The LSE Directory / Data providers
Xe (XE.com) operates one of the most widely used online currency converters, offering free live and historical foreign-exchange rates through its website and mobile apps, alongside Xe Money Transfer, a consumer and business international payments service, and Xe Currency Data, a commercial API product that sells exchange-rate data to other companies. The free converter draws on the same underlying rate infrastructure as the paid data product, which the company markets separately to software vendors and enterprises that need to embed FX rates in their own systems. In the data-provider category, Xe differentiates itself less on exotic asset coverage and more on breadth and ease of integration for fiat currency rates: the Currency Data API covers 220 plus currencies, including precious metals and a small set of cryptocurrencies, sourced from central banks and more than 100 financial data providers, with historical data back to 1998. It is sold in tiered subscription plans (Lite, Intermediate, Prime, Enterprise) that step up from daily rates to hourly, 15 minute, and live minutely updates, and it ships with SDKs for Java, Node.js, PHP, and Python plus prebuilt connectors for enterprise systems such as Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Sage, and SAP. This positions it toward accounting, ERP, and e-commerce integrations rather than toward trading desks needing tick-level market depth. The company traces back to August 1993, when high-school friends Steven Dengler and Beric Farmer founded Xenon Laboratories Incorporated near Newmarket, Ontario, initially as a computer-consulting and internet-services business. In 1995 they launched the Universal Currency Converter on the newly registered xe.com domain, which grew into the world's most visited currency site; the company formally renamed itself Xe Corporation Inc. in 2001 after shifting its focus entirely to currency and FX tools. It added the Xe Trade money-transfer service in 2002, rebranded that unit Xe Money Transfer in 2016, and released an iPhone currency app in 2009 that has since been downloaded over 100 million times. Euronet Worldwide (NASDAQ: EEFT) acquired Xe in July 2015, and in December 2018 merged it with sister company HiFX, continuing operations under the Xe brand; combined, Euronet describes the unit as forming the world's third-largest money transfer business. Xe holds NMLS ID 920968 in the United States and states compliance with GDPR and Canadian and US privacy law. As of a 2016 company disclosure, Xe reported over 280 million unique visitors annually and roughly 350 employees, with headquarters remaining in Newmarket, Ontario under CEO Mark Ledsham. The business underwent a full web platform redesign in 2022 and continues to operate both the free consumer converter and the separately licensed Xe Currency Data API as parallel product lines under the same brand.
