Atlantic Money takes its responsibility to protect customer funds very seriously. We operate multiple bank accounts in order to ensure that money held for the purposes of customer transactions is kept separately from our own whenever it is required to be, according to rules and regulations. This is called safeguarding. Safeguarding ensures that your funds remain safe even if something happens to us.
Transfer steps and protection of your funds
- Create a transfer: select a recipient and specify the amount you want to send them. We'll show you the live exchange rate and a clear breakdown of fees before confirming your transfer.
- Pay for your transfer: you'll need to make a bank transfer of the correct amount to your Atlantic Money account. We receive these funds into a designated customer safeguarding bank account and your money is protected while it is held here.
- Currency conversion: because you instruct us to convert your currency, we withdraw it from your Atlantic Money account. We usually do this immediately in order to begin the conversion process (unless you are transferring over the weekend and select next available rate, in which case we will wait). If you select Standard delivery, it takes 2 business days to convert your money. If you select Express delivery, you don't need to wait for currency conversion. You can learn more about delivery speeds here.
- Paying the recipient: once your money has been converted we'll send it to the recipient immediately. If there is a delay in sending your money we'll protect it using the designated customer safeguarding bank account until it is successfully paid out.
Additional measures
Furthermore, as an authorised payment institution, we are required to maintain organisational arrangements in order to minimise the risk of customer funds being compromised. These include:
- Undertaking due diligence on the creditworthiness and reliability of our banking, payment and other important providers;
- Maintaining a minimum level of regulatory capital on our balance sheet at all times;
- Enforcing strict controls over access to company bank accounts;
- Keeping secure records of every transaction we undertake; and
- Instructing independent audits on our processes and procedures periodically.
How do FSCS cover and other EU deposit guarantee schemes differ from safeguarding?
Funds held in an Atlantic Money payment account are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or another protection scheme that you would get with a bank account (such as the EU deposit guarantee schemes). These schemes reimburses customers when certain institutions like banks fail and cannot return their deposits. In the unlikely event of us going out of business, an insolvency practitioner would be appointed to manage the return of safeguarded funds to customers. Their costs would be deducted from our remaining assets before this was done. This is different from how the FSCS or similar EU schemes compensates customers of insolvent institutions.
You can find more information about using a non-bank payment service provider on the FCA’s website.
If you have any questions regarding the protection of your funds, please get in touch.