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Did you know that the world’s first P2P FX firm was formed in 1998 and is listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange and cross-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange?
No, me neither.
Midpoint, formed in 1998, describe themselves as the world’s first authentic peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) international foreign currency and payments platform, have a US patent on its FX deal matching process and have won several awards for this including being the “Best P2P Currency Matching Platform” in 2015.
Zooming up to the bigger picture of P2P – y’all know about P2P – one of the mainstays of the fintech revolution.
Or so you might think.
In P2P borrowing and lending there has been a lot of displacement of the “P” by institutional capital – so less P2P than it was.
In Insurance Fintech P2P is far more spoken about than done.
In FX – well it’s always been something of an insiders’ secret that the much-vaunted P2P FX model – beloved of unicorn valuations – is more talked about than done.
In LFP023 Philippe Gelis CEO of B2B Fintech FX players Kantox spoke about how “pure P2P” in the FinTech fx markets rapidly became “best execution” and that P2P never really worked.
The most well-known B2C FX Fintech is Transferwise. In a recent article Nick England founder of VFX and a 15yr veteran of the FX markets said that Transferwise was – “smoke and mirrors” – and that their main innovation was around marketing.
It was something of a surprise to social media Fintechers that Transferwise (as far as I and others saw) chose not to reply to these claims. The Memo reached out to Transferwise to ask how much is P2P and how much is dealt outside and they declined to reply. So after all, like the banks, they do have “something to hide”.
Another advertising slogan bites the dust.
Against this bakckground, for some time I have been keeping my eye out for a firm that does P2P FX to come on the show and honestly and openly discuss the pros and cons of Fintech FX.
As Midpoint are listed they are rather more familiar than non-listed firms with the need to tell the truth about business rather than hype up some PR and spin.
Discussions in this episode include: Continue reading →