About Escrow Europe

In South Africa, Escrow Europe (Pty) Limited is the leading provider of escrow services and is the only local escrow service provider that is capable of providing world-class Active Escrow© services.

The company has achieved the ISO 9001:2008 quality certification standard - the standard against which professional escrow service providers - local and international - are measured. The motivation for this is that Escrow Europe (Pty) Limited wanted to confirm the company’s commitment to the highest quality escrow service delivery on a world-class basis in a manner that would:

• Affirm for its clients that they have selected to partner with a best-of-breed escrow service provider.
• Provide additional assurance that clients’ investment in business-critical intellectual property and technology is protected in a manner that provides proper re-assurance that they will be able to continue functioning should their suppliers no longer able to support the technology.
• Confirm that deposits – the ‘crown jewels’ for many technology businesses’ – are being subject to the highest quality safekeeping standards, on a measurably consistent basis.
• Send a very powerful message to an international audience about its commitment to good corporate governance and operational risk management.

Escrow Europe was originally founded as a neutral Escrow Agent in Amsterdam in 1989 and established a number of affiliate operations worldwide, including the operation in South Africa. Today, Escrow Europe (Pty) Limited is proudly South African and an independent provider of quality certified escrow services in its own right. Escrow means "security in the hands of a trusted third party." As an independent and neutral third party, the company guards business-critical assets such as source code of software, important databases and/or industrial designs.

Under specific conditions agreed in advance - such as bankruptcy of the supplier - Escrow Europe is authorised to release the material on deposit to the beneficiaries. Thanks to the escrow agreement, the beneficiaries are given security and continuity while suppliers retain their intellectual property rights.

Quality control receives our continuous attention. As an independent third party, it is our duty to safeguard the interests of all parties involved. We follow market developments closely in order to be able to offer our clients the best. For instance, the implementation of our ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System (QMS) is based on eight core quality management principles, namely, customer focus, leadership, involvement of people, process approach, systems approach to management, factual approach to decision making and mutually beneficial supplier relationships. In addition, the adoption of the quality management principles facilitates regular management reviews and internal audits ensuring a continual improvement process.

ISO9001:2008 is a milestone quality certification as, unlike previous iterations of the ISO9001 standard, it is specific to the business concerned - the Escrow Europe certificate states that the quality management standard relates specifically to the processes for:-

“The conclusion of active escrow agreements and the deposit, verification and subsequent storage of intellectual property such as software source code belonging to the depositor (software developer) for the future benefit of a specified beneficiary in the event of a release condition as stipulated in the active escrow agreement.”

Escrow Europe stands out from other escrow agents because it concentrates entirely on Active Escrow©, in other words escrows including both compulsory verification of every deposit and tracking of updates and new releases. This safeguards the quality of the deposits.

We provide a broad range of Escrow services: amongst others software, data, industrial and SaaS.

Escrow Europe is truly independent with no ties or relationships to hardware or software companies. Our team consists of lawyers, consultants and ICT specialists. The combination of corporate legal expertise with technical know-how gives Escrow Europe (Pty) Limited a unique position in the market. Whereas most escrow agents are either legal or technical specialists, we are able to offer both types of expertise for the benefit of our clients.