Person-to-person currency transfer platform CurrencyFair has raised $10.6m in a funding round, led by Octopus Investments.
The latest funding round will help the firm capitalise on the expanding new sector of peer-to-peer currency transfer and enhance and expand CurrencyFair’s existing currency corridors.
Participants in the round include venture capital investors Octopus Investments with follow on from existing investors Frontline Ventures.
Customers worldwide are increasingly migrating away from using traditional banks – where they pay non-transparent and expensive currency exchange charges – towards the wave of new fintech platforms.
CurrencyFair CEO Brett Meyers said: “The money transfer sector has seen a lot of attention recently, with customers beginning to realise the high fees charged by banks when sending money internationally.
“These customers, made up of an internationally mobile workforce, retirees and foreign property owners, are regularly sending £2,000 or more in the form of pay, pensions, mortgages and rents.
“For these people we are a great match as we are virtually unbeatable over £2,000, sometimes even beating the interbank rate, which banks, brokers and other transfer services can’t do.”
Rebecca Hunt, a member of the Ventures team at Octopus, added: “The fintech scene is incredibly exciting at the moment, and nowhere more so than in international transfers. It’s certainly a competitive market, but we are pleased to be backing CurrencyFair and look forward to working closely with them in this next step in the business’ growth.”
And Will Prendergast partner at Frontline Ventures, continued: “It is amazing to see groups of ex pats, pensioners and small business all over the world switch to adopting CurrencyFair’s unique marketplace system for moving money internationally. It is always the unexpected behaviour change that means you are onto something big.”