HN Explorer

Private Equity firm is acquiring a lot of currency conversion APIs

19 points by leosantos ↗ HN
I'm working on a side project that needed a currency conversion API, and I'd originally started using https://exchangeratesapi.io/ which until a few days ago was a free API - https://web.archive.org/web/20210328014153/https://exchangeratesapi.io/

As of today, it is now a paid API, and says it's operated by apilayer (which was recently acquired by a private equity firm).

It seems like they've acquired a decent number of currency conversion APIs:

1. https://openrates.io/ 2. https://currencystack.io/ 3. https://fixer.io

And probably a few more.

It's almost amazing how private equity strategy works :)

5 comments

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junon
At what point does this sort of thing become legally questionable?
jhugo
At no point? These APIs are all secondary sources anyway, the actual price is public information on the actual currency markets
kasey_junk
Currency (spot) markets are not typically public. They are usually OTC deals between 1 counterparty and a specific bank. Even on multi dealer platforms you don’t see the same prices other people trading on those platforms see.
webmaven
> At what point does this sort of thing become legally questionable?

Only at the point where the roll-up creates a dominant player (or several, ie. a monopoly, duopoly, or oligopoly[0]) and antitrust rules kick in to prevent further consolidation or abuse (of various sorts) of the dominant position(s).

[0] In theory, antitrust also protects from abuse of monopsonies etc., but abuse of a dominant buyer (eg. Walmart) is harder to accomplish and maintain, harder to prove harm, and harder to regulate.