UK: Apartment provider SITU has appointed foreign exchange and international payments provider Frontierpay to handle its international payments.
SITU has apartments in more than 500 locations, and will engage Frontierpay to provide access to a wider range of currencies and more competitive exchange rates, as it leases and maintains properties around the world.
Phil Stapleton, managing director of SITU, said: “Our business requires us to work with customers from all around the world, which means we are dealing with a vast range of currencies on a daily basis. The support of a currency expert like Frontierpay is going to open up a wide range of possibilities for us in previously unexplored territories.”
Frontierpay will also be helping SITU to eliminate currency risk in its booking process through the use of a hedging strategy. This will allow SITU to purchase currency that will be needed in the future, but at the current rate of exchange, in order to avoid falling short if the value of the currency depreciates.
Stapleton continued: “A typical transaction for us could involve a customer in New York deciding in June that they want to book an apartment in Paris in September. We will quote a price in June, however, subsequent fluctuations in the exchange rate can mean that our customer’s payment is ultimately worth less to us than it did when we quoted. Working with Frontierpay to lock in the exchange rate in advance will remove the risk from this process, giving us an increased degree of financial certainty. However, the most important aspect of our relationship with Frontierpay is that we can offer our clients a better service. They also will no longer be affected by exchange rate fluctuations, meaning the price they are quoted is the price they get.”
Nat Davison, partner at Frontierpay, said: “This is a booming industry, as the global workforce becomes increasingly mobile and workers are looking for places to call home while on international assignment. This partnership is a particularly exciting opportunity for us at Frontierpay, as it enables us to apply our specialised solution to yet another key facet of the global mobility space.”</p
