INTL FCStone Inc. (NASDAQ: INTL) today announced that its London-based subsidiary, INTL FCStone Ltd’s Global Payments Division (GPD) has introduced Automated Clearing House (ACH) connectivity, significantly enhancing the Company’s solutions for high-volume, low-value cross-border payments.
Low-value payments are the single largest driver of growth in GPD’s payments volumes, which are currently ~60% higher than at this time last year.
In order to support this increasing demand, the Company has embarked upon an initiative to securely access a greater number of global ACH low-value clearing systems.
GPD maintains an extensive network of approximately 300 local correspondent banks worldwide, providing its customers with access to local clearing in 140 currencies across more than 175 countries.
The Company has leveraged these trusted correspondent bank relationships to begin implementing ACH connectivity, and is looking to expand on its current ACH offering of 15 currencies by an additional 60 currencies over the next 12 months.
Gregory Vincent, Head of FX Payments (EMEA) at INTL FCStone Ltd’s Global Payments Division, commented on today’s news:
Having been clearing locally in 175 markets for most of the last 30 years, it was a natural progression to start developing seamless STP links to the local ACH. This has been driven by the high number of low-value payments that our global banking customers are increasingly bringing to us, as we collectively look to meet new corporate demand to make payments all over the world, particularly in emerging markets. These companies want to make smaller cross-border payments more efficiently, and in response we will be rolling out a larger suite of currencies where this is achievable.
GPD offers payments solutions to global financial institutions including eight of the top ten in the Euromoney 2017 survey of FX Market Share, in addition international aid and development organizations, non-governmental organizations, and multinational corporations.
Carsten Hils, Global Head of INTL FCStone GPD
Carsten Hils, Global Head of INTL FCStone Ltd’s Global Payments Division, concluded:
Utilizing our expansive global correspondent bank network and existing infrastructure, we have implemented ACH functionality based directly on the feedback of our bank clientele, whose demand for such an offering has increased exponentially in recent years. We look forward to bringing ACH connectivity online for additional currencies in the coming months.