EMERGING MARKETS 3.0

AbbeyCross is a business-to-business FX trading and compliance marketplace for emerging market (EM) currencies. Available to banks and payment providers, it brings deeper EM currency liquidity, previously unavailable price transparency and market data to a fragmented EM payment industry.

Built by a team of deep industry specialists, AbbeyCross enables banks and payment providers to achieve new technical and operational efficiencies, significant cost savings and reduced regulatory and compliance risk.

With AbbeyCross, banking participants are able to secure and strengthen their EM payments offerings through one simple integration with multiple liquidity and settlement providers, while these same providers have easier access to new EM payment flows.

THE PROBLEM WE ARE SOLVING

We’ve been hearing for years about how Emerging Markets (EM) payments are too expensive.  The problem is real and needs solving. One of the reasons it hasn't been solved, however, is that the problem is greater than any one bank or non-bank payment company can solve through pricing, technology or other means available to it. The issue is a structural problem within the EM currency market itself.   

EM payments are far more complex than payments in the major currencies. EM currencies are often illiquid, market data is incomplete and, critically, onshore liquidity and settlement providers are fragmented across more than one hundred separate onshore markets. This has resulted in an opaque trading ecosystem, where payment banks often contract with only one external vendor who aggregates and then provides both trading and settlement services for all EM currencies.

A single vendor means a lack of price competition, limited transparency and questionable market data. As a result, banks and non-bank payment companies are often unable to verify that they are trading ‘on market’ and, therefore, demonstrate to their clients and regulators that they are offering a fair market price to their payments clients.   

Market participants have long been aware of these issues, but integrations with new vendors, or additional correspondent banks, are cumbersome, costly and time consuming.  In addition, legacy infrastructure, onboarding procedures, and legacy processes stifle new offerings. 

The international payments industry and all its clients - from NGOs to multi-national corporates to retail customers - need a better way.

What we do

HOW BIG IS THIS PROBLEM?

$3TN:

FX flows annually

$10BN:

the costs to banks and payment companies each year

120+ currencies:

many of which trade without a recognised market ‘bench-rate’

6 billion people:

feeling the impact of the problem

HOW WE ARE SOLVING IT

With a fresh idea and a new trading venue: AbbeyCross.

We recognize that no individual market participant can solve this structural issue, so AbbeyCross is partnering with global banks, their currency suppliers and a whole spectrum of new providers to address the challenge. The result is AbbeyCross: THE “integrate once, trade with all” marketplace, where visibility of service is enhanced, and friction to trade is reduced

 Available to all wholesale and institutional participants, and designed in collaboration with key stakeholders in the industry, AbbeyCross is the first trading venue to focus on improving the underlying market structure for EM currencies. 

The results and benefits are clear: