Mobile Payments, Banking Group FairFX Rolls Out Its Interim Results

Word out of FairFX, which the company sent our way recently, says that the last six months have been exciting ones for the company. The company devoted to online banking and payments has returned some noteworthy results, despite an environment that was less than hospitable.

The company posted gross profit of 9.7 million pounds sterling ($12.76 million US) against gross revenue of 12 million pounds sterling ($15.785 million US). The end result was a net profit margin of 21.9 percent, which increased tenfold according to the report.

Good figures, but what was behind the numbers? Several factors contributed to the gains, including the acquisition of City Forex, which provided extra operating capacity. This helped particularly when FairFX started moving its international payments operations to the City Forex Platform.

Better yet, FairFX started issuing cards under the Mastercard platform, and saw corporate card turnover grow 28 percent to reach 74.8 million pounds sterling ($98.304 million US). Throw in the new Fair Everywhere business current account and a hefty new slug of customers—a new 182,171 to bring the total to 911,156—and it was clear that the business was succeeding.

While the travel money environment has been difficult, especially in the UK-a weak pound sterling, a hot summer in the UK, and the constant specter of Brexit looming in the background-the company still manage to post new gains in profit and in users thanks in part to a growing number of corporate users.

The numbers are positive enough, and amazingly, despite some marked weakness in the currency, the company has done quite well for itself. That influx of corporate users was definitely a shot in the arm, and the company’s commitment to diversification as evidenced by its City Forex purchase and Mastercard connection was helpful as well. By branching out like that, it’s left itself less vulnerable to economic issues felt at the consumer level. It’s still a shaky condition overall, but the more fields FairFX can branch into, the better off it will be.

Seeing the end-of-year results should be especially edifying here, and hopefully, it can keep the streak alive despite many of the issues it faced in the first half still continuing into the second.