Crowdfunded lending platforms that specialize in providing loans to businesses—known as “crowdlending”—face the challenge of finding a bank willing to hold investors’ funds.
The Business Financing Promotion Act, in effect since April 2015, requires crowdlending platforms to:
Deposit the funds in a financial institution accredited by the Bank of Spain.
https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2015-4607
This ensures that investors’ contributions go directly to the companies; as a result, the platforms do not have access to the funds raised.
However, due to the scarcity of institutions that can offer these services in Spain, crowdlending companies authorized by the CNMV have had to turn to foreign institutions, such as the French company Lemon Way, which is also accredited by the Bank of Spain as a payment agent.
The problem is that no institution in Spain offers this service.
Therefore, the only solution would be for companies engaged in crowdlending (and authorized by the CNMV) to register as payment institutions so they would not have to rely on a third party.
The main reason Spanish banks do not offer this service is that they do not want to make things easier for these lending companies—logically, because they are direct competitors.
Lemon Way has been a pioneer in offering this service both in and outside of Spain, as it has a robust technological infrastructure that makes it highly competitive in terms of costs and the fees it charges platforms.
This is essential for these companies, whose still-emerging business requires them to be highly efficient.