LumoXchange, a Little Rock-based financial technology payments company, has created the first currency exchange marketplace that allows users to pick their exchange rates and also send money, the firm said Wednesday.
LumoXchange provides exchange rates from its international-partner financial institutions and lets users compare rates, review customer ratings and select how the recipients will be paid.
"Just like shopping for the best-priced hotel room on Hotels.com, you can compare the exchange rates and convert your payment to local currency while saving up to 50 percent on fees versus the competition," said Maf Sonko, LumoXchange's founder and chief executive officer.
There are other sites that allow customers to compare currency exchange rates, but no other firm allows the customer to send the money from the same site, Sonko said.
"We do a lot of market research on other companies that have tried to do this," Sonko said. "You can look at companies like Moneytis or TransferGuru or CompareRemit. They all let you do comparisons but they pass you on to a service provider [to send money]."
LumoXchange is able to use its proprietary Local Exchange Networks, networks of financial institutions in each country where it offers payments.
Customers on other exchange sites would have to create as many as three accounts to verify their identification and to prove they are not on a sanctions list, Sonko said.
"We aggregate that on one site," Sonko said.
LumoXchange was a graduate business in the initial FinTech Accelerator program in 2016, a group of 10 startup companies that trained in Little Rock under guidance from Fidelity National Information Services Inc., better known as FIS. Sonko decided to move his company's headquarters to Little Rock at the conclusion of that first program. LumoXchange was previously based in Atlanta and Geneva.
For its initial launch, LumoXchange will allow customers to transfer currency to Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Ghana and Nigeria.
Later this summer, LumoXchange will add payments to the Philippines, the fourth-largest payment corridor from the United States. This would put LumoXchange in markets of $17.5 billion in cross-border payments by the end of 2018.
The company is set to announce more partners to its money-transfer marketplace as well as options for more countries in coming months.
"As an immigrant to the U.S., I know firsthand the lack of transparency and expensive cost of sending money abroad," Sonko said. "We solve the age-old issue of the cost of converting currency when sending money abroad through our currency exchange marketplace."
LumoXchange, which has its office in the Little Rock Technology Park, had a partnership with Bear State Bank of Little Rock, but that ended this year when Bear State was acquired by Arvest Bank.
LumoXchange now has a partnership with Searcy-based First Security Bank, Sonko said.
LumoXchange has to get a payments license in every state, Sonko said. Currently it has a license in Georgia, Arkansas, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington state, Sonko said.
Business on 06/07/2018