Classeo: Split Payment Usecase

François Gautier, founder of Classeo, has kindly given us some time to talk about his company. As a long-standing customer of Digiteal, we wanted to seize the opportunity to highlight his product that is revolutionizing the daily work of school photographers.

Could you introduce your company and its main activities?

Classeo offers an online sales service dedicated to school photography. Our goal is to make this service as functional as possible and to best meet the needs of photographers and consumers.

Classeo places a strong emphasis on data protection, image rights and payment security. We are also developing more eco-friendly alternatives, such as no longer printing photos without a confirmed order to avoid waste.

What is the history of your company? How was it founded?

Classeo is a family business founded in 2014.

My father was a school photographer and faced multiple logistical challenges in his time. So, we decided to design an appropriate solution for project management tailored to school photographers. It’s ideal for on-the-ground work.

We began selling to other photographers in 2018.

What are the main sectors you target?

Our clients are school photographers. Therefore, schools, educational institutions, and associations are the entities that directly benefit from our services.

What is your payment model and who are the stakeholders?

Payments are often made in installments (Split Payment). When it’s time to pay for the service, parents go to the platform. Beforehand, each school (in agreement with the photographer upon the initial contract) chooses how the payment will be made. Several scenarios are possible:

1

Full payment to the school (100%)

2

Payment to the photographer (100% minus Classeo’s commission)

3

Photographer, school, and Classeo commission (3 stakeholders)

4

Photographer, photographer’s subcontractor, school, and Classeo commission (4 stakeholders)

Having better understood what Classeo is, let’s see what they think about our partnership.

How is the collaboration with Digiteal?

Very well, we are delighted with the work done together, especially their flexibility in terms of services.

What were your initial expectations when you chose our company? How did it start?

As a reminder, Classeo became available to school photographers in 2018. We initially started using PayPal for payments, but quickly realized there were issues with European Compliance: Marketplaces using PayPal are limited in terms of revenue.

We therefore turned to Digiteal (in 2021), which already offered an installment payment service as well as DigiTrust (secure payments between individuals), and we adapted it to our specific needs.

The advantage of working with a medium-sized company is that the service is more personalized, which is what we were looking for. With their pre-existing solutions, Digiteal’s Dev team developed technology suitable for our situation (confirmation-based payments).

What are the main challenges you face in your sector?

PSD2 compliance is at the heart of the business because it ensures the security of funds. Indeed, many players still do not fully comply with all PSD2 standards, including KYC (Know Your Customer), which ensures perfect identification of the different entities receiving the funds. This process is costly, complex, and time-consuming. By going through Digiteal, Classeo is fully compliant with current European directives.

Could you explain exactly what you offer?

Classeo offers a product that supports the school photographer from the photo shoot to production.

Photo session
Automatic upload to the website
Order management
Creation of a digital file > external printing

The goal is to allow the photographer to focus on creating and selling images, without worrying about logistics.

Can you tell us about a recent project you are particularly proud of?

The use of direct debits, developed by Digiteal, allows for greater flexibility in payment distribution, so we now offer the possibility of transferring all revenue to school associations that wish to do so.