CROSSBORDER
Going the extra miles Banco Santander’s investment in Ebury – the award-winning provider of financial services to internationally-focussed SMEs – will allow it to continue its globetrotting quest for ‘borderless’ transactions, as Chief Technology Officer, Toby Young, explains The phrase ‘small world’ has never rung truer than when describing cash management services provider Ebury – the UK company whose stated mission is to create a ‘boundaryless’ world of payments. Established in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Juan Lobato and financial services expert Salvador García, Ebury is one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintechs and is committed to ‘removing global finance barriers’ to achieve ‘as few boundaries as possible’. Its services include everything from providing CBILS (Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme) funding in the UK, to trade finance, international payments, mass payments solutions, currency accounts and collections, all via its proprietary online platform. At the core of the business, is providing SMEs with access to the financial products they need to expand across international borders. Growing fast, with 24 offices globally, Ebury has been recognised by a string of awards, including the FT’s Future 100UK in 2018/19. Its commercial ambitions have been jet-propelled, recently, by a string of deals, most notably a major cash injection www.fintechf.com
by Banco Santander, which acquired a 50 per cent stake for $453million in April. Ebury’s diverse services, which its website describes as ‘intuitive, fully auditable and secured by design’, are delivered by its own application programming interfaces (APIs) and platform, which can provide automated solutions for ‘crossborder and transactional banking, including a test environment, as well as complex tracking and reporting, and automation of business processes’. It prides itself in proving the kind of customer service, usually reserved for a bank’s biggest customers, boasting ‘whether you’re an international trader, an NGO, an ecommerce platform or a small business owner, our solutions are designed to create a seamless international finance process’. Over the course of this, the most challenging of years, the global transaction platform has built out its capability in a number of ways. In May, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic’s first wave, it launched Ebury Instant, enabling its clients to make instant, currency-agnostic payments. Where both parties are Ebury clients, it deposits payments into the recipient’s account immediately, in their
originating currency. Then in September, it was one of five fintechs to share £80million of funding (Ebury’s share being £10million) from the UK government’s Banking Competition Remedies (BCR) Pool E fund. A month later, it announced its first acquisition – of Frontierpay, a step that increases its global reach exponentially, and provides a major new business line, that of payroll payments, which Frontierpay delivers across 180 countries. Notably, it also gives Ebury a way in to the lucrative Asia-Pacific region. Earlier this month, Ebury joined forces with fintech Cobase, giving it access to the leading fintech’s Cloud-based, corporate multi-banking platform, while Cobase will give its corporate treasury clients access to Ebury’s services. This announcement followed the launch of Cobase’s new Liquidity Forecasting and Foreign Exchange (FX) Exposure Management modules, enabling corporate treasuries to optimise cash positions and automatically hedge their foreign exchange risk. Chief technology officer at Ebury, Toby Young, says the industry backdrop against which Ebury is making such strides is one of ‘dramatic change’ in payments. Issue 7 | ThePaytechMagazine
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