Hi All,

We wanted to reach out and highlight some information for you in regards to expenses and payment processes on Open Collective.

In early 2021 Open Collective integrated software called TransferWise for fiscal hosts to use to process payments on the platform. This was implemented to allow hosts like us to continue to pay out large numbers of expenses on a regular basis, and continue to provide an efficient and effective service.

TransferWise will check that the sort codes and account numbers are correct when processing payments. However they  will not cross reference the name given against the name registered on the bank account (this is something that all banks have been doing since spring 2021).

We wanted to encourage you as page admins to continue to check that the people you are approving expenses for and the expenses themselves are legitimate claims and to double check that the details match the person who would like to receive the funds.

As you all know, we give the responsibility of checking and approving expenses to the admins of the groups. The platform is designed in this way to give you maximum control over how you spend your funds. It is our responsibility as fiscal hosts to make the payments, and yours as admins to make sure the payment is legitimate.

This has come to our attention as recently there was some fraudulent activity on a collective’s page, where an individual was using multiple aliases to submit multiple expenses to the same bank account. We are in contact with Open Collective and the affected collective to ensure we are taking all steps possible to reduce the chance of this happening again.

Please do get in touch with us if you have any questions at all, as always we as your fiscal hosts are here to support you.

Thank you,

Accountable Team