Regulatory News

Equals Group PLC, the fast-growing e-banking and international payments group, is pleased to announce that its first loan product for SMEs, in partnership with iwoca, is now live.

Equals Group was granted permission by the FCA to offer credit products to its customers via a broker relationship. Under this permission, the Group can now offer a wide range of credit and loan products to its business and retail customers whilst not taking credit risk or utilising the Equals Group balance sheet. This product offering is expected to be a material new revenue stream for the business going forward.

Equals has partnered with iwoca, the the award-winning small business lender, to create an innovative app-based flexible loan product. This product, initially launched as the CardOneMoney Platinum Business Loan, is now live.

Utilising this product, the Group's customers can now apply for a loan via the App and receive a decision together with available funds within minutes. Funds are available immediately on a virtual Mastercard and usable online, can be transferred to the customer business account or used directly via Equals direct connectivity to Faster Payments and other payment methods.

Ian Strafford-Taylor, Equals Group CEO, commented: "Having our first credit-based product live is a key step in the Equals journey. With all the various products and services we can offer to businesses, the ability to offer credit was the missing piece of the jigsaw. With this rapid and easy-to-use product our business customers literally have funds available at their fingertips. The speed at which we have rolled this out is testament not only to the quality of our internal engineering teams but also to the quality of our partner, iwoca.

"This represents a new and significant revenue opportunity for the Group and will be the first of many credit-related products we will launch and enables us to drive forwards in offering a full-service platform for our business customers."

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About Equals

Equals is a leading challenger brand in banking and payments that disintermediates the incumbent banks with a superior user experience and low-cost operating model. Our business enables personal and business customers to make easy, low-cost payments both domestically and in a broad range of currencies and across a range of products all via one integrated system. The Equals platform facilitates payments either direct to Bank Accounts or at 35 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.

Equals provides money movement 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, Equals has a market-leading business-expenses solution based around its corporate platform and prepaid card. This service can yield significant savings on a Corporate's expenses and procurement both domestically and overseas, through better controls and improved transparency. The platform also streamlines the downstream administrative processes and integrates into accounting software, thus saving costs. Equals offers 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.