Credit Cards & Crowdfunding – Some Considerations
The industry, at long last, has a credit card processor willing to service equity and debt crowdfunding. As portals, brokers and other people jump to do this, I want to take a moment to discuss a few things.
WHO: the credit card company only wants to sign “platforms”, as the underwriting process for a single small issuer is just too much and not worth their time. This means brokers, funding portals, and platforms who bring on numerous offerings per year. NOTE THAT THE PLATFORM IS THE “MERCHANT”, not the issuer (critical point, as I’ll discuss below).
FUNDS LANDING: Unless you are a trust company, bank or $250,000 net-cap broker-dealer you cannot touch the money that investors send. This means that your escrow relationship will need to accommodate you, as the merchant, delivering funds from investors to the escrow account. This will be enormously complicated for the escrow agent as they will have to be able to sort through the
