June 1 (SeeNews) - French payment services provider iBanFirst said that it plans to increase its FX team as it seeks to build up its client portfolio targeting companies with an annual foreign exchange (FX) trading volume of at least 500,000 US dollars (466,420 euro).
The company, which opened an office in Bulgaria in March, is looking to expand its FX headcount to 10 by the end of 2022, it said in a press release on Tuesday.
To boost business-to-business (B2B) FX operations, ibanFirst recruited Vesselin Bekyarov, former head of FX sales at KBC Group subsidiary UBB, as its main FX dealer in Bulgaria.
"Companies in Bulgaria need innovative financial solutions in order to make easier, faster and more transparent international payments and iBanFirst can provide these to them. Also, a large number of companies are going through major strategic changes and uncertainty now, given the current economic circumstances," Bekyarov said in the statement.
In April, iBanFirst said that first-quarter revenue from operations in Bulgaria came in 20% above target, as the war in Ukraine prompted local companies to seek to mitigate risks in cross-border payments.
Paris-based iBanFirst facilitates cross-border transactions such as payments to suppliers or intercompany flows, and provides FX risk hedging. It currently operates 12 offices in nine European countries, including Hungary and Italy. The company's expansion to Southeast Europe (SEE) began late last year, after in May 2021 it secured a 200 million euro ($214.4 million) growth investment from US Marlin Equity Partners.
Apart from Bulgaria, in recent months the fintech opened a local office in Romania, which earlier in May reported a 250% quarter-on-quarter increase in transaction volume over the first three months of 2022.
($ = 0.9330 euro)