The cross-border payments space has become crowded with fintech upstarts promising to dismantle the old guard's dominance. But while many chase Western corridors, Verto has quietly built something different—a B2B platform laser-focused on the emerging markets that traditional banks still treat as afterthoughts.
Since closing a $10 million Series A round in September 2021, the London-based company claims to have scaled its annual transaction volume to over $25 billion and more than doubled its client roster from 2,000 to over 5,000 businesses worldwide. Perhaps more telling: the Milken Institute awarded Verto the $1 million Milken-Motsepe Prize in FinTech in May 2025, an award designed to spotlight innovations serving the world's faster-growing but harder-to-reach economies.
"We saw a gap," says co-founder Ola Oyetayo, who along with Anthony Oduwole brought experience from American Express, Barclays, and ICBC Standard Bank before launching Verto. The gap, as they saw it, wasn't just technological—it was geographic. SMEs and even large corporates still struggle to move money efficiently into and out of markets across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Verto set out to make those corridors work.
Money Where Banks Won't Go
Quona Capital led Verto's Series A in September 2021, joined by a consortium that included Treasury, Middle East Venture Partners, TMT Investments, and several others. At the time, Verto supported 39 currencies across 200 countries—a sprawling footprint, but one the founders planned to push even further.
The pitch was straightforward: build the rails that let businesses pay freelancers in Lagos, suppliers in Manila, or partners in São Paulo without the opacity and delays that plague legacy correspondent banking networks. The company had already raised $2.1 million in seed funding from Accelerated Digital Ventures back in 2019, enough to prove the model worked.
By May 2022, Verto rolled out multi-currency Global Accounts, enabling clients to receive payments in up to 25 currencies and disburse funds in 51. It was a technical milestone, but also a statement of intent. The platform now handles what the company describes as 45-plus "exotic" currencies—the kind that don't show up on your average FX desk but matter enormously to businesses operating in frontier markets.
Today, the company reports enterprise clients include Unilever and Maersk, a sign that its infrastructure appeals beyond the scrappy startup crowd. The company's website lists 190-plus payout countries, though the real measure may be less about breadth and more about depth: can it actually settle a payment in Naira or Kenyan shillings without drama? That's the test that matters.
Licenses and Legitimacy
In fintech, regulatory stamps matter—sometimes more than funding rounds. Verto holds Electronic Money Institution authorization from the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and operates as a licensed money transmitter in several U.S. states, partnering with FDIC-insured Global Innovations Bank to handle American flows.
On January 31, 2025, it secured a bigger prize: authorization from the Dubai Financial Services Authority to set up shop in the Dubai International Financial Centre. The license allows Verto to provide money services and operate payment accounts in the UAE, a strategic node for businesses eyeing both the Gulf and Africa. The company formally launched Dubai operations last October.
Behind the scenes, banking partnerships with ClearBank and Banking Circle—both inked in late 2021—power much of Verto's multi-currency plumbing. It's the kind of infrastructure work that doesn't make headlines but determines whether a payment clears in hours or gets stuck in limbo for days.
What $1 Million Says
Winning the Milken-Motsepe Prize wasn't just about the money, though a million dollars is hardly trivial for a growth-stage fintech. The award, presented at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles last May, was designed to recognize companies solving real problems in emerging economies—not just incremental improvements to wealthy-market conveniences.
Verto's recognition suggests the judges saw something beyond slick product design. Moving $25 billion annually through corridors that Western fintechs often ignore is, in its own way, a form of infrastructure building. It's less glamorous than consumer apps with viral loops, but arguably more durable.
The company now employs between 201 and 500 people, according to its LinkedIn profile—a range that reflects either typical startup opacity or simply the fluidity of a growing team. Either way, it's a far cry from the skeleton crew that launched six years ago.
The Long Game
Cross-border B2B payments won't yield the explosive user growth curves that venture capital tends to worship. Transaction volumes scale, but slowly. Regulatory approvals take time. Banking partnerships require patience.
Yet that may be precisely the point. Verto isn't chasing consumer virality or trying to reinvent money itself. It's building pipes—boring, essential, lucrative pipes—that connect businesses to markets where the pipes didn't exist before. Sometimes, in fintech as in life, the most valuable innovations are the least flashy.
As emerging markets continue to grow faster than their developed counterparts, the companies that figured out how to move money there efficiently may find themselves sitting on infrastructure that becomes only more essential. Verto seems to be betting that the future of B2B payments isn't just faster rails between New York and London—it's reliable ones between everywhere else.
