by Annika Backe
April 21, 2016 – On October 26, 2015, the first Fourex exchange machine has been installed in London. Visitors of King’s Cross Tube Station, for example, are now given the opportunity to exchange coins and bank notes from 150 currencies in a non-bureaucratic way round the clock.
One of the four kiosks Fourex has installed in London.
The main concept is simple and readily understandable: probably everyone has some unused foreign currency lying around somewhere. But who wants to go to the bank, to exchange only a handful of currency? This is something Jeff Paterson, co-founder of Fourex, knows from his own experience. Working for Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi, he transformed his frustration into a business idea that won Virgin Media’s Pitch to Rich competition and is now met with enthusiastic response from the general public.
After the kiosks are operating for nearly six months, Paterson thus draws a positive interim result. He told CoinsWeekly: “(…) we have done in excess of 10,000 transactions, and processed several hundred thousand coins, and thousands of notes through only 4 kiosks.”
While some people bring whole suitcases full of coins, tourists like to exchange the last British pounds for their own currency before leaving the country again. Yet Paterson also knows of other user groups: “Buskers, homeless people, and charities are finding our kiosks a useful way of finding value in the foreign currencies they get, and have previously never been able to exchange.”
Encouraged by this widespread support, Fourex intends to further expand and install about 400 exchange machines through 2017. The firm is looking at contracts with other local rail operators, as well as supermarket chains. Visitors from Germany will thus also become accustomed to the Fourex machines as an increasingly common sight in the streets of London.
Please find the website of Fourex here.
You can watch an interview with the founders of Fourex on YouTube.
If you read this contribution while in London, just click here for the nearest exchange machine.
Practical information is provided in this short YouTube movie.
And here you can find out how much money you will get for your currency.