The journey for Melbourne fintech Assembly Payments is set to end with the company being merged into Ireland-based cross-border payments platform CurrencyFair by one of the company’s key backers Standard Chartered.
The British banking multinational launched a Singapore-based joint venture digital payments company with Assembly Payments in early 2020.
Standard Chartered said the merger was the result of a strategic investment by its investment arm, SC Ventures, was “doubling down” on its commitment to the payments industry and “turbocharged our digital payments proposition”.
Alex Manson from SC Ventures said: “E-Commerce is one of the highest conviction themes for SC Ventures, and we will continue to grow and scale our capabilities and geographies to support the transition to digital economies.”
The deal is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. The terms have not been disclosed. CurrencyFair CEO Paul Byrne will lead the merged business.
Standard Chartered‘s group CEO Bill Winters said their 2020 investment in Assembly Payments “greatly enhanced our presence in the domestic payments business”.
“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,” he said.
The merged business will “focus on addressing key pain points including the fragmentation of payment ecosystems, the complexity of implementing different payment ecosystems from a technical, operational, financial, and regulatory perspective, privacy and security of data, and cross-border e-commerce for multi-market and multi-currency collection requirements” the bank’s statement said.
The board of Assembly Payments issued its own statement saying: “The importance of providing complementary payment services such as non-card payments, fraud management, reconciliation, foreign exchange and liquidity via a product-rich experience is critical. As a combined proposition, we believe Assembly Payments and CurrencyFair are perfectly positioned to address these challenges in the global cross border business payments market.”
Assembly Payments was founded in 2013 as PromisePay by Darren McMurtrie, Simon Lee and Simon Jones. The Westpac-backed payment platform opened offices in Melbourne and San Francisco the following year before expanding into Singapore and the Philippines. It rebranded as Assembly Payments in 2017 and employs 74 people.
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