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Receive, send, and store funds with Virtual Accounts

The following guide explains how to use virtual accounts (VA) to manage fiat and crypto payments via BVNK.

A virtual account (VA) is a BVNK-managed payment account for sending, holding, and receiving both fiat and crypto funds in one place.

The customer virtual accounts product allows you to create virtual accounts for your customers, simplifying how you track and manage their payments.

To handle transactions for your customers and their clients (whether businesses or individuals), you assign each customer a virtual account with a unique name, details, and a virtual IBAN (vIBAN). These vIBANs link to your payment account so you can send and receive payments on behalf of your customers under their names.

BVNK offers virtual accounts as an optional solution. Partners and customers may use them, but they are not required for all. You can use other BVNK services (such as payments, crypto trading, or treasury management) without setting up or managing virtual accounts.

To qualify for customer virtual accounts, a partner must:

  • Be a fully licensed financial services provider (e.g., UK FCA license, Canadian MSB, etc.).
  • Demonstrate a robust financial crime control framework (AML, risk policies, transaction monitoring, etc.).
  • Undergo compliance checks, including documentation review and interviews with the BVNK's compliance team.

For who is this product intended?​

Virtual accounts are designed for regulated Financial Institutions and similar businesses that need to manage payments for themselves and their customers. We simplify the entire process and offer tools to efficiently manage funds between your business, your customers, and their end-customers.

The product supports two main models:

  • Principal virtual accounts

    Principal virtual accounts are created for direct BVNK customers, including but not limited to:

    • Any business entity: Fintech companies, gaming platforms, crypto businesses, and more
    • Physical persons: In the embedded model, individual persons can also have virtual accounts

  • Customer virtual accounts

    Customer virtual accounts enable financial institutions and banks to create underlying virtual accounts for their own customers, such as:

    • Regulated Financial Institutions
    • Banks
    • Payment Service Providers (PSPs)
    • Crypto and Trading Platforms

What is a standard use case for virtual accounts?​

VAs are intended for partners who need to segregate funds, simplify reconciliation, or embed financial services in their platforms.

Virtual accounts enable various payment scenarios:

For Crypto and Trading Platforms:

You represent a crypto trading platform and want to allow your customers to deposit fiat funds for crypto trading. Your platform receives deposits from hundreds of customers daily, and you need a robust payment reconciliation mechanism to match incoming payments to the correct customer accounts.

With virtual accounts, each of your customers receives a unique named vIBAN. When a customer deposits $5,000 into their virtual account, you can immediately identify the customer who made the payment using the unique account details. The funds are deposited into your principal wallet, and you can automatically credit the customer's trading account balance. Your customers can also convert their fiat deposits to crypto, trade, and then withdraw crypto or convert back to fiat—all through their virtual account.

This setup enables seamless fund segregation, accurate reconciliation, and a smooth user experience for both fiat and crypto operations.

For Payment Service Providers and Financial Institutions:

You represent a Payment Service Provider serving multiple business customers. Your customers need to receive payments from their own clients and make payouts to suppliers, employees, or contractors. Each customer requires their own named IBAN to maintain clear payment separation and reconciliation.

You create a virtual account for each of your customers, with a unique vIBAN issued in their business name. When customer A receives a €10,000 payment from their client, the funds are automatically routed to customer A's virtual account, and you can immediately identify and reconcile the payment. Customer A can then use those funds to make payouts to their suppliers or employees, all processed through their dedicated virtual account.

This model allows you to process third-party payments on behalf of your customers while maintaining complete fund segregation, enabling accurate reconciliation, and providing your customers with professional payment infrastructure. The flow can optionally include stablecoin pre-funding for faster settlement and cross-border capabilities.

Additional use cases:

Virtual accounts support various other scenarios:

  • Neobanks: Issue named IBANs to your customers for personal or business banking services
  • Marketplaces: Provide each merchant with their own virtual account to receive payments from buyers
  • Employer of Record services: Create virtual accounts for each client company to manage payroll and contractor payments
  • Treasury management: Segregate funds across different business units or projects with dedicated virtual accounts

How virtual accounts work?​

Virtual accounts are connected to wallets, which serve as the storage of value with balances.

A wallet is a storage of value that maintains balances. It can hold fiat or crypto value. Various payment instruments can be connected to a wallet, including Crypto addresses (for crypto).

If crypto lands on a channel connected to a fiat wallet, it's automatically converted and deposited in the wallet as fiat. If a virtual account is linked to that wallet, you can withdraw funds through the VA.

The storage of value is separate from the payment instrument linked to it so that you can manage funds flexibly.

Financial institutions can have the Principal Wallet, which is the storage where the financial institution stores its value. It works like any other fiat wallet. With it, the institution can:

  • Create underlying virtual accounts for their customers
  • Create wallets for their customers
  • Manage funds across the entire structure

Supported virtual account types​

BVNK supports various virtual account types to meet different payment needs:

  • Named Accounts are issued in the name of your business or your customers, enabling personalized payment routing. They are dedicated to domestic payments (within the EEA region) and support the following payment methods and currencies:

    • USD: ACH and other domestic payment methods
    • EUR: SEPA payments
    • GBP: Faster Payments

  • Pulled accounts are standard SWIFT accounts with Virtual International Bank Account Numbers (vIBANs) used for cross-border payments. They are issued in the name of a BVNK-owned legal entity, "System Payed Services Malta".

Virtual accounts require additional approval from BVNK's compliance team. To qualify, your business must:

  • Be a fully licensed financial services provider (for example, UK FCA license, Canadian MSB).
  • Demonstrate a robust financial crime control framework including AML policies, risk management, and transaction monitoring.
  • Complete compliance checks with documentation review and interviews.

How to get started?​

Before you can request or create virtual accounts, your business must be approved for the customer virtual accounts solution.

To request virtual accounts, do the following:

  1. Contact BVNK via your Account Manager or sales contact to express interest in the VA product.

  2. Submit required documentation:

    • Proof of regulatory status, for example, FCA license, MSB registration
    • AML/CTF policies and procedures
    • Risk management framework
    • Details of your business model and use case

BVNK's compliance team reviews your documents and may request additional information. Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) may occur, especially if your business is in a higher-risk sector (for example, gambling, gaming, or trading).

After BVNK's compliance team approves your application:

  1. The commercial team or support success team creates the VA product configuration, specifying which currency virtual accounts you need (GBP, USD, EUR) and other parameters.
  2. The account activation team maps your parameters to the appropriate banking partner.
  3. A wallet is created in the admin panel, mapped to the banking partner.
  4. Once the wallet is created, a virtual account (USD/GBP/EUR VA or SWIFT account) is attached to it.

Also, after your business is enabled for VAs, you can create VAs for your underlying customers. For that:

  • Collect KYC information for your customer (the end user who will receive the VA).
  • Screen the customer according to BVNK's requirements (manual screening, risk checks).

After you have completed these steps, you can proceed with the configuration phase.

Ready to start? Once you have completed the setup process with BVNK, you can proceed with preparing for integration.

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