Google Ventures Conducts First FinTech Investment
Currencycloud, a London fintech world leader in cross-border payments, announced that it has raised £20 million ($25 million) from Google’s venture capital arm, GV, according to a company statement.
GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet, Inc. and formerly known as Google Ventures, joins other investors to the five-year-old startup for the series D round, including Notion Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Rakuten FinTech Fund and Anthemis.
This high-profile investment gives the sector a much-needed boost following fears post-Brexit and pushes funding for the company to £44 million ($61 million).
Mike Laven, CEO of Currencycloud, said that in recent years the company has seen a rise of the ‘building block economy,’ and that companies can combine services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Maps, Stripe and Twilio to build new businesses fast without expensive overheads.
Currencycloud provides a set of multi-currency payment and conversion tools that are helping hundreds of companies globalize fast. We are seeing massive and increasing demand for these services, with volumes growing over 150% last year.
The company has more than 200 customers in 35 countries including Travelex and the Standard Bank of South Africa, which pay Currencycloud a portion of all payments made through its API. With millions of end-users with access to its platform through their payment providers, Currencycloud delivers the tools to build cross-border products and applications, helping to drive innovation throughout the fintech sector.
The new funds build on the £12 million ($18 million) it raised in 2015 in its series C round and will go toward boosting the company’s growth and ongoing global expansion.
Tom Hulme, GV General Partner, said:
We believe in empowering developers by making it easier for them to add scalable services to their products, ideally with simple APIs. Currencycloud is the leader in providing cross-border payment services in this manner, a real need as companies globalize.
Google Ventures Steps into FinTech
Launched in 2009, GV primarily focuses on the fields of life science, healthcare, artificial intelligence, robotics, transportation, cybersecurity and agriculture.
Investing around $500 million to companies worldwide like Slack and Uber, GV’s fintech investment in Currencycloud appears as though the company is shifting its fund focus to new areas.
According to a report from the Financial Times , Hulme is reported as saying that a major area of investment for GV is within fintech.
London is particularly interesting because there is a huge exit opportunity. We look for capital and potentially exit options, and London has great financiers, customers, and potential acquirers for a business like Currencycloud in the long run.
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