Barcelona and London: 27 October 2022 – Neo, the treasury management, payments and FX fintech, has cleared $5 billion through its multi-currency accounts as cross-border payment volumes increase globally. The provider launched its multi-currency account offering for treasurers in June 2020 and cleared $4 billion in the past year. This compares to $1 billion in its first 15 months, reflecting a growing demand from clients for a fast, cost-effective and transparent alternative to the traditional banking model.
Three-fifths (58%) of SMEs say they are sending and receiving more cross-border payments now than before the pandemic, according to a recent borderless payments report from Mastercard. 39% said cross-border payments slow down supply chains and 36% said there was no transparency about how much money they lose in foreign exchange and transfers.
The report highlights the persistent problems businesses face when paying suppliers in different countries. The challenge is that working with traditional banks involves limited and incomplete payment information, making it difficult to reconcile payments and delaying the shipment of goods. The high level of fees applied by banks to those payments also hurts SMEs’ competitiveness.
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Neo offers a single platform where treasurers can gather all currencies and access their information in one location. Businesses can set up an international account with their own multi-currency International Bank Account Number (IBAN), enabling them to manage cash flows and view trading data, all in one place. Virtual wallets then allow them to organise funds and make and receive payments in more than 30 currencies – all with transparent and competitive pricing.
Neo now works with more than 300 corporates across 28 countries and more than 5,000 banks are connected to its Bank Identification Code (BIC) on the SWIFT network.
Laurent Descout, CEO and Co-Founder of Neo, comments: “We’ve seen a rapid acceleration of volumes in the last 12 months and, in part, this reflects a very notable increase in demand for borderless payments across the market. However, a large portion of our growth is from existing clients and what we’re seeing is businesses experiencing the benefits of moving away from the traditional banking model. It has long been a complex, opaque and often costly process and in order to facilitate the rise in payments, businesses are buying into a more streamlined, integrated approach that can deliver significant cost savings.”
