X-Border Payments Startup Nabs $11M Backing

Kantox, the London-based online currency exchange platform focused on small and medium enterprises, has raised $11 million in Series B financing from a trio of existing investors, TechCrunch reported Wednesday (May 27).

Kantox’s platform enables peer to peer currency transactions, which bypasses banks and which proponents say allows smaller entities to get better rates than those offered by financial institutions or brokers. The latest financing, which takes total funding in the company to $19 million since its 2011 founding, comes from a consortium of investors, with leadership from Partech Ventures and IDinvest Partners, alongside Cabiedes & Partners.

In an interview with TechCrunch, company founder Phillipe Gelis stated that larger companies “have resources, knowledge and leverage to manage their FX in a smart way and to negotiate fair prices with banks. On the contrary, SMEs and mid-caps are unable to do so and find themselves at the mercy of banks and traditional FX brokers.” The company says it has roughly 1,500 or so corporate clients across 18 industries.

In 2015, Kantox reached $1 billion worth of processed transactions. Of that tally, roughly half a billion dollars’ worth were processed in the past three months, Techcrunch noted.

Colloquially known as P2P, such currency exchange platforms are catching on, especially across the pond. In one notable transaction, the Irish currency P2P firm known as CurrencyFair closed a nearly $11 million funding round last month.