EClear receives BaFin license

The Berlin-based fintech has obtained the license of a payment service provider received. EClear now wants to process the payment transactions of online merchants across Europe.

EClear has received a license to provide payment services from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). The license is valid throughout Europe. "As a payment institution, we can now offer additional services to our customers, enabling them to grow cross-border smoothly," says Roman Maria Koidl, founder and CEO of eClear.

The fintech's BaFin license allows it to process pan-European payments for online merchants and independently collect VAT. The role of "tax payment acquirer" is new. The start-up takes over the collection of funds from end consumers and remits the VAT directly to the responsible tax offices abroad. EClear is liable for the accuracy of the tax calculation as well as the amounts owed to the tax authorities. E-commerce merchants do not have to register for tax themselves. "As a result, eClear is now the first payment institution in Europe to take over the calculation, collection and remittance of transaction taxes in a fully automated manner, i.e. "end-to-end" for merchants," says CEO Anne-Katrin Gewohn.

EClear was founded in 2016. Last year, the company's proprietary "ClearVAT" was tested on individual customers. More than 8,000 merchants are already connected to the system. The fintech has six offices, and this year the startup opened an office in Shenzhen in China. An office in Reykjavik in Iceland is to follow.