In another of the frequent ongoing announcements about the B2B payments space, this piece appears in PaymentsSource and discusses a ‘new’ payments service from Travelex. For those readers not particularly familiar with Travelex, it has been around (in one form or another) since the 1970s. It’s basically a foreign exchange business.
‘Travelex is rolling out a suite of B2B payment services through a new API-based platform and sandbox….Travelex Business targets banks, merchants and fintechs looking to consolidate enterprise travel, B2B payments and foreign exchange services through a single channel, leveraging the company’s global cross-border connections.’
The Travelex parent was majority-owned by the PE firm Apax, which spun off the Travelex Business unit to Western Union Business Solutions (WUBS) back in 2011 for about $1 billion. As far as we know, WUBS still retains that former Travelex unit as part of its business solutions. This new announcement arises from what was a separate transaction in 2014-2015, whereby billionaire Dr. B.R. Shetty bought the remaining Travelex business from Apax, and then merged it with UAE Exchange.
‘Shetty in 2018 established Finablr, a financial services holding company, to operate Travelex alongside UAE Exchange, another longtime foreign currency exchange operation based in Abu Dhabi….Travelex Business’ services include Travel Business Cash, a white-label product for sending and receiving cash for travel or wholesale transactions; Travelex Business Pay, enabling fast transfers of large sums across borders; Travelex Business Cloud for dynamic currency conversions and Travelex Business Digital, a developer platform enabling partners to experiment or add Travelex Business services into their own products.’
It is sometimes difficult to follow the bouncing ball, but certainly continued global focus on business payments is quite clear, given the massive market which is undergoing vast digital change.
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group