Crowdfunding

Escrow-grade holding. Refunds on tap.

Reward, donation, equity or peer-to-peer — the rules of crowdfunding changed in 2021. Modena gives you ECSP-compliant infrastructure in days, not months, without negotiating a separate banking arrangement on the side.

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Pledge methods: Cards · SEPA · iDEAL · Blik
Refund policy: Full-amount, automated
Regulation: ECSPR-aligned

Crowdfunding flow

Backer
Pledge
Pay-in
Captured
Campaign wallet
Escrow-style
Success → payout
Failure → refund

Backers fund a campaign wallet. On success, payout. On failure, one-click refund all.

Without Modena

Five forces make crowdfunding payments fundamentally harder than e-commerce.

The structural costs of building your platform on a generic PSP.

ECSP requires fund segregation by law, not best practice.

Since 2021, the European Crowdfunding Service Provider regulation forbids commingling investor funds with platform funds. If your money sits on the platform's bank account, you're already non-compliant.

All-or-nothing logic is a regulatory and PR landmine.

If a campaign misses its goal, every backer must be refunded — at scale, on time, in their original method. Doing it manually is an outage waiting to happen and a brand wound when it inevitably slips.

Pledges arrive in a half-dozen currencies.

EUR, GBP, SEK, PLN, NOK, DKK — international campaigns receive whatever the backer carries. Conversion, consolidation and multi-currency reporting fall to your team.

Equity raises need investor-grade tax and audit trails.

Every investor needs a transaction history that holds up to a regulator's review and supports their own tax filing. Bookkeeping in spreadsheets is not an option above small ticket sizes.

With Modena

Modena cancels each of those forces with a primitive built for it.

The same problems, neutralised by infrastructure built for the job.

Campaign-segregated account out of the box

One ECSP-aligned segregated wallet per campaign at an EU credit institution. Funds never touch your operating account; the regulator's checkbox is ticked from day one.

Conditional release, automated

Funds reach the project owner only once the goal is hit and the deadline passes. Logic is configured per campaign; no human in the loop is required for the success path.

Mass refunds in a single API call

Failure path: one POST refunds every backer to their original payment method, with reconciliation webhooks per pledge and a single ledger entry to audit afterwards.

Tiered KYC matched to investor size

Light verification for small backers, full due diligence for material investors. Built-in tiering keeps friction low at the entry tier and meets diligence at the high end.

Multi-currency wallet

Backers pay in their currency. Modena handles conversion and consolidation; you see balances in EUR with full FX transparency on every transaction.

Investor-grade audit trail

Every euro movement is timestamped, signed and exportable. A complete ledger that satisfies both your auditors and your investors' tax accountants.

Value to your users

What changes for backers and project owners.

Compliance is invisible when it works. The visible part is trust — and a refund button that always works.

What backers get

Confidence that pledges sit in a segregated account, not on a startup's balance sheet.
Refunds returned automatically — same payment method, full amount, no email exchange.
Pledge in the currency they prefer; conversion handled behind the scenes.
A clean transaction history they can use for their own records or tax filings.

What project owners get

Funds released the moment the goal is hit and the campaign closes — not weeks later.
A single payout to their business bank, with one statement line per campaign.
Hosted KYB on the campaign owner so funding can flow without bank-side delays.
Multi-currency settlement consolidated to a single EUR balance.

Build it today

Hold, release, refund — all from your backend.

A short, real flow — copy it into your repo and start extending.

Node

255,255,255,0.4)">// 1. Create a campaign wallet tied to the campaign owner.
"color:#FFE66D">const campaign = "color:#FFE66D">await modena.wallets.create({
  owner: ownerId,
  purpose: "crowdfunding_campaign",
  metadata: { goal_cents: 5000000, deadline: "2026-06-30" },
});

255,255,255,0.4)">// 2. Collect each pledge into the campaign wallet. Held until release.
"color:#FFE66D">await modena.payins.create({
  amount: pledge.amount,
  currency: "eur",
  payment_method: pledge.method,
  wallet: campaign.id,
  capture: "held",
  reference: `Pledge ${pledge.id}`,
});

255,255,255,0.4)">// 3a. Success path — release the wallet and pay out to the campaign owner.
"color:#FFE66D">if (goalHit) {
  "color:#FFE66D">await modena.wallets.release(campaign.id);
  "color:#FFE66D">await modena.payouts.create({
    wallet: campaign.id,
    amount: campaign.balance,
    currency: "eur",
    beneficiary: ownerBankBeneficiaryId,
    method: "sepa",
  });
}

255,255,255,0.4)">// 3b. Failure path — refund every backer to their original payment method.
"color:#FFE66D">if (deadlineMissed && !goalHit) {
  "color:#FFE66D">await modena.wallets.refundAll(campaign.id);
}

ECSP no longer lets backer funds sit on your bank account. Modena gives you compliant infrastructure in days, without a separate banking arrangement on the side.

The frame, every vertical

Five things that hold whether you run a marketplace, a crowdfund, or a gig platform.

The product changes per vertical. The structural reasons to build on Modena don't.

You don't have to become a bank.

A PI licence is a years-long, multi-million-euro project. Modena gives you that infrastructure on day one — without the licensing detour.

Fund segregation is not optional.

5AMLD, PSD2 and ECSP each require it. Modena does it by default — every wallet on the platform is a segregated client account at an EU credit institution.

KYC and KYB are solved problems.

Built-in onboarding for individuals and businesses, ongoing monitoring, and audit trail — so your team isn't building compliance ops from scratch.

Integration speed = time to market.

Lemonway and Mangopay measure onboarding in quarters. With Modena it's weeks: typed SDKs, sandbox in an hour, and engineers on a shared Slack.

EU-native, end to end.

Estonian-licensed, EEA-passported. Jurisdiction, data residency, regulator and customer support all sit in the EU — not in the US, not in post-Brexit UK.

Get started

A payments partner that speaks your vertical.

Share what you're building. We'll map your flow to Modena APIs and come back with a plan.

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