Nigel Verdon founded FX Capital in London in 2007. He saw early that cross-border payments could be automated. At the time they were slow and expensive, with hidden fees, and run by banks.
In 2012 Notion Capital led a Series A with Atlas Venture and Anthemis. The company hired Mike Laven as CEO and became Currencycloud. It had about £1m in revenue and processed about £25m a month.
Currencycloud sold the plumbing to other firms through cloud APIs. Monzo, Starling and Revolut were customers. By June 2021 it had processed more than £2bn for nearly 500 customers in 180 countries. In early 2020 it raised $80m with Visa and the World Bank Group.
Visa announced the purchase in July 2021 in a deal valued at $963m (£700m), and it completed in December 2021. Rivals include Wise Platform, Airwallex, Railsr, Banking Circle and Ebury.