ALT21

ALT21

ALT21 was founded as a direct challenge to how banks and traditional brokers serve mid-market businesses managing currency exposure. Prit, the founder and CEO, brought over 20 years of experience building digital hedging platforms to the task of unbundling embedded costs: the firm shows businesses the spread before every trade and makes forwards, options, and target-rate orders available in a single platform. It was one of the first fintechs to go live through the FCA Regulatory Sandbox. ALT21 targets the gap between small-business payments apps and institutional treasury desks. The platform covers spot FX, forward contracts, and structured strategies, supported by cash-management capabilities that earn returns on idle GBP, EUR, and USD balances. It processes payments into over 180 countries and connects to more than 1,200 banking partners, with direct integrations to Xero, QuickBooks, and NetSuite. Core geographic markets are the United Kingdom and Europe, supported by dual regulation from the FCA in the UK and the MFSA in Malta. The firm reports that fewer than 10% of European SMEs use FX hedging tools, a statistic it uses to frame its addressable market. ALT21 operates four offices — London, Dublin, Coimbra, and Gżira — and a management bench drawn from firms including Vodafone, Argentex, Sucden, and Cognism. The company previously raised $21 million to accelerate its platform build and expand into the European Union. In May 2024, ALT21 promoted Kate to Chief of Staff and head of its European entity, aligning C-suite execution with its cross-border regulatory footprint. The board includes Andy who is an Industry Partner at Motive Partners and Chairman of Wilshire, and Richard who previously scaled Global Shares through its acquisition by JPMorgan in 2022. ALT21’s architecture deliberately fuses a tech-first self-serve model with human specialists retained for large or complex trades. This structure contrasts with both low-cost payments apps that offer no hedging and banks that historically restricted treasury instruments to private-banking clients. By overlaying platform functionality with regulated status in two jurisdictions, the firm targets a compliance and infrastructure posture that enterprise-grade counterparties require.