Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Santander Scales Ebury To Control SME Cross Border Payments
May 1, 2026 | NCFA Market Activity | Payments And Market Infrastructure
£550M Funding Deepens Bank-led Infrastructure For Global Trade Flows
On Apr 30 2026, Santander confirmed Ebury secured about £550M in funding led by Centerbridge Partners, with Santander, Vitruvian Partners, and 83North reinvesting. Santander will retain a 55% stake and positions Ebury as its core SME cross-border payments platform.
Ebury was founded in 2009 in London and focuses on cross border payments, foreign exchange, and trade finance for small and mid sized businesses. According to Santander, the platform serves more than 27,000 businesses, operates in over 160 countries, supports 140 currencies, and is active across more than 30 regulated markets. The company has delivered more than 30% annual revenue growth since 2020, reflecting sustained demand for SME-focused global payment infrastructure.
The model is built around consolidation of fragmented workflows. Businesses use Ebury to move funds, manage FX exposure, and access working capital in one system instead of relying on multiple banks and intermediaries. That reduces settlement friction, improves pricing transparency, and shortens execution time across cross border transactions.
This competitive positioning targets a structural gap. Large banks tend to focus on multinational corporates, while many fintechs focus on consumers or small merchants. Ebury sits in the middle, serving companies that operate internationally but lack access to sophisticated treasury and FX tools. By combining payments and FX, it captures both transaction volume and margin, which are often separated in traditional models.
See: UK Private Banks Commit £11 Billion To SME Export Lending
The funding supports further expansion and investment in automation and AI across payment processing and compliance workflows. Santander places Ebury within its Payments Solutions division, which targets more than 15% annual revenue growth through 2028, showing that cross border SME payments are being treated as a core growth segment rather than an adjacent business line.
Worth noting that Santander recently received approval to operate in Canada through a Canadian banking licence. Combining that regulatory presence with Ebury’s platform creates a path to serve Canadian SMEs engaged in global trade, particularly those that require faster payments, integrated FX, and access to international liquidity.
For Canadian fintechs and financial institutions, this news raises the competitive bar. Cross border payments are becoming integrated infrastructure platforms rather than standalone services. Competing requires deeper integration into business workflows, specialization in trade corridors, or partnerships that extend global reach.
Talking Point
If banks control fintech platforms like Ebury, cross border payments stop being a service and become infrastructure. The open question is whether independent fintechs can compete at global scale or whether access to capital, licensing, and distribution will concentrate that control inside bank backed networks.
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