Holvi

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= Holvi is a shared account which allows you to collect funds for your activities and does fully automatic bookkeeping. You don't need an additional bank account.

URL = https://holvi.com/


Description

Holvi is a product of Scred Ltd, a company based in Helsinki, Finland.

1. Springwise:

"Holvi aims to give small teams a better understanding of how their money is spent and received. Users can create a budget for their activities and see a graphical report of everything happening in real time, for instance. They can also build income by selling tickets and t-shirts, for example, and then see their bookkeeping updated in real time. Expense claims can be received, fully tagged and categorized, and photos of receipts can even be uploaded directly to the site. Meanwhile, users can pay bills as they would with any internet bank; every payment is tagged and automatically updated to their budget reports." (http://www.springwise.com/financial_services/holvi/)


2. Kristoffer Lawson:

"It is a complete replacement for a traditional bank, and targeted specifically at people doing group activities together. Ie. people running conferences, art projects, indie film projects, sports clubs etc. As it does replace traditional banks you can use it for normal credit transfer, both in and out. But the really sweet thing is that it's a group account, so multiple people can view what is going on. You can attach any kind of metadata to payments, meaning that accounting is completely automatic and in realtime, plus it offers great opportunities for linking to social networks. You can also share your budget, and the realtime status, with the world if you want to be totally open.

Finally it offers easy ways to raise and collect funds, with a built-in shop (registrations, donations, merchandise) and invoicing system. Again, all tied to the core account, so everything updated in realtime. When someone pays a sponsorship fee, you immediately see it reflected in your budget.

The user interface is absolutely gorgeous. We brought in a brilliant designer to help with that and while it's meant a lot of very hard work, I think it's absolutely worth it.

We're currently regulated in Finland and would need further investment to expand Europe-wide. We're riding on brand new EU regulation which allows us to do this without a bank license, so the investment amount is much less than what a bank would require. The EU is actually a great place to do this.

We think there is a lot of activity out there, in people's minds, which is not getting done because managing and collecting money is way too difficult. Holvi is so easy absolutely everyone will want to do something with it."


FAQ

"Holvi is the checking account for group activities. A Holvi account can be shared with the group, does automated bookkeeping and includes tools for collecting funds for your activities.

How is Holvi regulated?

Holvi is operated by Scred Oy, a company based in Helsinki, Finland. Scred Oy is registered with the Financial Supervisory Authority of Finland (FIN-FSA) as a payment services provider.

Holvi is authorised by the FIN-FSA to operate payment accounts and execute payment transactions to, from and between payment accounts.


What laws govern Holvi’s operations?

Providing payment services is a regulated activity within the European Union. All payment service providers (PSPs) operate under the EU Payment Services Directive (2007/64/EC).

In Finland the Payment Services Directive (PSD) is implemented by the Payment Institutions Act (Maksulaitoslaki, 30.4.2010/297 MLL) and Payment Services Act (Maksupalvelulaki, 30.4.2010 MPL).

Holvi is required to identify and verify its customers according to the anti-money laundering and combating terrorism financing laws (Laki rahanpesun ja terrorismin rahoittamisen estämisestä ja selvittämisestä, 18.7.2008/503 ResL). Collecting personally identifiable information is governed by relevant laws (Henkilötietolaki, 22.4.1999/523 HTL).


Where is customers’ money kept?

All funds on the payment accounts of Holvi customers is held in client money accounts at Nordea Pankki Suomi Oyj.

The EU Payment Services Directive and the Payment Institutions Act (Maksulaitoslaki) have clear regulations on how Holvi must segregate and safeguard our customers’ money. In an unlikely insolvency event, the funds held in our customers’ payment accounts are protected from other creditors’ claims and can be repaid to our customers." (http://blog.holvi.com/faq/)


Discussion

Differences between Scred and Holvi

"Scred does still run, in maintenance mode. It can't really be replaced by Holvi, as Holvi is quite different (Scred is about sharing expenses with people, and is thus more p2p), whereas Holvi really is a bank replacement. The groups that use Holvi are generally a bit more organised than with Scred, which are generally a bunch of friends travelling or doing something together."


More Information

Articles

http://betakit.com/2012/11/22/team-banking-startup-holvi-adds-funding-in-advance-of-2013-european-launch

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/22/holvi-plans-to-disrupt-traditional-bank-accounts-with-simple-but-powerful-services/

http://gigaom.com/europe/holvi-prepares-to-roll-out-banking-for-teams-across-europe-in-2013/