with other online payments methods like Stripe, Paymill, Paypal, etc.
Despite the fact that a recent report about Innovation in Online Payments suggested that very little innovation would come out of Europe due to its strict regulation, it seems that that same strict regulation is making the market a very hot spot to be in. While I will be curious o see whether MangoPay’s differentiation and vertical focus will allow it to gain major traction – namely, whether their verticals are really in need of a vertical-specific online payments solution – but, for now it seems, they’ve got a pretty unique positioning.
You can try out MangoPay today for free – no setup or subscription fees – in a SandBox environment (MangoPay is quite developer-friendly in that regard)!