How it works

GBF Payment Services is a multi-currency payment platform. You hold positions in the currencies you use, move funds in and out through licensed payment partners in each market, convert between currencies at a quoted rate, and send payments to people and organisations abroad.

Regulated activity is performed country by country by locally licensed partners. GBF Payment Services provides the interface, the record of your instructions, the controls that protect the account, and the reporting you rely on. Positions shown in the product describe amounts and their availability; they are not a guarantee of funds and they are not a store of value we promise to preserve.

Registration takes an email address, a confirmation code and a password that meets the strength requirement. The account is then bound to the device you registered on, which is the anchor for every later security decision.

One device is active at a time. If you sign in from somewhere new, the request has to be approved from the device you already trust. If that device is lost, recovery re-establishes access after identity verification and a time-limited security hold.

Verification is a legal requirement, not an optional step. For an individual we verify name, date of birth, address and a government-issued document with a live selfie. For an organisation we verify the entity, its ownership and the people authorised to instruct payments.

Most checks complete in minutes. Until a case is approved, outbound payments are unavailable. The verification screen always shows the current state, what is outstanding and a reference identifier for support. Full detail is on the Know your customer and Know your business pages.

You register the account or card you want to pay in from. Card details are entered into fields hosted by the payment partner, never into our own form, so full card numbers never reach our systems and are never stored by us.

Some methods confirm instantly. Others use two small verification amounts posted to the account, which you enter back into the product to prove ownership. A funding source that fails verification cannot be used, and a limited number of registered sources is allowed per account so that ownership stays traceable.

An incoming payment is created as a reservation with a reference. You see the reservation as soon as it is created, and its state as it moves: prepared, in progress, settled or failed. A settled payment increases the available figure for that currency; a payment still in progress is reported as pending and is not spendable.

Availability figures are reported exactly as the platform declares them — available, pending, held and restricted — as four separate figures. They are never added together, because each describes a different condition.

Conversion begins with a quote. The quote shows the rate, the fee, the amount leaving one currency and the amount arriving in the other. It is valid for a short displayed window and can be used once. If it expires, you request a new one rather than accept a rate you did not agree to.

All amounts are calculated by the platform in whole minor units of each currency. The figures shown to you are the figures used, with no rounding applied after the fact.

Choose the recipient, the currency and the amount. Before anything moves you see a review screen listing the amount, the fee, the conversion rate where one applies, the recipient and the total. Nothing is sent until you confirm on that screen.

On confirmation the instruction is given a reference and a single idempotency key, so that a retry after a dropped connection cannot create a second payment. The payment then moves through its states, each with a timestamp you can see.

Arrival time depends on the corridor, the method and the local cut-off times. The estimate is shown before you confirm and again on the record. Where a payment cannot be completed, funds are returned to the position they came from and the record shows the reason and the reference.

Every currency has a statement listing each movement with its date, description, reference, direction and the position after it. Statements are exportable, and amounts are shown with aligned figures so columns can be read at a glance.

Screening. Every outbound instruction is screened before release. A potential match pauses the instruction for review.

Monitoring. Activity is monitored for patterns associated with fraud and financial crime. An alert may pause a payment while it is reviewed.

Step-up verification. A higher-value or unusual action can ask for a further verification step before it is released.

Restrictions. Where an action is unavailable, the product names the action, gives a reference identifier and, where it is lawful to do so, the reason.

We do not pay a return on the amounts you hold. We do not lend your funds. We do not offer credit. We do not provide investment, tax or legal advice. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for cross-site advertising.

We do not display the identity of the underlying partner that executes a payment; that is operational information and not a product field. Any question about who executed a specific payment should go through support.