SUCCESS STORY
Homunity and Lemonway: When a Real Estate Fintech Rethinks Its Payment Infrastructure
+856
M€ Raised since creation
10,14 %
Average gross return in 2025
+150000
Registered investors
+660
Projects financed, of which +340 have been repaid
+856
M€ Raised since creation
10,14 %
Average gross return in 2025
+150000
Registered investors
+660
Projects financed, of which +340 have been repaid
Founded in 2014, Homunity has established itself as one of France's leading real estate crowdfunding platforms, enabling any individual to invest in real estate projects from as little as €1,000, entirely online. Approved as a European Crowdfunding Service Provider (ECSP) by the AMF and a subsidiary of Tikehau Capital (€53 billion in assets under management) since 2019, the platform has progressively expanded its offering to cover the full spectrum of real estate investment: crowdfunding, rental investment, REITs (SCPIs), and other real estate products.
Rigorous project selection is one of the platform's defining hallmarks: Homunity applies an audit covering more than 80 criteria, both on the project sponsor and on the project itself.
1. Context: A Payment Infrastructure That Had Become a Barrier to Growth
As the platform scaled, friction points emerged that were affecting both the investor experience and internal operations. Three core issues were identified:
Customer service: Homunity's teams had limited visibility into their contacts at their payment provider, making issue resolution laborious for its 150,000 registered users.
KYC journey: Investor identity verification was at times complex, generating frustration and drop-offs during the onboarding process.
Operational management: The absence of a centralised, user-friendly dashboard made it difficult to monitor financial flows, in a context where Jules Villiers, Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity, was overseeing all transactions across the platform.
These challenges arose precisely as Homunity was executing a strategic shift: transitioning from a crowdfunding platform to a comprehensive real estate investment platform, with growing transaction volumes, a more diverse investor base, and heightened regulatory requirements under its ECSP status.
"Our previous provider no longer met our requirements. We needed enhanced security over financial flows, a more fluid and intuitive dashboard for operational management, and easier access to data to track our performance in real time. These three points were decisive in our decision to migrate to Lemonway."
Jules Villiers
Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity
2. The Key Criteria Behind Choosing Lemonway
The selection process was rigorous: market benchmarking, a technical proof of concept to validate API integration, followed by legal validation. Among the providers assessed, Lemonway stood out on four criteria:
Regulatory compliance and fund security. Lemonway holds an electronic money institution licence and ensures the segregation of investor funds, two non-negotiable prerequisites for an ECSP-licensed platform.
Expertise in the crowdfunding ecosystem
API quality and flexibility. The smoothness of the technical integration was a key factor, particularly in connecting Lemonway to Homunity's existing KYC journey.
Team proximity and responsiveness. "Working with a French company, with offices close to ours, makes a difference, perhaps subconsciously, but it does make a difference." — Jules Villiers, Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity
"Many crowdfunding platforms use Lemonway, which creates a network effect and shared expertise. Lemonway understands the specificities of our business, and that really does make a difference in the quality of day-to-day interactions."
Jules Villiers
Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity
3. Results Observed and Ongoing Initiatives
The migration was completed during 2025. The first two months required adjustments on both sides. Beyond this implementation phase, Homunity's teams report a smooth run and tangible improvements in their day-to-day operations.
Wallet ibanisation: Each investor has their own wallet identified by a dedicated IBAN, which simplifies the traceability of financial flows and the management of repayments across more than 30,000 active wallets. The solution also includes the automatic blocking of payments made by third parties, a security rule that was absent from the previous provider.
Centralised dashboard: Real-time data visibility represents a significant time saving for daily management. "Data clarity is very important to us. If it is well integrated into a dashboard, the time savings are quite significant." — Jules Villiers, Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity
Workflow validation: This feature allows wire transfers to be submitted for internal validation directly within the interface, without any external manual process.
A more structured and educational KYC process: While more demanding, the journey guides users step by step.
Lemonway team responsiveness: The availability of dedicated contacts is consistently cited as a trust-building factor in the day-to-day relationship.
"Over time, our clients came to understand that there was better security in place. In the end, it reassures them, even if it initially creates some friction.
Lemonway enables us to manage a growing volume of transactions without major friction. That is a sine qua non for a platform of our size that continues to grow.
Jules Villiers
Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity
Looking Ahead: Towards a Business Partnership
"To democratise real estate investment, every step of the journey must inspire confidence, from project selection through to payment. That is why the underlying infrastructure is not a minor detail."
Jules Villiers
Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity
Homunity and Lemonway are currently working on two priority areas for the coming years:
- Streamlining onboarding and improving KYC/KYB conversion: Reducing drop-offs during registration, particularly for legal entities, by making error messages clearer and the journey more intuitive. Homunity also aims to gain access to more conversion data to better orchestrate its onboarding journey, which is currently being redesigned.
- Strengthening fraud prevention tools: Configuring custom validation rules based on specific criteria (transaction amount thresholds, geographic origin of bank details, investor type), with real-time reporting.
The relationship between the two companies is progressively evolving from a purely technological model towards a business partnership, where product roadmaps are built with each party's priorities in mind.
Jules Villiers, Head of Middle-Back Office at Homunity : "Our business cannot be done well without yours."
About Lemonway
Lemonway is a pan-European Payment Institution offering a solution dedicated to marketplaces, and alternative finance platforms looking for a payment processing and collection system on behalf of third parties in a secure and regulated framework. Regulated by the ACPR and benefiting from the European passport in 29 countries, Lemonway is based in Paris and Milan.
