Two LF Member Firms Signed Up With Equals BaaS. I Wanted to Know Why

Two LiquidityFinder member companies have recently signed up with the Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution from payments and embedded finance provider Equals, and both seem to be pleased with the service. That is usually enough to make me sit up. When firms I know and respect start telling me something works for them, I want to understand why, and whether it is worth putting in front of the wider community.

So I thought I would take a closer look at how the Equals BaaS product actually works under the bonnet, and where it might be relevant to the brokers, payment firms and digital asset businesses that make up so much of our membership. What follows is my own read on it: what impressed me, what I would want to check before signing anything, and who I think it suits.

For anyone who does not know the name, Equals is a well established name in UK business payments. The group started life in 2007 as FairFX, the currency card and international payments business, floated on AIM in 2014, and rebranded as Equals in 2019 as its focus shifted from travel money towards business payments. Today it provides multi-currency accounts, international payments and corporate cards to a UK business customer base in the tens of thousands, operating as an FCA-regulated e-money institution. Last year the group was taken private in a merger with embedded finance platform Railsr, which I will come back to, because it matters for the BaaS story. This is a business closing in on its twentieth year of operations and recently announced that it has surpassed £58 billion in annual transaction volume, with many well-known CFD brokers on its client list.

Post the merger with Railsr, It has recently gone through a rebrand, changing from a predominantly orange based colour scheme to a rather bold, maybe more forward looking, plum purple colour.

The problem this is really solving

Before getting into the product, it is worth being honest about the problem the BaaS solution from Equals is looking to solve, because, if you work in this industry, especially on the Digital Assets side, you will most likely recognise it, or could be slightly nervous about it: Debanking.

Banking access is the large pain point underneath both tradfi broking and digital assets. Traditional banks generally view FX and CFD brokers as high-risk, and they view crypto businesses as higher-risk still. The result is a sector living in a permanent state of anxiety over its own banking relationships. Accounts get refused outright. Accounts that do open often get reviewed and closed, sometimes at very short notice and through no fault of the firm, simply because a bank has decided an entire category sits outside its risk appetite. There are many examples of brokers and digital asset firms who have had a perfectly good banking relationship pulled out from under them with almost no warning. It is not something people shout about.

This is not just my own anecdotal impression. Last year we ran an industry survey of digital asset firms, published as a white paper titled Blockchain Without the Volatility, looking at exactly this problem. The findings were pretty clear on the issue (however this is before the Trump regime came in with a much more laissez-faire approach to these markets, inside the US anyway. Only 14 per cent of respondents reported a seamless experience accessing banking and payments, and debanking and payment disruption came through as among the most pressing operational concerns in the sector. The same issue, or the perceived threat of it, came up again and again: firms being offboarded not because they had done anything wrong, but because the bank simply did not understand the digital assets space well enough to tell a regulated, legitimate business apart from genuine risk. When a compliance team treats an entire category as a moment for a red flag, the good operators get caught up in the decision along with everyone else.

A great example:

Keith Grose, UK CEO at Coinbase aired his concerns on Linkedin that Wise, a neo-bank itself, acting like a stuffy 200-year old institution, had decided that Coinbase needed to be off-boarded. Coinbase. Really?

On top of that sits the day-to-day reality of actually moving money. A broker with clients across multiple countries needs to take deposits and pay out withdrawals in a range of currencies, settle IB and affiliate commissions, and do all of it quickly and cheaply. Relying on a single banking relationship and traditional correspondent rails makes that slow, expensive and fragile. The obvious alternative, going out and getting your own e-money or payments licence, is a serious undertaking: think twelve to eighteen months, significant capital, and a compliance function. Headaches all round. For most firms this is simply not realistic, (although some have gone down this road and are now offering these services to other brokers).

This is the gap a BaaS solution is built to fill. Instead of fighting for survival with your own banking relationships or chasing your own licence, you build on a regulated partner's infrastructure and permissions, and get multi-currency accounts, payments and cards as a service. For a digital asset firm, it can be the difference between having a working fiat on-and-off ramp, and having no business at all.

A theoretical example of where things go wrong

Imagine you are a mid-sized FX and CFD broker that has grown nicely, signing up clients across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. All of its client money flows through one banking relationship it has held for years. One morning, the bank's compliance team completes a routine review of its exposure to the sector and concludes that FX brokers no longer fit its appetite. The broker receives 60 days' notice that the account will be closed.

Now the clock is ticking. Client deposits start bouncing and withdrawal requests pile up because there is nowhere to settle them from. Clients who cannot get their money out quickly begin posting about it publicly, and trust, the main thing a broker really sells, starts to evaporate. The regulator notices the withdrawal complaints and starts asking questions. Meanwhile the hunt for a replacement bank, in a sector every bank is wary of, takes months, and this is time the business does not have. A perfectly healthy firm is suddenly in an existential crisis, not because of anything it did wrong, but because its entire ability to function was concentrated in a single relationship it did not control.

For a digital asset firm the same story plays out faster and harder, because the banking doors are narrower to begin with. An exchange or OTC desk that loses its fiat on-and-off ramp cannot let customers get pounds or euros in or out, and at that point the business is effectively frozen.

A BaaS partner does not make a firm immune to risk, but it changes the shape of the problem. Client money sits with a regulated principal across diversified, safeguarded infrastructure rather than balancing on one bank's monthly risk review, and payouts run through proper multi-currency rails built for the job. That is the real reason this category exists.

First, what BaaS actually means here

Banking-as-a-Service, in essence, means a regulated firm lets you plug its banking and payments infrastructure straight into your own product, so you can offer accounts, payments and cards to your customers without becoming a regulated institution yourself. You build the branding and experience. The provider holds the licence and carries the regulatory weight.

What I like about the Equals proposition is that it does not force you down a single route. You can integrate via a single API and build everything yourself, you can take a fully branded white-label deployment with very little technical lift, or you can run a hybrid of the two. For most firms reading this, that flexibility can give you options. A trading technology business with a developer team will want the API. A broker that simply wants to put accounts and cards in front of clients under its own brand, without hiring engineers, will want the white label. Being able to choose, rather than being told means this solution can work with you in the way you want.

The Railsr factor

In April 2025, embedded finance platform Railsr and Equals Group, the parent of the Equals brand, merged in a £283 million all-cash deal backed by a consortium including TowerBrook Capital Partners and J.C. Flowers & Co. The two businesses are complementary: Equals brought multi-currency accounts, FX and corporate cards, while Railsr contributed embedded finance and Cards-as-a-Service infrastructure.

I see this as one of those classic cases where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The product now sits inside a larger, better-capitalised, private-equity-backed group, which strengthens its longevity as a partner, something to consider when building on someone else's rails. As of June this year, it seems that the integration between the 2 businesses has been completed, as the rebranding was announced at the time of Money20/20 in Amsterdam.

What I like: the implementation process

This is where Equals is impressive. The onboarding journey for the BaaS product is unusually structured for this market. You get a dedicated implementation manager, sandbox access to build and test against before you touch anything live, and a certification step you have to clear before go-live. Typical go-live sits in the region of 2 - 6 weeks (2 weeks may be a bit too ambitious of course).

I have heard about "just take our API" pitches where the firm is then left to work it out alone. A supported, structured process with a real person attached, a proper test environment and a sign-off gate is what you would want (expect?) when you are embedding financial infrastructure into your own platform. Equals take the implementation seriously, not just the sale.

What I like: three ways to onboard your own customers

If you are embedding accounts and payments, the question of how your customers get verified is central, and it is often where these projects can get stuck. Equals offers three KYC models: managed, where they handle verification for you; hybrid, where the work is shared; and delegated, where you run it yourself under agreed standards.

Again this gives you, the client, options and flexibility. A smaller firm without a compliance function can lean on the managed model and get moving. A larger broker or payments business with its own onboarding stack and risk appetite can take the delegated route and keep control of the customer experience. Most providers give you only one way of doing this.

What I like: the payments engine

On the money movement side, the numbers are solid. Businesses can manage 38 currencies and access 60+ currencies, across the major payment rails you would expect, including SWIFT, SEPA, UK Faster Payments, CHAPS, Bacs, ACH and Fedwire.

Two things stand out. The first is batch payments: you can push up to 10,000 payments in a single file. Anyone running high-volume client payouts, mass affiliate or IB commission runs, or payroll-style disbursements will see why that is attractive. The second is support for inbound USDC stablecoin payments. This has been facilitated by the partnership with BVNK, announced last year. I hear more and more broker clients are looking to fund in stables - stablecoins are here to stay and are just going one way in terms of adoption and use.

What I like: a proper cards stack

Card issuance is a full part of the offering rather than an afterthought, with dual Visa and Mastercard issuing and support for physical and virtual cards. Crucially, it includes digital wallet provisioning across Apple Pay and Google Pay globally, and Samsung Pay is live in the UK.

For a broker or platform that wants to give clients or staff a branded card, or for a digital asset firm building an on-and-off-ramp experience, having the wallet integrations included out of the box removes a real piece of engineering pain.

Reassurance on the regulatory side

The licensing and safeguarding picture is the whole point of using a BaaS provider in the first place. Equals operates as an FCA-regulated entity, with customer funds safeguarded under e-money regulations and held in segregated accounts. That is the baseline you should expect. It is what lets you offer regulated financial products to your customers without taking on the licence yourself.

What I would want to check before signing

No product is perfect, and I would not be doing my job if I only listed the good bits. A few things I would want answered before committing.

First, currency and market coverage. The core offering is strong, but if your business is concentrated in markets outside Equals' main corridors, I would map your real payment flows against their coverage carefully rather than assuming. The headline currency counts are healthy, but do they cover all the specific corridors you actually use? And ask about the settlement times across their currency universe and make sure they match your, and your clients’, requirements. I know that for some - same day is demanded and may be worth checking with Equals that the currencies of most importance to you are available as same-day/instant.

Second, licence ownership. In this model, Equals holds the licence as principal. For most firms that is exactly what they want. But if your longer-term strategy is to own your own regulatory permissions outright, you should go in clear-eyed that this is a partnership built on their licence, not a stepping stone to your own.

Third, the public review picture. I did look at the customer sentiment, and the Trustpilot reviews skew heavily towards the retail and consumer card side of the Equals business rather than the institutional BaaS product. That makes the public ratings a poor proxy for what a broker or payments firm should expect. Far more useful, and what I would actually do, is ask to speak to an existing BaaS client directly. The fact that two of the companies on LF are already up and running, happy and growing this part of their business is a strong signal, rather than any Trustpilot star rating.

Fourth, integration roadmap. As above, with the Railsr combination still relatively fresh, I would ask directly how the combined platform is being developed and what it means for the specific modules you plan to rely on.

Fifth, and this has been a common issue I have heard quite a bit about, Onboarding times. The headline number in the Sales pitch could be 2 - 6 weeks. I would suggest having that as an SLA in writing before committing. There has been a recognition about onboarding times from the firm and I am told, particularly for UK customers, the process has improved significantly recently with Rest of World being worked on. This would be a reason to opt for delegated onboarding so that your business is much more in control of the onboarding process.

Where it fits: brokers and digital asset firms

So who is this actually for? This is a product that lands well with a specific set of firms. If you are a broker that wants to offer multi-currency accounts and cards to clients under your own brand without building a banking stack, it fits. If you run a payments or treasury operation that needs high-volume payouts and broad rail coverage, the batch payments capability is most probably worth a conversation. And if you are a digital asset business, the combination of USDC inbound support, card issuance and a regulated UK partner is a useful starting point for building compliant on-and-off-ramp and account products.

My verdict

I know personally of 2 firms that started as Equals clients then progressed to the BaaS solution. Both seem to be now growing this side of their business not as a side project but as a full blown offering on a par with, or even overtaking, the other parts of their business. There is clear demand from their clients for a partner that understands them and I doubt you will find that in one of the traditional banks in Canary Wharf. The Equals BaaS offering is now mature, well-documented and operationally tested.

It will not suit everyone. Firms that want to own their own licences, or that operate mainly outside the core corridors, need to look closely before they commit. But for brokers, payments firms, treasury teams and digital asset businesses that want to embed accounts, payments and cards quickly under a regulated UK partner, Equals is worth a close look. On the evidence of LiquidityFinder companies and members of our community, it is delivering.

Found this interesting? Become a member of LiquidityFinder, join the community and join the discussion - join here.

Payment services are provided by Equals Money Plc. Equals Money Plc is authorised as a Payment Institution by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with Firm Reference Number (FRN) 488396. Company registered in England & Wales No. 05539698. Registered Office: 3rd Floor, Vintners’ Place, 68 Upper Thames St, London, EC4V 3BJ.