Ireland based peer-to-peer currency exchange, CurrencyFair, secured 8m EURO in venture funding, led by Octopus Ventures. CurrencyFair is competing agains the currency exchange monster, Transferwise, who has raised nearly $60m. The funding is intended to help market the company and further differentiate its exchange from existing p2p players.
In case you’re not familiar with the so-called p2p model, the idea is that by matching customers in different countries with inverse currency exchange needs, money doesn’t unnecessarily leave each country and any subsequent savings can be passed on to customers, providing a better exchange rate than banks typically do.