Dublin-based money transfer outfit CurrencyFair is merging with Australia's Assembly Payments thanks to a strategic investment from Standard Chartered. Financial details were not disclosed.
The move comes a year after Standard Chartered invested in Assembly Payments and will create a combined company that the partners claim will give businesses the building blocks to easily access, build, connect, and use any payment service.
CurrencyFair CEO Paul Byrne will lead the merged business.
Covid-19 has accelerated the move to e-commerce, and with a substantial number of these transactions taking place between continents and markets, cross border digital payments have become more complex, requiring workflows that involve many steps, systems and interactions.
Corporate clients are also increasingly demanding more value-added services from their payments providers, to consolidate all aspects of their payment value chain within a seamless and cost-efficient offering that meets domestic and cross border payment flow needs.
The combined venture is promising to address some of the key pain points, including the fragmentation of payment ecosystems, the complexity of implementing different payment ecosystems, privacy and security of data, and cross-border e-commerce for multi-market and multi-currency collection requirements.
Bill Winters, group chief executive, Standard Chartered, says: "By bringing together the complementary strengths of CurrencyFair and Assembly, we are supporting the merged company in offering the full range of payment services, providing retail and corporate clients access to fast, high-volume domestic and cross-border payments."