INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As the UK continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based startup that enables companies to work internationally has
raised a huge round of funding from a strategic backer to expand its business
Ebury, which provides foreign exchange, money transfer and other currency services to small and medium businesses and their banking
With the deal, Madrid-based Santander will become a majority shareholder at 50.1% but notes that Ebury will continue to operate as an
its revenues from existing customers and take on new ones.Santander said that it has 4 million SME customers globally, and currently more
than 200,000 of them do international business, while Ebury is already operating 19 countries and covers 140 currencies, with annual revenue
growth of 40% in each of the last three years.But putting to one side 4 million businesses, even providing services to 200,000 customers
said that its investment gives it a 50.1% stake in the company, but it is not disclosing total valuation
and co-founders and management will also invest in the transaction
Past backers include 83North (formerly Greylock Israel) and Vitruvian Partners, among others
Just last month, Ebury announced that it had acquired another fintech called Frontierpay, which specialises in international payroll
The deal is still going through regulatory approavals.Many have lamented the fact that startups out of Europe find it hard to scale and grow
Fintech is one of the big areas that bucks this trend.Adyen built and still operates its successful online payments business out of the
offer our clients the best of both worlds: they can benefit from our technology and high- quality service safe in the knowledge that they
shareholders will allow us to invest in new ways to serve SMEs trading internationally and continue the growth in our business while keeping
business, specifically by integrating or co-marketing those services alongside its own
Although it looked like iZettle could eventually get gobbled up by Santander, in the end, it was acquired by PayPal for $2.2 billion.As with
the iZettle investment, the focus for Santander here is on providing more services for SMEs, a huge sector that is fragmented and often
overlooked and underserved against the bookends of mass-market consumer services and high-touch, high-end large enterprise services
Chairman of Banco Santander, in a statement
By partnering with Ebury, Santander will deliver faster and more efficient products and services for SMEs, previously only accessible to
