Power your fintech and boost acquisition by offering credit to your users. Defacto’s credit lines support your users working capital & cash needs with no paperwork or hidden fees. Embedded financing reinforces engagement & increases stickiness.

The guide explains how to power up your fintech with capital:

Onboard a borrower (or your user in this case)
Get the credit line amount of the borrower
Send a loan request
Get the billing info

We assume that you already followed the Authentication section and are able to authenticate with our API.

Onboard your user as a borrower

Create a borrower

➡️ POST /borrowers

First, to create a borrower, you only need the user’s company registration number (for example, SIREN in France, NIF in Spain or the VAT number).

Why is the legal identifier mandatory information for Defacto to offer the service?

What countries are supported?

T&Cs acceptation

➡️ POST /borrower/{borrower_id}/sign

Defacto offers credit products to borrowers that have accepted our terms and conditions (T&Cs). To inform Defacto that your user has accepted the Defacto T&Cs, make sure to fill the signed_at parameter, or make another request indicated above. This is the only legal document to be "checked".

Does Defacto provide terms and conditions? In what languages?

What and when will the contracts be generated so that the borrower can access them?

Enable SEPA Direct Debit (SDD) as the repayment method for the borrower

If you wish Defacto to direct debit your user, you will need to provide the following information:

Business bank account details (IBAN and BIC)
Business email
Legal representative’s birthdate
Legal representative’s Country of residence
Legal representative’s Nationalité

Enable SEPA Credit Transfer (SCT) as the repayment method for the borrower

If you wish to acquire the repayment by yourself, you can either transfer the repayment by SCT or provide the IBAN of the wallet and Defacto can direct debit the wallet.

Please note that according to the market practice and loan contract Defacto stops calculating the fees only when the repayment arrives at Defacto’s bank account.

To understand more about How do we calculate fees.

Provide credit offering for eligible users

➡️ GET /credit_lines

Once the borrower is created and the borrower accepts the T&Cs, Defacto will create a line of credit. The amount of the line of credit is calculated according to our underwriting algorithm.

To understand more, check:

What is a line of credit?

How do we define the credit line amount?

How can I share the eligibility-relevant data with Defacto?

Request a loan

➡️ POST /loans

Set WALLET_FINANCING as theloan_type.

The loan_to is to indicate where Defacto sends the money. It can be the borrower’s bank account or dedicated digital wallet.

Please note that in WALLET_FINANCING, Defacto can only send the money to a bank account that belongs to the borrower.

(You need send the money to the borrower's counterparty instead? Please check our product PAY_LATER or CASH_IN_NOW)

Once the loan request is submitted, Defacto checks the eligibility with our underwriting algorithm. If the loan request is eligible, we will initiate the loan payment. The loan payment takes maximum 1 day (SEPA payment processing) to arrive at the beneficiary’s bank account.

(You need absolutely an instant payment experience? Chat with us via intercom at the bottom right corner of this page!)

Because nothing looks more like a payment than another payment of the same amount we recommend you to provide a unique salt_id value for each requested. This will guarantee that you don't request the same loan twice.

What are the reasons for a loan request rejection?

To get the payments linked to the approved loan:

➡️ GET /payments?loan_id=<LOAN_ID>

Repayment

The repayment acquisition can be initiated either by you or Defacto.

If the repayment is acquired by Defacto, we initiate a SEPA direct debit (SDD) directly to your user.

If you wish to keep the repayment flows for better visibility, you can acquire the repayment from your users, Defacto accepts 2 repayment methods:

SEPA credit transfer (SCT), you make a bank transfer to Defacto’s bank account (see more details below).
SEPA direct debit (SDD), Defacto initiated a direct debit to a dedicated wallet or bank account.

There is no need to notify Defacto about the repayment by API. We reconcile everything automatically : )

To repay the loan by SCT, You will need two information:

The virtual IBAN to send the money to (each borrower has their own virtual IBAN)
The reference to attach to the credit transfer

To get these values, GET /loan/{loan_id}.

Make sure that status is TO_REPAY before repaying
Get the destination IBAN under repayment_to.account_number
Get the reference under repayment_to_references

Repayment date

For the repayment method SDD, the repayment amount is debited on the repayment date (to_repay_at).

The repayment date can be modified as long as it doesn't exceed 120 days.

Please note that it takes 3 working days to process the SDD. If today is the 1st of January, the earliest repayment date would be the 4th of January.

➡️ PATCH /loan/{loan_id}

What happens when the loan repayment passed due?

Billing

➡️ GET /bills

Defacto bills the fees at the beginning of the month for all the loans repaid during the previous month. The fees are due by the borrower; however, you can transfer the fees on the user’s behalf (in such case it will be mentioned in the loan contract).

For example:

In January, Borrower A requested 3 loans
In February, 2 loans were repaid
On the 1st of March, Defacto sends the bill to you or your borrower for the 2 loans repaid in February

Please note that according to the market practice and loan contract Defacto stops calculating the fees only when the repayment arrives at Defacto’s bank account.

The billing (i.e. fees payment) method inherits the defined repayment method.

For example, if you acquire the repayments, you acquire also the fees; if Defacto acquires the repayment, Defacto acquires also fees, this means we send the bill by email directly to the borrower and initiates an SDD.

To understand more about How do we calculate fees.