Cornerstone FS PLC joined the AIM, London’s junior stock market hot off the heels of its £2.7m round.
Founded by the former boss of Cambridge Analytica Julian Wheatland, the international payments and electronic account services group is valued at £12.4m based on its debut share price of 61p.
It will use the cash to fund both organic and acquisitive growth designed to expand its technology platform. Furthermore, Cornerstone intends to buy other foreign exchange businesses, integrate its platform with cloud-based accounting applications, pay the costs of the IPO and develop a broader range of products and services.
Cornerstone is the UK-based holding company of FXPress Payment Services Ltd and Avila House Limited. While FXPress started as a small foreign exchange broking business, in 2018 it developed FXPal, its own proprietary cloud-based multi-currency payments platform, which is hosted on Amazon Web Services.
Last October, Cornerstone acquired Avila House, which has an electronic money institution licence focused on multi-currency e-wallets. It allows clients to hold a multi-currency current account.
Commenting on the AIM debut, Wheatland said, “The non-financial institutions segment of the market is highly fragmented with many smaller players struggling to cope with the ever-increasing regulatory demands and the costs of acquiring up-to-date technology.
“At the same time, SME customers are seeking better quality and more bespoke services that are provided by the major financial institutions that dominate the foreign exchange market. This provides us with a clear opportunity for our offering, which, with our strong board, excellent management team and highly scalable platform, we are well-placed to deliver.”
With 30 other foreign exchange businesses as clients, the business processed an estimated £600m of foreign currency transactions each year for its 700-plus corporate customers, it claimed.
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