Equals Gp Regulatory News (EQLS)

21 December 2017

FairFX Group plc

("FairFX" or "the Group" or "the Company")

FairFX granted full Mastercard Membership

FairFX, the e-banking and international payments group, is pleased to announce that Mastercard has granted FairFX full membership status. This gives FairFX a licence to issue Mastercard branded cards, initially across Europe but with other regions to follow.

The membership of Mastercard is part of FairFX's stated strategy and is just one of the benefits of the e-Money licence the Group holds. Mastercard membership is also an example of FairFX continuing to gain direct membership of banking and payment networks rather than accessing through third parties.

FairFX currently has a number of card programmes issued by third parties that can now be brought in house. In addition to cost savings, doing so will improve delivery and simplify processes, which will facilitate the Group's continuing growth.

Ian Strafford-Taylor, CEO of FairFX, said: "Gaining Mastercard Membership is a major step in our stated aim of reducing FairFX's reliance on third parties and providing choice for the business. We can now place our various products and services through the supply chain that fits best from the perspective of cost, flexibility and reliability. Going forward this will simplify our product iteration and reduce our cost base which will ultimately benefit our customers."

This announcement contains inside information.

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About FairFX

FairFX is a leading challenger brand in banking and payments that disintermediates the incumbent banks with a superior user experience and low cost operating model. This enables personal and business customers to make easy, low-cost multi-currency payments in a broad range of currencies and across a range of FX products all via one integrated system. The FairFX platform facilitates payments either direct to Bank Accounts or at 30 million merchants and over 1 million ATM's in a broad range of countries globally via Mobile apps, the Internet, SMS, wire transfer and MasterCard/VISA debit cards.

FairFX provides banking and payment services to both personal and business customers through four channels: Currency Cards, Physical Currency, International Payments and Bank Accounts. The Currency Card and Physical Currency offerings facilitate multiple overseas payments at points of sale and ATM's whereas the International Payments channel supports wire transfer foreign exchange transactions direct to Bank Accounts. For Corporates, FairFX has a market-leading business-expenses solution based around its corporate prepaid platform and card that can yield significant savings on a Corporate's procurement through better controls and improved transparency and also streamline the procurement process thus saving administrative costs. Through the recent acquisition of CardOne, FairFX now has the capability to offer retail and business Bank Accounts with all the functionality you would expect from a Bank, namely faster payments, BACs, direct debits, international payments and a debit card.