SA fintech company Curve Technology Group has expanded to the UK, opening a new office in London.
Established in March 2016, Curve develops financial platforms, customised to fit various types of businesses. The founders had grown the organisation into a multimillion-rand company with four offices in two countries - SA and Germany - before its expansion to the UK.
The company says its UK presence will make its technology available to a new market, and it has already secured several international clients.
"We are selling South African banking technology to the UK and Germany, and bringing that revenue back home," says Fred Baumhardt, CEO of Curve Technology Group.
"We are ready to compete with global companies, and we are agile and able to deliver more quickly thanks to our iterative development processes. At the same time, we are not a faceless multinational; we have a number of cooperative teams who are managed based on outcomes alone."
The group has built 52 pre-assembled banking solutions that can be delivered to clients within six weeks, Baumhardt adds. "Our banking system is ready to be deployed anywhere; all we have to do is change the look and feel according to the customer's corporate identity."
Discussing the difficulties of expanding abroad, Baumhardt points out it is often easier to do business overseas than it is at home.
"There are socio-economic components to doing business in SA that complicate matters. In the UK and Europe, clients want to know if your solutions are commercially and technically superior and if you can deliver on time and within budget. Nothing else matters to them.
"We are used to dealing with much more complexity in this country, which makes doing business overseas that much simpler. If you can do well in this market, you can thrive overseas. Two recent deals closed in the UK means that a substantial portion of our revenue this year will come from abroad."
Baumhardt says his vision is to create Africa's first multinational software house. Curve was started with a number of key founding members, and without external investors.
"We identified a gap in the market and customers willing to pay for our solutions."
A key UK client is Fourex, a retail foreign exchange market disruptor that was started by local entrepreneurs.
"When Fourex wanted a banking system, we customised the look of the solution and rolled it out," Baumhardt concludes.
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