VertoFX, a global B2B payments platform, which helps businesses move money across borders seamlessly and instantly, has raised $10 million to continue its B2B payments mission and expand into emerging markets such as Africa, a region where SMEs cross-border payment needs are currently significantly under-addressed.
The Series A funding round was led by leading FinTech investor Quona Capital, alongside Treasury, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), TMT Investments, Unicorn Growth Capital, Zrosk Investment Management and P1 Ventures. Previous investors include Y Combinator, Accelerated Digital Ventures, and Ace & Company.
According to Ola Oyetayo, Co-Founder and CEO of Verto: “Using Verto’s three main products (Payments, Exchange & Multi-Currency account), business owners can now send cross-border B2B payments at FX rates up to 9 times cheaper than they could through traditional banks, and with Verto wallets businesses can hold money with us in 39 currencies and make instant cross-border payments to other companies on the Verto network in real-time. While traditional peer-to-peer payment platforms often have transaction limits, the Verto platform facilitates payment volumes that are appropriate for MSMEs.”
VertoFX, which helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to make payments to their suppliers in over 200 countries across 39 currencies, aims to solve important pain points in the B2B global payments industry, which analysts forecast will grow to nearly USD 200 trillion by 2028, over six times the size of the retail payments market.
Founded in 2017 by Nigerian-born, British ex-bankers Anthony Oduwole and Ola Oyetayo, VertoFX aims to make cross-border payments seamless starting from Africa and other emerging markets.
Since launch, the London-based firm allows companies to gain easy access to foreign currencies and make international payments to their suppliers abroad seamlessly. With an FCA approval, the firm operates accounts in various currencies and processes millions of dollars in monthly transaction volumes for businesses with speed, affordability and transparency.
In 2019, VertoFX raised $2.1m for a cross-border payments platform for Africa and other emerging markets, just months after graduating from YCombinator. The firm uses a peer-to-peer model to avoid redundant banking infrastructures to match businesses with foreign currency needs via algorithms on its platform making access to currencies cheaper, faster and more secure.
A typical VertoFX customer, for example, could be a South-African based Solar energy company with suppliers from China which it needs to pay in RMB or USD on a weekly basis. VertoFX provides a solution for this with its advanced tech-stack and marketplace business model. It connects these companies and uses its networks of banks and infrastructure relationships to provide simpler settlement times plus liquidity in local currencies.
Anthony Oduwole, Verto’s Co-Founder and CTO, said: “We plan to expand our presence in emerging markets with this fund through a suite of top-class tech stacks. Geographically, this is an essential step towards our mission of ‘making international payments simple, fast and cheap’. Our purposefully built tech infrastructure and payment rails enable instant cross-border payments in a way that is really exciting for businesses.”
