CURRENCYCLOUD

Currencycloud's roots go back to 2007, when Nigel Verdon started a company called FX Capital. In 2012 it was rebuilt and rebranded as Currencycloud, with Verdon, Richard Arundel and Stephen Lemon among the founders and Mike Laven brought in as chief executive.

They set up shop in a small rented office in east London. The insight was simple.

Moving money between currencies was painful, manual and locked inside big banks. Turn that process into clean software other companies could tap, and you could power an entire generation of fintech apps.

That is exactly what happened.

Currencycloud sells the pipes for cross-border payments. Banks, fintech apps and businesses plug into its APIs instead of building currency exchange and international transfers from scratch.

Picture a neobank that wants to let users hold and send dollars, euros and pounds. Rather than wrestle with banking rails in every country, it uses Currencycloud to do the heavy lifting.

Currencycloud makes money on transaction and currency exchange fees. It is invisible to the end user, which is the whole point.

Currencycloud's product is a set of APIs for moving and managing money across borders. It offers multi-currency wallets, so a business can hold and manage many currencies in one place.

It provides virtual account numbers and real-time notifications on currency transactions. It handles the actual currency conversion and international payouts behind the scenes.

Bundled together, it is a full toolkit for any company that wants to offer cross-border payments without becoming a bank itself.

Currencycloud grew by being the quiet engine, not the star. Instead of building its own consumer app and fighting for attention, it powered other people's apps.

As the fintech boom took off in the 2010s, every new challenger bank and payments startup needed cross-border infrastructure. Currencycloud was right there to sell it.

It ended up supporting nearly 500 banking and technology clients across more than 180 countries. Being the layer underneath a whole industry turned out to be a very good place to sit.

Being infrastructure is a double-edged sword. Currencycloud's fate was tied to its clients, so it only grew as fast as the fintechs it powered.

It also operated in a heavily regulated space where compliance mistakes across many countries can be brutal. And it faced deep-pocketed competition from Wise, Adyen and the banks themselves.

The honest truth is that staying independent long term was hard for a business like this. In the end the challenge resolved itself the way many infrastructure startups do, by being bought rather than going it alone.

Currencycloud raised more than $140 million over its life from a long list of backers. Notion Capital, Sapphire Ventures, GV, Anthemis and Accomplice were among the venture investors.

The most telling round came in January 2020, when Visa led an $80 million investment alongside BNP Paribas, the International Finance Corporation, SBI Group and Siam Commercial Bank. That Visa check was a preview of what came next.

In July 2021 Visa agreed to buy Currencycloud outright for around 700 million pounds, and the deal closed that December. The company that powered other fintechs became part of Visa.