Notion Capital, the entrepreneur-backed venture capital firm with a focus on Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service, today announced its first investment from the recently closed $100 million, Fund 2.

The 2 million pounds ($3.1 million) investment in The Currency Cloud, the provider of a cloud-based currency conversion and international payments service, will support the continued and rapid expansion of the firm as it moves into new geographies and builds on the strong customer demand it has experienced since the beginning of the year.

The investment comes on top of £2.5 million previous funding from Atlas Venture and the Anthemis Group. Jos White, partner at Notion Capital, will join Sean Park from Anthemis and Fred Destin from Atlas, on The Currency Cloud's Board.

Jos comments, "Scandals in the banking sector have further exposed the inefficiencies, high costs and complete lack of transparency in many areas of the financial system. A new model for finance is required. Firms like The Currency Cloud are leading a wave of cloud-based innovation in financial services; improving access, bringing down costs and empowering customers with greater transparency and control.

Cross-border payments and currency exchange creates more frustration and confusion in its customers than any market I've looked at. The cost of FX conversion and payment can easily rise above 4% as a result of various hidden fees. Making and receiving international payments is still a very manual and resource intensive process with nearly 30% of transactions running into issues. The Currency Cloud provides a solution to these problems that is entirely web based and easy to use for customers. We are very excited at the opportunity the business has to change the landscape of currency exchange and cross border payments. "

Mike Laven, CEO of The Currency Cloud says, " We are delighted to welcome Notion Capital to our team. Notion's focus on cloud-based services is a valuable compliment to Anthemis' specialisation in financial services and the broad technology experience of Atlas Ventures.

The end-to-end, straight through processing that we offer through our TCC Connect platform is bridging the chasm between customer needs and the services currently on offer. Notion, Anthemis and Atlas provide the ideal mix of skills and experience to help us achieve our vision of being the go-to provider for currency conversion and international payment services."

Notion's previous investments in cloud-based services include Brightpearl, eSellerPro, NewVoiceMedia and Tradeshift. Jos White was co-founder of MessageLabs, one of the largest B2B successes to come out of Europe.

About Notion Capital www.notioncapital.com
Notion is a venture capital firm focused on high potential businesses in the Cloud Computing and Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) markets. The Notion team has unique expertise and experience in the Cloud Computing market having founded, built and exited Star and MessageLabs, two highly successful businesses in the space. Companies within Notion's portfolio include Brightpearl, eSellerPro, NewVoiceMedia and Tradeshift.

About The Currency Cloud
Launched to market in 2012, The Currency Cloud is a low cost, transparent, end-to-end cloud based cross currency payments automation service that is changing the face of the global foreign exchange payments industry. The service makes the complexity of international payments processing simple and removes the inefficiencies and costs that are inherent to existing methods of sending and receiving international payments.

The Currency Cloud platform was developed and built by an experienced team of foreign exchange traders, payments experts and technologists. The Currency Cloud is live at more than 100 large and small customers, including remittance, online payments, corporate services, financial services, and e-wallet firms.