Currency Exchangers: How to Grow your Local Holiday Money Market
Declan Morton
January 27, 2025
Foreign currency services on the high street face a unique challenge. They have a local focus, and are usually smaller operations than their better-known competitors. Their approach to change and investment can be cautious. This is especially the case with back-office improvements. Large retailers can absorb the hefty costs of system-wide upgrades. But for independent travel money retailers or small chain currency exchangers, such investments can seem impracticable. The result? Some still find themselves using out of date systems, frustrated that better options appear out of reach. However, now there is a solution for holiday money. But first, consider the challenge.
Breaking free from the past
Currency exchange businesses come in all shapes and sizes. Some high-profiles ones are well known to the travelling public: supermarkets, banks, and Post Office Travel Money – and then there are the enterprise scale bureaux de change. For holiday money, many consumers stick to these because they don’t know there’s an alternative, and because they believe that only the large retailers offer the best exchange rate.
There are other outlets too. Some independents are simply a service offered for regular customers at corner shops. Other businesses also branch out into foreign currency for similar reasons: jewellers and pawn brokers for example – and travel agents, for obvious reasons. Some of these are significant players. Then there are the small multiples of bureaux de change. All face the same challenges: how to gain visibility, expand their customer base, and access competitive exchange rates.
Making holiday money simple
The good news? For these suppliers there is no need to re-invent the wheel or make huge changes. Instead, carefully chosen online holiday money services can deliver huge improvements without hefty price tags. The best of these bring plug-and-play convenience that transforms the way retailers can serve customers.
Foreign currency for holiday money fits this model well. Consumers expect convenience, ideally in the form of a website or app they can access on a pc or smartphone. Buying via click & collect is an obvious solution in this context. The next hurdle is the exchange rate.
Click & Collect holiday money online – at the best rate
Imagine your customers no longer waiting to find out the exchange rate, and possibly discovering their preferred currency is not in stock… Instead they can order their holiday money with a few clicks online, for collection locally, and in the knowledge that they have the best exchange rates in their neighbourhood.
Money4Travel, from foreign exchange specialists Essiell, makes it a reality.
Customers choose their currency, enter their postcode and a few details. Money4Travel then finds its member retailer within a 10 minute drive of the customer’s location, then guarantees the best exchange rate within that area. If the currency exchanger has that currency in stock – typically for popular currencies they will – it can be ready for collection the same day.
Money4Travel: small bites of holiday money, big transformation
For the currency exchanger there are obvious benefits. This service helps build a strong local customer base. That’s further enhanced by Money4Travel’s buy-back guarantee and a loyalty scheme that brings future discounts. For consumers and retailers alike, it really is win-win.
Money4Travel brings major benefits for the back office too:
- access to the Money4Travel marketplace is via a very competitive subscription from £6.95/month
- the service comes with built in AML screening for confidence in compliance, and
- transaction funds are sent by instant bank transfer to the designated business account the next day
- the (optional) point-of-sale system is intuitive and does not require expensive tech upgrades
With Money4Travel the reality and the promise are the same. Quite simply, it’s an innovative system that can bring impressive results without expensive changes to the currency exchanger’s business – except the desire to attract more customers!
The service has the potential to change the local travel money market significantly for the better. If you’d like to be part of the transformation, get in touch now!
By Declan Morton, writer and editor at Money4Travel – the online service for foreign currency sales in the UK. More about the author.
