The telecom troublemaker is attacking the credit card payment market to win over traders and small businesses.
End of suspense. While the small world of telecoms and tech had their eyes fixed for a few days on Stancer, a company of the Iliad group (Free), the veil was lifted on Tuesday morning. Finally, it is not a bank. Stancer is “a payments provider that offers solutions for merchants and small businesses“. The project was born in 2018, led by Xavier Niel, the founder of Free. “At Iliad, we were tired of paying exorbitant fees to be able to collect our subscribers. That’s how Stancer was born. It’s a fairer payment solution“, he relates. As early as 2019, Stancer was used by the Iliad group, before the Stancer Pay solution was offered to merchants and freelancers. The offer covers all distribution channels, with low prices and relatively simple implementation.
The merchant must first connect to the Stancer site, to register “ea few minutes“. For online payments, he obtains an API (a programming interface) to integrate into his website, to enable him to accept payments with Stancer or a payment link for remote collection (via SMS, e- email, QR code, social networks, etc.). For in-store payments (or while roaming, for example, in markets), the seller has an electronic payment terminal equipped with a Free Mobile card. “We made Iliad’s alter ego in the world of payment. Stancer is non-binding, subscription-free and competitive“, adds George Owen, managing director of Stancer, estimating to be two to three times cheaper than its competitors.
For a physical collection, Stancer receives a variable commission of 0.7% and a fixed commission of 7 cents for transactions over 7 euros. For online payments, the commission is also 0.7% cent, with a fixed 15 cent for transactions over 7 euros. “We want to prevent merchants from having to refuse card payments when the amounts are too small, due to too high feesadds George Owen. The commission rises to 2.5% for payments outside the euro zone. The terminal is free, for a minimum of 150 transactions per month. Otherwise, it is charged 15 euros per month. In addition to the payment solution, Stancer provides access to a dashboard summarizing all payments.
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With such a price positioning, Stancer hopes to shake up the world of payment, as Free did before him in telecoms. The market is constantly evolving, with the arrival of new players, whether start-ups like SumUp or gigatechs like Apple Pay. ” It’s the right time to launch an alternative payment solution, we are in an economic context in which the margins of small traders and independents are under pressure. We hope to find an echo with this targetadds George Owen. In the long term, strategic partnerships with entities of the Free group are envisaged, which could give a boost to StancerPay. The service is first launched in France and Stancer is “in strategic thinking for other European countries, in priority those where Iliad is already presentlike Italy or Poland.
Today Stancer has a team of 25 people and continues to recruit. It is targeting at least twenty hires over the next twelve months.
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