Although Michael Laven, CEO of four-year old Currency Cloud, is taking away cross border transactions from banks, he thinks fintech firms and banks have to learn to work together.
“I was with a bank yesterday; I speak to a lot of banks. I think they reel me in to frighten their people to move on innovation.”
If he tells Currency Cloud’s story, he could be pretty frightening.
“We double every year and we have brought out our next generation of software. We are core to the whole digital upgrade of the financial world. Our volumes grew by over 100 percent, customers over 100 percent, employees by 50 percent. As you walk around the office you can see there is nowhere to sit any more.”
You can’t go online and move money across borders with Currency Cloud. Somewhat like the “
“We are embedded in lots of startups,” said Laven, “some of which have become quite big. We are changing the way money moves around the world. We don't sell directly to end users, but we are the infrastructure behind other money moving firms. Currency Cloud is a piece of infrastructure that is behind making international payments easier for all sorts of different kinds of payment platforms and provides simpler, cheaper, more transparent payments.”
More than 150 companies use Currency Cloud and they in turn have a total of more than 500,000 end users, he told The Payers publication. Companies that have linked to the Currency Cloud API include MANGOPAY, WeSwap and WorldRemit.
Laven says that in today’s world any company can operate globally.
One example is Paddle, which provides a platform for app developers to sell their software around the world. When it started Paddle used international bank transfers or
It implemented Currency Cloud with its API in two weeks and gained access to a streamlined automated payment process that saved Paddle 97 percent compared to processing payments through its bank.
“When Paddle started working with Currency Cloud, the company was a tenth of the size it is today,” said Grimston. “Yet, rather than the workload increasing with transaction growth, we have maintained the same number of staff to deal with this process – and have even reduced the amount of time this team spends on managing transactions.”
The average developer selling through Paddle makes $1,000 a month and now is saving 5 percent on landing feeds, FX fees and transaction costs, he added.
Fintech companies are coming at the world through mobile and social channels, said Laven, and their innovation and intelligence are changing consumer demand.
“People will expect the pricing and ease of use that comes from the way fintech startups think of the world, but fintechs may not be the delivery mechanism.” He points to Santander and BBVA as technology leaders in banking who think that they can develop new platforms and integrate with some of the key fintech innovators.
Several banks are using Currency Cloud including Fidor in Germany, Bank of Malta and several banks in the Czech Republic. He points to the alliance between Zopa, a P2P lender in the UK and Metro Bank, the first new retail bank in maybe 100 years, as a sign of things to come for fintech firms and banks. Zopa provides a better user experience, better analytics and allied with a bank that has a strong deposit base to it can provide capital.
“Fidor is branchless and uses mobile or an online wallet, but behind that they connect through APIs to a whole host of best-of-breed services. Santander is trying to do the same, where the online bank is freed from the infrastructure of the main bank. Some banks will figure this out faster than other banks.”
