This time a year ago, Kantox was on stage at FinovateEurope, showing the world its peer-to-peer currency exchange for SMEs.
Today, the company is announcing its largest funding round to date: a Series A investment of €6.5 million (approximately $9 million). The round was led by Partech Ventures and IDinvest Partners, which joined previous investor, Cabiedes & Partners.
The new investment brings the company’s funding total to more than $12 million. Kantox plans to use the capital to help develop its peer-to-peer trading technology, as well as to expand the company’s presence in Europe. Philippe Gelis, Kantox CEO, said, “We are extremely excited to have secured this latest round of funding, and can’t wait to continue building out our sales teams in Germany, France, Spain, the UK and Italy.”
Kantox specializes in helping small and medium sized businesses access optimal foreign currency exchange rates. Kantox leverages its peer-to-peer technology to provide SMEs with a way to avoid costly (and often undisclosed) FX fees typically demanded by brokerage firms and banks.
“Large corporates enjoy access to really competitive rates while SMEs and mid-caps – who usually don’t have access to live rates or an in-house FX expert – are overcharged by a banking oligopoly which promotes opacity,” Gelis said.
A few Kantox metrics:
- Serves more than 500 corporate clients
- Anticipates processing more than 1 billion euros in transactions in 2014.
- Provides ability to trade more than 25 international currencies
- Saved more than 70% of its customers more than 80% compared to banks and brokerages
Kantox is one of a number of innovators in this P2P currency exchange space, competing alongside fellow Europeans (and Finovate alums) like CurrencyTransfer and TransferWise. The company is headquartered in the UK, and has offices in Barcelona, Spain.
This post is part of our live coverage of FinovateEurope 2014.
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