The Currency Cloud, an international payments engine, has raised $10m in a Series B funding round to complement the $9M invested in 2012.
The full round came from existing investors Atlas Venture, Anthemis Group, Notion Capital and XAnge Private Equity with Silicon Valley Bank providing a further line of capital.
Making an international payment through traditional channels can be expensive, opaque and complicated due to out dated processes and high margin foreign exchange practices. The Currency Cloud is a software-as-a-service company, which believes small businesses and consumers deserve a better service, and that technology is the way to deliver it.
The Currency Cloud's customers include payments firms (Payoneer, Kantox, Azimo, TransferWise) banks (Fidor Bank, MedBank), and e-commerce solutions (Sofort, Zippcard). By connecting via a simple API, they can access a global network providing quick, transparent and secure international payments, benefits that they can pass to their customers. The Currency Cloud provides full transparency on its margins and wholesale rates. Setup time is minimal.
The Currency Cloud has achieved strong growth over the last 18 months: the total number of transactions passing through its network has increased twelvefold year on year and the company is now securely moving billions of dollars around the world per annum.
Mike Laven, CEO of The Currency Cloud, comments: "Traditional international payments are broken. We're bringing to this market the levels of efficiency and simplicity that companies like Stripe have brought to consumer payments."
"While 85 percent of international payments go through banks, more and more businesses are now turning to us to provide their international payments capabilities. Unlike other payments providers, we make cross-border payments transparent and frictionless. New clients can also get set up with our service quickly via our developer-friendly API."
"As a technology firm, it is in our DNA to continually build our capabilities so that we can offer the best possible service for our customers. customers. With this investment, we can further refine our platform and expand into new geographies. We operate in a truly global sector and want businesses in different parts of the world to enjoy simple, secure and reliable cross border payments."
Erin Lockwood, Managing Director of Commercial Banking at Silicon Valley Bank's UK Branch said: "We are excited to be working with The Currency Cloud and look forward to being a long term partner as the business grows. The company is using technology to solve an important client need, which we believe has huge potential."