Visa Joins $80M Round For Currencycloud

Currencycloud, a U.K.-based FinTech focused on cross-border payments, said Monday (Jan. 27) it had received the equivalent of $80 million from a series of investors including Visa.

Other investors included World Bank’s International Finance Corp., Siam Commercial Bank and BNP Paribas, as well as SoftBank’s spun-off SBI Group. The new investors were joined by existing investors including Nation Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Google’s venture arm known as GV.

The Series E funding round takes Currencycloud’s total funding to $140 million to date.

Currencycloud said it will use the funding to boost its technology portfolio and partner network. The firm said it will add integration with major software platforms, and increase alternate payment methods to offerings such as mobile wallets, instant payments and cards.

The company said that since 2012 it has processed more than $50 billion in cross-border payments using the company’s offering and application programming interfaces (APIs), and Currencycloud pointed to a customer base that includes Monzo, Revolut and Starling.

Recent product launches and updates include Currencycloud Spark, which provided multi-currency accounts to banks and FinTechs across more than 35 currencies.

As part of the announcement,  Currencycloud said Colleen Ostrowski, senior vice president and treasurer at Visa, will join Currencycloud’s board.

“Currencycloud is re-imagining how money flows around the global economy and embedding it into platforms of the future,” Currencycloud CEO Mike Laven said in a statement. “Transfer of value is fast becoming the newest layer in the modern technology stack, and Currencycloud is positioned to provide the infrastructure to make this happen. With these new strategic investors, we are well placed to be the go-to provider for the next wave of Fintech innovation.”

Separately, Laven said in an interview with TechCrunch that as many as 350 companies use Currencycloud’s  APIs as of the end of 2019.

“No one is doing what we’re doing in terms of the model we have,” Laven told the publication, with a nod to an “embedded model” that allows for seamless fund flow. “I’m not competing with our customers. My brand is invisible. We think we’re still the only one that has that kind of solution.”