How does Lumanu compare to Tipalti?

Why build complex compliance and treasury logic on a generalist AP platform API? Lumanu's specialized Creator Payout API is ready out-of-the-box. Lumanu drastically reduces your development time, support overhead, and tax compliance liability.

Meet with Lumanu

our unique value

General Purpose
vs. Creator Specific

Features

Lumanu (Creator Specialist)

Lumanu (Creator Specialist)

Tipalti (Generalist AP platform)

Vendor Management & 1099

Lumanu acts as your Single Master Vendor for all creators, handling all compliance and tax documentation.

High Vendor Maintenance Cost. Tipalti requires manual upkeep for creators and complex entities (Loan-Outs, Agencies). While it helps handle tax compliance you are responsible. Tipalti was built for B2B vendors, not high-volume creator onboarding and management.

Onboarding & State Management

Single API Link. Lumanu handles all complex state management and error handling out-of-the-box, guaranteeing success.

Overly complex for Creators. Tipalti's complex vendor portal and sequential API steps are overkill for simple creators, leading to higher drop-off and manual support effort.

Money Flow & Treasury

Flexible Wallet System. Easily generate finance-ready invoices to fund dedicated Lumanu accounts. Our wallet supports platforms whether you are in or out of the money flow (MoR).

Requires Custom ERP/GL Integration. Tipalti is built to integrate deeply with your ERP/GL system. While powerful, this requires extensive custom setup and maintenance by your finance and engineering teams.

Global Payments & Reliability

High Payout Success. We use multiple banking relationships and localized rails, ensuring creators withdraw in their currency with high success rates.

Payment Failure Resolution Burden. While Tipalti offers global reach, the platform often puts the burden of resolving payment failures and managing bounced transactions back onto your in-house AP team.

Creator Management

Lumanu’s payment network was built to give creators a frictionless experience, with native support for complex entities like Loan-Out Companies and Agencies.

Vendor Portal Friction. The generic vendor portal is not creator-centric, often leading to a complex, unbranded experience and pushing Tier 1 support back onto your platform's team.

Support

White-glove support from a team of experts who understand the creator economy. We provide dedicated support to both you and your creators.

Generic support. The platform is the first line of defense for non-core issues like tax form errors and payout failures.

Meet with Lumanu

Meet with Lumanu

General payment APIs

Onboarding & Compliance

Lumanu handles all vendor onboarding, compliance checks, and tax form collection.

You are responsible for building an onboarding flow and collecting and verifying W-9s/W-8BENs, and managing 1099s.

Money Flow

Flexible money flow is tailored to support your needs. Choose how your customers fund dedicated wallets.

Rigid, one-size-fits-all money flow requirements that don't adapt to your business model.

Global Payments

Fund in your customers' currencies, pay out to 180+ countries. Creators can withdraw in their local currency with local rails and cost-effective conversion rates.

Complex setup requiring regional entities (Stripe Connect) or high, often hidden, currency conversion fees passed on to recipients (PayPal).

Creator Experience

Lumanu's payment network was built to give creators a frictionless experience.

A fragmented and confusing experience for creators, who have to navigate multiple platforms and redundant information requests.

Support

White-glove support from a team of experts who understand the creator economy. We provide dedicated support to both you and your creators.

Generic support that doesn't understand the nuances of the creator economy. You and your creators are left to fend for yourselves.

Why Lumanu?

Engineering Simplicity, Built-in Support and Compliance.

Skip expensive custom development and maintenance. Lumanu helps you achieve lower operating costs and reduce engineering time spent on payment infrastructure support and maintenance.

Enterprise Funding & Flexibility

The Problem: Large companies require a defined and auditable funding process. Tipalti's focus on deep integration with the general ledger can complicate treasury operations when funding a high volume of creator payments outside of standard AP workflows.

The Lumanu Solution: Streamline your treasury operations. Easily generate a finance-ready invoice for your customers or platform to fund dedicated Lumanu account(s). Our native wallet system provides the flexibility to support platforms IN or OUT of the money flow (MOR).

Simplified Vendor Onboarding & Management

The Problem: Tipalti's portal is built for complex, low-volume B2B vendors. This process for a high-volume of creators often results in creator drop-off due to over-engineered steps, creating a poor experience and increasing the onboarding friction your platform must manage.

The Lumanu Solution: Lower support costs with a true, creator-focused onboarding experience. Lumanu handles all state management and error handling out-of-the-box. This simplification extends to supporting complex entity structures like Loan-Out Companies and Agencies natively.

Lumanu handles W9s, TIN validation and 1099 filing

The Problem: Tipalti's general compliance workflow was not built to handle a high volume or individuals or the creator economy's unique entities (e.g. management and loan out companies). High operational cost and complexity to manage hundreds of creator W9s and compliance needs.

The Lumanu Solution: We eliminate your tax compliance. Lumanu acts as your Single Master Vendor, handling the collection, verification, and filing of all necessary W-9/W-8 forms with the IRS. This eliminates the burden of managing creator compliance within a general B2B system. Save time and operational costs.

Global Payouts, Low Failure Rate

The Problem: Payout failures due to asvailable rails. Tipalti puts the burden of resolving payment failures and managing creator support back onto your internal AP team, consuming significant engineering and support time.

The Lumanu Solution: Drastically reduce support and engineering effort with our global coverage and dedicated creator support. Lumanu uses local rails with global banking relationships, and we handle all Tier 1/2 creator support and issue resolution, freeing your team from debugging payout issues.

Your Payments Roadmap, Accelerated.

Our flexible, straightforward REST API provides the building blocks you need to create a sophisticated, compliant payment system that feels native to your platform. Without the burden of building it from scratch.

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Exploer API Docs

Execute Complex Payouts with a Single API Call

Stop managing complex state machines for payments. With Lumanu, you can initiate a payment with a single API call. We handle the multi-step branching logic, from compliance checks to payment method execution automatically. You tell us who to pay, and we make it happen.

Abstract away the complexity of compliance, onboarding, and payment execution into a single API call.

{
  "email": "example@creator.com",
  "amount": "500.00",
  "currency": "<ISO_CURRENCY_CODE>

{
  "email": "example@creator.com",
  "amount": "500.00",
  "currency": "<ISO_CURRENCY_CODE>

Offload PII & Compliance, Not Control

Drastically reduce your compliance overhead and security scope. Lumanu can handle the entire vendor onboarding process, collecting sensitive PII, tax forms (W-9/W-8BEN), and bank details through our secure, hosted flows. If you already have the data, you can pass it to us. It’s a flexible, hybrid approach that lets you control the user experience without taking on the risk.

Leverage our pre-built banking relationships and compliance engine to launch in days, not months.

Build Event-Driven Workflows with Webhooks

Eliminate the need for constant polling and status-checking logic in your codebase. Lumanu pushes real-time updates directly to your application for events like payment status changes, vendor onboarding completion, and account balance updates.

Focus on building your core product, not on tracking payment states or ledger balances.

Developer Resources:

Everything You Need to Build with Confidence.

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Comprehensive API Docs

Clear, actionable guides and a complete API reference.

⭐

Full-Featured Sandbox

Test your entire workflow.

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Dedicated Developer Support

Expert hands on guidance from integration to launch.

FAQ

Your top questions, answered

What is the impact of Lumanu's specialized onboarding on creator drop-off compared to Tipalti's vendor portal?

How is Lumanu fundamentally different from a general Accounts Payable (AP) system like Tipalti?

Does Lumanu handle all tax compliance, including issuing 1099 forms?

If a global payment fails or a creator has a payment question, who handles the support?

Which platform has a faster and less expensive implementation process?