Project — № 01
Collecting payments without a middleman
When you pay for one of our applications, the money goes through a payment provider, Mollie. It holds the authorisation to collect, and takes a commission every time. The project is to obtain our own authorisation and collect directly. Here are the four steps that lead there, and what each one costs.
Contents
- The obstacle: a permission
- What each one takes
- Four steps
- Eight documents to write
- What we do not know
The real obstacle
Taking payment requires permission.
Building a tool asks no one's permission. Taking money does. Payment is a regulated trade: to operate yourself, you need a status granted by the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, and that status is not obtained with code.
That is why everyone goes through a middleman. It holds the licence, takes its cut, writes the rules. The dependency is not technical, it is regulatory, and that is what makes it last.
Every means we want to take back is guarded by a permission. This one is crossed in four steps.
The price of dependency
What each one takes.
Stripe is the default choice, and for good reasons: it integrates quickly and accepts almost every payment method. Here is what each payment costs, according to public pricing.
Stripe
Standard European card
1.5% + €0.25
On €20.00: €0.55
Stripe
Premium European card
2.8% + €0.25
On €20.00: €0.81
Stripe
International card
3.15% + €0.25
On €20.00: €0.88
Wero
Account to account, via Mollie
0.90% + €0.25
On €20.00: €0.43
SEPA transfer
Bank to bank, via Mollie
€0.25
On €20.00: €0.25
Imagine those commissions recovered to fund tomorrow's applications.
Every payment leaves a few tens of cents to a middleman today. Collected by us, they would stay in the organisation and fund what comes next.
Wero is the European account-to-account payment initiative: money goes from the customer's bank to the merchant's, without passing through Visa or Mastercard. It belongs to EPI, a company owned by sixteen European banks and providers, including BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and ING. The percentage drops. But a merchant still reaches it through a provider, which adds its commission and its fixed fee per transaction.
The fixed fee is what weighs on small amounts, and it is the same everywhere. Removing it means being the payment institution yourself: that is the point of this project.
Public pricing for France, recorded on 6 October 2026 from stripe.com/fr/pricing and mollie.com/fr/pricing. Excludes volume-negotiated pricing. The group that runs Wero publishes no price list: the rate shown is Mollie's, our current provider. EPI shareholders according to epicompany.eu.
Project — collecting payments without a middleman
Four steps,
climbed one at a time.
Each removes a share of dependency. Each already earns, which pays for the next. None requires waiting to have all the money before starting.
The share that is not yet ours
00 — today
Where we stand
00
Under a third party's licence
€0
No regulatory capital
What is not ours
This is where we stand today. Payments go through an already licensed payment provider: we hold neither bank details nor customer identities, everything stays with it.
- What we gain
- The product runs, collects and funds itself right now. Nothing waits for an authorisation.
- What it costs
- Complete dependency. The provider takes its cut, sets its rules and can turn off the tap.
Next step — 01
The next step
01
Agent of a payment service provider
€0
Registration, not authorisation
What is not ours
A licensed institution appoints us and registers us with the ACPR. We operate payments ourselves, under its licence and its responsibility.
- What we gain
- Actually operate payments, build volume and compliance expertise in real conditions, without tying up a cent.
- What it costs
- An institution has to be convinced to appoint us: it files the application, not us. Good repute, competence and internal controls to demonstrate.
Next step — 02
Later
02
Simplified payment institution authorisation
Reduced capital
Up to €3M/month in volume
What is not ours
Our own authorisation, granted by the ACPR. A lighter prudential regime: reduced initial capital, and no minimum own-funds requirement under article L. 522-11-1 of the French Monetary and Financial Code.
- What we gain
- The licence is ours. No more principal, no more cut taken by a middleman, no more rules written by someone else.
- What it costs
- A complete authorisation file, and that is where the legal work concentrates. The regime is capped and gives no access to the European passport.
Next step — 03
Later
03
Payment institution authorisation
€125,000
Minimum initial capital
What is not ours
The full regime, with no volume cap. The capital is not an expense: it sits on the balance sheet, required by the regulator, and stays there.
- What we gain
- No volume limit at all, and the possibility of applying for direct access to the European Central Bank's transfer network, without an intermediary bank.
- What it costs
- Full internal controls, permanent compliance functions, continuous reporting to the regulator. And a banking link that does not go away: a payment institution is not a bank, so customer funds must stay in a separate account at a credit institution.
What the reinvestment funds
Lawyers, not capital.
The regulatory capital, the €125,000 of the last step, is not an expense. It is a sum held on the balance sheet, which the regulator requires to see and which stays there. It is not consumed, it is set down.
The real expense is elsewhere, and it is human. An authorisation file is a set of written procedures, verifiable and defensible before an authority that can question the directors and analyse the business model in detail. It is written with lawyers specialised in banking law, and maintained by a compliance officer who does not leave once the file is submitted.
The file
What has to be written.
The detail of an authorisation file, as the regulator examines it. This list is what our reinvestment pays for.
№ 01
Programme of operations
The precise description of the services provided, how they work and how they are delivered. It is the piece the regulator reads first.
№ 02
Prudential business plan
Financial projections showing that prudential requirements will be met over time, not only at filing.
№ 03
AML/CFT framework
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing: procedures, controls, and a designated officer. Not a document, a permanent function.
№ 04
Internal controls
Two levels of control, with the governance that goes with them. The simplified regime lightens it, it does not remove it.
№ 05
Security and sensitive data
Procedures for access to payment data, security measures, fraud prevention.
№ 06
Business continuity
What happens when it goes down. The regulator wants the plan written before the incident.
№ 07
Safeguarding of funds
How user funds are protected and ring-fenced. They never belong to us.
№ 08
Directors and shareholders
Good repute, competence, experience, assessed person by person. The authority may hold hearings.
Reviewing a complete file takes three months. The clock only starts once the file is deemed complete; the preparation has no regulatory deadline. That is the part we fund.
What we do not know yet
The price is not public.
Neither the authorities nor the specialised firms publish a price list for assisting with an authorisation file. The figure does not exist in the open: it comes by quote, case by case.
So we will not put an amount on this page until we have our own. The only figures shown here are the regulatory capital amounts, set by the Monetary and Financial Code. When the quotes come in, they will be published, like the rest.
And we may never have to climb all four steps. Step 00 already collects. Each of the next ones is decided when it becomes more profitable than the dependency it removes.