It’s fair to say few people listening to their favourite playlist or podcast spare much thought for Spotify’s hardworking receivables team. But efficiently managing account receivables at the streaming giant was a complex and, at times, costly undertaking.

In majority of the markets, premium customers can pay their subscription in the local currency, creating a complex currency structure for the treasury team to handle. When dealing with accounts receivables denominated in certain major currencies (USD, EUR and GBP, among others) Spotify maintains currency accounts and handles the FX component in-house. But for the more minor currencies, it was neither cost efficient or practical to manage internally.

In these global markets Spotify works with multiple payment service providers (PSPs). They collect receivables, convert the funds to the major three currencies (EUR/GBP/USD) and send it on to the company’s cash pool in Europe in a process that left Spotify short changed.

“Having performed a full audit of these relationships, we found that the FX rates we were receiving in certain markets were not competitive – and significant cost efficiencies were being left on the table. As a result, we sought a solution to substantially cut costs and increase the efficiency of our account receivables in these markets,” say Jan Lesniewski, Financial Market Activities.