Hong Kong’s Currenxie Begins $10M Series A

Hong Kong-based cross-border payments startup Currenxie says it’s ready to take on its first outside investors, starting with a $10 million Series A funding round.

According to the South China Morning Post, the funding round — led by BF Belmont — will allow Currenxie to expand its product offering, add to its 35-member team and reach new markets in Europe and Southeast Asia.

“We sat back and we said we’ve built an enormous amount of infrastructure here,” CEO Riccardo Capelvenere said. “We’re on par with a handful of companies around the world that have built all of this. It became evident to us: why don’t we actually leverage that way? Why don’t we go more global? Why don’t we do the other things that the other players are doing?”

Capelvenere founded the company in 2014 with his wife Alison, Currenxie’s CFO. The two are Goldman Sachs alumni.

The firm offers digital wallets for multiple currencies, currency exchange services, payments and virtual banking, operating in 30 countries and 18 currencies.

Licensed as a money lender/money services operator in Hong Kong, the company is hoping to gain an e-money license in Ireland and to add staff in Dublin next year.

“We’re also looking at expanding into other areas like Singapore and Australia and a few other places that we have thoughts about,” said Capelvenere.

As the SCMP notes, the world’s B2B payments market is expected to exceed $1.9 trillion, with cross-border payments seeing a compound annual growth rate of 13.3 percent — higher than the global CAGR average for B2B payments.

Among the players in this sector is Airwallex, a cross-border commerce FinTech that we profiled in June following their partnership with Visa to debut a borderless card for firms in Hong Kong.

The partnership gave the firm’s clients the ability to generate and issue multicurrency virtual payment cards to make transactions in more than 140 currencies, making payments anyplace Visa is accepted.

Learn more: Visa, Airwallex Debut B2B X-Border Virtual Card In Hong Kong