High-risk IBAN banking and business accounts

Boldrails is integrated with licensed principal providers, and a business account for a high-risk business is one of the accounts we issue for merchants that mainstream banks turn away. That includes iGaming, forex, crypto and high-volume e-commerce operators. We provide four types: a dedicated account, a virtual account with its own virtual IBAN, a pooled account with per-client sub-accounts, and a merchant account.

This page covers the holding and settlement side: accounts you use to collect, hold, convert and pay out money in your own name. Card acquiring is a separate product, our merchant accounts, and the two work together.

Because we hold the necessary licences required in the markets we serve, we underwrite your business directly. We do not pass your application to a third party, and we do not treat high-risk verticals as an exception to be reviewed later.

High-risk IBAN banking is the short name for what this page describes: an account in your own company name, with its own IBAN, held at an institution whose risk model was built for your vertical instead of against it. The IBAN behaves exactly like any other. What changes is that it does not get closed when your chargeback ratio moves or your MCC is read as gambling.

Every client's money sits in its own sub-account, a segregated client account in practice, or a ring-fenced sub-ledger inside a pooled account, kept separate from your operating funds and from ours. Client funds are safeguarded and held separately, in line with the regulations of the markets we serve. Safeguarding and client-money segregation are set out in the FCA's client money rules (CASS 7) and in Article 7 of the EU E-Money Directive (2009/110/EC).

One point worth stating plainly: safeguarded balances are not deposit-insured the way a high-street bank account is. They are protected by segregation and safeguarding instead. The two rules below are national regimes, and each applies only to its own market. In the US, funds held at an FDIC-insured bank can qualify for pass-through insurance up to the standard maximum per depositor. In the UK, the FSCS deposit limit rose to £120,000 per person per firm on 1 December 2025, and that limit covers bank deposits held with a UK bank, not safeguarded e-money. Knowing which regime applies to your balances matters more than the headline number.

We hold the necessary licences required in the markets we serve. You can see the regulatory frameworks we operate within on our licensing and compliance page.

The most expensive fraud in business banking is rarely a hack. It is a supplier invoice with the bank details changed, paid by someone who had no reason to doubt it. A recipient has to be approved before a payment can reach it, and the person who prepares a payment cannot be the person who releases it. Those two rules together close that route.

Access needs two-factor authentication, so a stolen password opens nothing on its own. Signing keys sit in isolated hardware rather than on a general-purpose server. Transactions are screened as they happen rather than reviewed at month end.

No provider can promise a transfer is never paused. A regulated one can always be required to hold funds, and any that claims otherwise is describing something outside its control. Our commitment is narrower and keepable: you are told why, and what clears it.