CurrencyCloud Founder Leaving To Focus On His Next Venture

Currencycloud founder Nigel Verdon is reportedly leaving the company to focus on a new FinTech startup, RailsBank.

According to a report in Business Insider, Verdon said he was leaving Currencycloud because the business is going well and shareholders of RailsBank want him to concentrate on that FinTech more fully.

“Currencycloud, to be honest, the team is doing a stunning job. Mike [Laven, Currencycloud’s CEO] has built a brilliant team, a great brand. I’m a sort of spare part at Currencycloud now,” Verdon said in the interview.

The departure of Verdon comes as Currencycloud recently raised £20 million from GV, the venture capital arm of Google.

“Once you get GV and a lot of those guys, the board just gets bigger and bigger. Taking Currencycloud to the next step [with] GV on the board], they really know about scaling up businesses,” Verdon said in the interview.

Verdon, who is a serial entrepreneur, has had RailsBank in the works for a little more than the year. The startup is providing a platform for businesses to access global banks instead of having to open different accounts with different people around the globe.

“RailsBank is a banking-led API that connects a network of global banks together to give access to global banking with five lines of code. Imagine a Stripe for banking; that’s what our aim is to be,” said Verdon. “I think global banking is fundamentally broken for companies that want cross-border bank accounts, to send money, receive money, issue cards — that whole infrastructure you need as a new business or existing business. It was something I remembered when I grew Currencycloud. We wanted this infrastructure and APIs to access the banking, but it just didn’t really exist.”

RailsBank is going after FinTech companies and eCommerce stores that need international transaction banking across borders, noted the report.