Moni

Moni is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, under the Payment Services Regulations for the provision of payment services. Moni Technologies is also licensed and resulted by HMRC as a Money Services Business (MSB) License. Moni Technologies was one of the first companies to be part of TechStars accelerator program in London, UK.

Laurence Aderemi is the Co-Founder and CEO at Moni. Previously he was Google’s Head of Mobile Strategic Partnerships in Europe. Laurence joined Google as part of the AdMob acquisition where he led strategy and business development for EMEA. Before AdMob he was European General Manager at Yahoo!

Fernando Saturno is the Co-Founder and CMO/CPO at Moni. Previously he was Product Director, Chief Marketing Officer and held management roles at other VC and privately backed European startups. He was Head of Yahoo! Mobile Product team. He has also led product and strategy teams at Yell Group and AOL Europe.

David Foskett is the COO and CFO at Moni. Previously he was the CFO at other private equity backed firms as well as holding senior leadership roles at Western Union, where he served as CFO Western Union Payments Services for EMEA. He was also Financial Director at Retail Network Eurpoe-CIS and Finance Director for Western Europe.

Moni was created out of personal frustration of the CEO, Laurence Aderemi when he found that transferring money abroad can be inconvenient and expensive. This discovery came in 2012 when Laurence’s mothers became critically ill and he found himself having to send money home to Nigeria urgently. Due to the options available to someone needing to send money abroad, Laurence and Fernando saw an opportunity to bring the benefits of mobile technology into a still unchanged $600bn market largely dominated by Western Union. Alongside close friend Abayomi Oyekoya, a London based city trader who shared the same frustrations, and provided seed funding for the ensuing operation. The trio set about changing the landscape for cheap, effective and unique transfer of money, globally, via mobile.

Moni Technologies was one of the first companies to be part of TechStars accelerator programme in London, UK. In February 2014, Moni was shortlisted for Everline future 50 awards for Britain's most disruptive UK startups. Facebook held discussions with three London-based international money transfer providers, TransferWise, Moni Technologies and Azimo, to help it build the services. The partners eventually sold the business in December 2015 to Private Equity for an undisclosed amount.

The app lets users choose whom they want to send money to, and the amount they want to send. The user then puts in their bank details which they can either do manually or by quickly scanning their debit card using their mobile phone’s camera. The user must then choose how to send the money to the recipient: either to their bank account or to a mobile phone.

If sent to the recipient’s bank account then the sender has to put in the recipient’s bank details. If the money is sent straight to the recipient’s phone, then the receiver can choose which bank account the money will go into and can put in the details him/herself. The sender is notified by text when the recipient has accepted the transfer and can track the progress of the transfer via the app and by sms notifications.