Modulr taps into Edinburgh fintech scene with new office

Business payments disruptor Modulr has opened a base in Edinburgh as it looks to tap into the city's burgeoning fintech scene.

Members of the Modulr team gather in Edinburgh. Picture: Contributed

The London-based firm, which recently completed its latest major funding round, will be creating 30 jobs this year on the back of the office opening.

Modulr’s digital accounts provide an alternative to traditional bank accounts for business payments, making them “faster, easier and more reliable”.

The Edinburgh team will be working to extend the current offering to existing and new customers in alternative lending, payments fintech (financial technology), payroll services, finance software providers and marketplaces.

The firm said it had opted for Edinburgh having undertaken a review of various technology hubs across Europe. It pointed to the Scottish capital’s “excellent” talent pool, support from industry and government bodies such as FinTech Scotland and Scottish Enterprise, and for being the UK’s second largest financial services centre.

Modulr recently completed its latest funding round, led by Blenheim Chalcot, which brought the total investment in the company to £10.5 million since its formation in January 2016.

It sees the investment in Edinburgh as enabling key additional capacity and capability to support the firm’s significant growth.

Myles Stephenson, chief executive of Modulr, said: “As a technology business, building high quality and scalable software engineering, risk and compliance, customer support and finance teams is critical to our current and future growth.

“Following our strong initial success, we identified the need to scale and we set about looking for a location with a strong talent pool and pipeline.”

Stephen Ingledew, chief executive of industry body FinTech Scotland, said: “Edinburgh is a burgeoning hub for talented software developers. Combine this with the city’s unmatched financial services heritage, and we have a recipe for success for ambitious fintech leaders like Modulr.”

In its first two years, Modulr has processed some £4.2 billion in business payments, while transaction volumes have been growing by an average of 11 per cent, month-on-month.

With the opportunities presented by its new office north of the Border, the company expects to double the size of its team over the last six months of the year – reaching more than 100 employees across both its Edinburgh and London offices.

Scotland has seen the number of people employed in the financial and related professional services sector grow by 6.6 per cent to 161,000 in the last year. A recent review of global fintech hubs by Deloitte ranked Edinburgh highly.