Haim Perry, the original founder of Hotels4U, is among backers of a new foreign exchange firm.
Created by entrepreneurs Tony North, Brian Jamieson and Daniel Butcher, who recently sold their respective foreign exchange businesses for a combined £350 million, Centtrip aims to make it cheaper for holidaymakers and business travellers to spend overseas.
The start-up is described as a “bespoke product securing fairer, more transparent rates, fees and services”.
It has an investor pool including Perry, former EMI chief executive and chairman Eric Nicoli and a senior executive of Credit Suisse.
The firm is offering a pre-paid MasterCard which can be loaded with sterling and then be converted into 14 currencies.
Users pay a fixed annual account fee of £10 and 0.5% of the funds loaded to the account and can then change money at the interbank rate without additional fees.
Jamieson told the Mail on Sunday: “We wanted to provide consumers access to the rates corporate consumers get.”