If there are a couple of words that describe OneLinQ, they are “tech” and “simplicity.” The company offers a host of clients, from banks and insurance to media and NGOs, a single, worldwide, connection for payments, collection, and cash management on their cloud-based platform. They are a B2B outfit, through and through, and primarily operate in the Netherlands, working with Fortune 500 companies as well as SMEs.
Paul Hagens, commercial director for OneLinQ, takes this idea of technical ability and simplicity, the latter of which is established in the outfit’s name, and gives it a categorial rendering indicating precisely what type of business the company is. “We’re a true innovative fintech company,” he says. “We make payments more efficient using new technology, like artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithms, APIs, biometrics”, he continues, underscoring that companies’ entire back offices can be streamlined and managed using OneLinQ’s platforms in a secure manner that is GDPR and PSD2-ready.
Origins and efficient payments, collection, and cash management solutions
OneLinQ began in 2015, growing out of Equens Corporate Services, which handled format conversions for payments files. Next, OneLinQ added SEPA direct debit and e-mandates to their offerings and in July 2017, Pelican took over management of the company, taking the small team and making them a part of a global organisation numbering more than 200 people.  “We started everything anew in 2017,” says Hagens.
The new organisation offers one cloud-based hub platform with three services: payments; collections; and cash management. The platforms connect directly to major accounting systems and 17 banks in the Netherlands, giving users a single point to manage their responsibilities in these categories. To illustrate, Hagens gives the example of an HR department in a company that has 10,000 employees scattered across the globe. The company has multiple banking relationships and multiple file formats and batches to send to these banks. “You can do this with four or five people, “he says,” or, “you can send us the files, we will convert them and take care of the payments – covering both the front and back-end sides of payments – and it’s fully automated.” Accounting software and PSPs, the latter with which the company also works, are able to and do connect to banks; however, these entities only push payments forward to banks, necessitating companies log in to their banks to carry them out. With OneLinQ, companies do not need to work with bank portals.
Having a single point streamlines these manual and time-consuming processes, which reduces costs and gives companies up-to-date overviews of cash positions.
 Automate everything: the Uber of payments
 “Our goal is to automate as much as possible in payment chain for B2B payments,” Hagens says, “for example, we’re ready to do instant payments – although the banks aren’t ready at this point in time.” OneLinQ’s goal to automate the entire chain of B2B payments is what Pelican’s CEO, Parth Desai, calls the “Uberisation” of payments, setting the company’s efforts over the coming years.
Currently, OneLinQ targets three markets: service providers; corporates; and accounting packages.
The game changer—everything a CFO needs 
 “Very soon, we’re going to introduce our own app,” Hagens says, “we don’t have a name for it yet, but it’s the only app a CFO, finance manager, or someone in an accounts payables and receivables department needs,” he adds.  In the app, overviews of all bank accounts and statuses of credit and debit transfers will be available, tools for managing authorisations will be present, and payments will be able to be carried out using biometrics-based authentication.
The OneLinQ solutions and app will be available via APIs and also a white label offering, which will be released in the coming months.
 
By Elliot Lyons, Research Analyst