City Forex volumes support FairFX international payments turnover growth in H1 2018
International payments turnover for the Group jumped 131.6% year on year, supported by additional volumes from City Forex.
International payments and banking services provider Fairfx Group PLC (LON:FFX) continues to reap the benefits of successful acquisitions. Earlier today, the Group posted an update on its performance during the first six months of 2018, with turnover for the six months to June 30, 2018, up 146.2% year on year to £1.1 billion, in line with management’s expectations.
On a like for like basis, excluding the effects of the acquisition of Cardone Banking and City Forex, turnover for the first six months of 2018 grew 22.8% from a year earlier to £532.9 million. Like-for-like turnover from prepaid cards and international payments increased 8.5% to £181.7 million and 39.1% to £334.6 million respectively.
International payments turnover for the Group increased 131.6% year on year, supported by additional volumes from City Forex, which saw year-on-year turnover growth of 39%. Since acquiring City Forex in February, the successful migration of FairFX’s international payments to the City Forex platform has led to increased opportunities for the Group to scale through the platform’s straight-through-processing capability.
Usage of the Company’s corporate card platform rose 28.3% year on year. A strong focus on sales and marketing of the corporate product is now gaining traction and forms a key pillar of our overall offering to the SME customer base.
On the retail card and travel money side of the business, the focus remains to grow turnover whilst maintaining margins through targeted marketing and improved user experience. The incorporation of the City Forex travel cash division into the Group is helping achieve this through maximising cross-selling opportunities.
Within the Banking division, the Fair Everywhere business account was recently launched and brings together the expertise of FairFX in international payments and Cardone’s banking capabilities. The account is designed to make global business banking easier, faster and cheaper for those who don’t want borders to limit their business ambitions. The launch of Fair Everywhere marks the start of a number of banking products planned for release in the coming months, FairFX says.
Regarding the future, FairFX says the focus for the second half of 2018 will be to continue the strategy of extracting efficiencies via scale whilst evolving the banking products for SME’s. The strong first half gives the Board confidence that FairFX will achieve market expectations for the full financial year.
