AbbeyCross Emerging Market FX payments platform hits key milestone: Launch of ABX Studio with US Tier 1 Bank

London, New York – 14 May 2024. AbbeyCross, the company focused on transforming the FX and payments landscape for Emerging Markets (EM), announces the launch of ABX Studio with its first US Tier 1 bank client. ABX Studio, the first solution to go live on the ABX Platform, provides unique emerging market FX pricing data directly from multiple EM payments providers, enhancing price discovery and comparison, to support deliverable payments to emerging markets.

Developed by payment industry veterans and built with best-in-class, proven and trusted financial markets transaction technologies, the ABX Platform has been created specifically to address the challenges faced today by commercial banks, Money Services Businesses (MSBs), Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and international charities operating in the world’s emerging markets.

Historically, commercial banks have suffered from a lack of choice when addressing emerging markets payments with most limited to one FX rate provider. This harms margins, limits services to their clients and creates compliance risks to regulators. MSBs may struggle to access banking services and are limited to banks’ wholesale offerings rather than having direct access to provider bank solutions. NGOs and Charitable Trusts face the same challenges as MSBs, along with a heightened need for pricing transparency for governance purposes.

These organisations can now benefit from a single access point to accurate and transparent EM FX payment pricing sourced directly from multiple payment partners. Through a single integration to the ABX Platform, users get unparalleled EM payments pricing accuracy and transparency without the cost and time associated with building multiple direct connections.

ABX Studio users can:

• View and compare real-time and historic deliverable FX rates from multiple payment providers
• Benchmark existing payment providers against the wider market to drive competition, improve margins and support more accurate customer pricing
• Address regulatory and supervisory challenges with independent verification of payment-relevant EM FX execution rates

Mike Robertson, CEO and Co-Founder, AbbeyCross said: “Today marks a major milestone in our journey to optimise and improve the outdated and inefficient emerging markets FX payments ecosystem. For this US Tier 1 bank client, joining the ABX Platform recognises its commitment to continuous innovation for its global client base. Using ABX Studio will help improve their decision-making capabilities for FX payments to emerging markets and bring greater efficiency, increase price transparency, and mitigate risk. This will ultimately reduce the bank’s client costs, simplify their processes and improve their client experience. We would like to thank our investors, payment partners, technology partners and the AbbeyCross team, all of whom share our vision for a better solution for EM payments, for their fantastic support.”

Olann Kerrison, Chief Commercial Officer, AbbeyCross said: “We are thrilled to go live with our first US Tier 1 bank client and look forward to adding more banks, institutions, and organisations in the near future. All of our user types – from commercial banks to global charities – can now benefit from unparalleled access to real-time and historic FX rate data from leading payment partners. The ability to more easily benchmark providers and generate comparison reporting supports true price discovery and ultimately results in better decision-making.”

Ben McConnell, CTO, AbbeyCross said: “The launch of ABX Studio on the ABX Platform is a huge achievement for the AbbeyCross team and our technology partners. Our collaboration with Chronicle Software, the specialist financial markets technology provider has proved to be a great fit for us. Their reputation and relationships in global financial markets, as well their expertise in delivering outstanding technology solutions, have been – and continue to be – instrumental in the successful development and delivery of the ABX Platform”.