CurrencyFair picks up €8m for P2P currency exchange

Peer-to-peer currency exchange marketplace CurrencyFair has closed €8m in a new round of funding. The capital comes from existing backers Octopus Ventures and Frontline Ventures.

The Dublin-based company aims to offer business and personal money transfers between currencies.

It avoids the usual high costs of remittance payments by allowing users to buy and sell currencies between themselves.

The funding takes the total raised by CurrencyFair to just less than $25m with it previously taking on a €8m round from Octopus Ventures, Frontline Ventures and Proxy Ventures in March, as well as a €10m Series A in April 2015.

The funding coincides with the company’s appointment of Paul Byrne as its new CEO and Ruth Fletcher as CFO. The positions are both subject to approval from Irish financial regulators.

CurrencyFair is also adding Sylvie McDermott as chief product officer while company founder Brett Meyers will now take on the role of chief strategy office.

He said, “I am delighted that, after an extensive recruitment process that we began in 2015, CurrencyFair now has a complete, highly experienced and high-calibre management team in place that will drive us all forward in the next phase of our growth.”

The company competes with London-based remittance firm TransferWise, which shares CurrencyFair’s peer-to-peer exchange model and has raised more than $100m from investors to date, including Silicon Valley heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz.

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