Travelex history

Our story starts in 1976 with the opening of our first store in London. Since then, we've grown both organically and through acquisitions to help more and more customers send and spend money worldwide. Here are some of the key events which have built our leading position today as the world's foreign exchange specialist, with over 1100 stores, over 900 ATMs as well as online and mobile channels worldwide:

 

Date  Milestone  
1976 Lloyd Dorfman opens our first store in Southampton Row, London
1977 Second store opens in Cromwell Road, London
1978 Third store opens in Oxford Circus, London
1979 First foreign exchange bureau opens on the road to the Dover seaport
1982 Travelex opens its first ferry outlet on board the P&O ferry serving Rotterdam, the largest port in the world
1984 Travelex ‘goes Dutch’, opening our first overseas branch in the Netherlands at North Sea terminal, Rotterdam
1985 Travelex opens in Belgium, at Zeebrugge passenger terminal
1986 Travelex wins a landmark contract as the first non-bank foreign exchange provider at Heathrow T4
1989 Travelex is ‘Born in the USA’ as we open branches in JFK
1990 Travelex goes down under and opens in Brisbane’s Domestic terminal
1993 Travelex takes over the Mutual of Omaha, taking over stores in 50 terminals at 34 airports across the US
1995 Abbey National buys a 33% stake of Travelex as we take over Abbey National’s foreign exchange
1998 3i become shareholders as they buy out Abbey National and Hambros in a 7-year deal
1999 Travelex acquires Barclay’s foreign exchange in the UK, kick starting our vault operations
2000 Negotiations begin to buy Thomas Cook Financial Services
2001 Acquisition of Thomas Cook Financial Services for £440 million
2003 Travelex India is born and Travelex sponsors the ITV Rugby World Cup and Jonny Wilkinson. The Travelex ticket season at the National Theatre was born. Travelex enters the Middle East with the first store opening in Oman
2004 Travelex lands in China 
2005 Apax recognises the opportunity and become Travelex’s majority shareholder
2007 Travelex beats a 30-year incumbent to land Auckland airport
2008 Travelex wins gold in Beijing and opens stores in the airport
2009 First foreign exchange ATM in APAC goes live at Brisbane Airport
2010 Peter Jackson arrives at Travelex
2011 Travelex sells its card programme management business to Mastercard for £290million. Travelex also sells Travelex Global Business Payments to Western Union for £606million. Following these sales, we go back to our roots as a business focused on the consumer. We purchase a shareholding in FX Africa and announce the acquisition of Grupo Confidence in Brazil.
2012 Travelex celebrates 35 years of helping its customers send and spend money round the world

 

 

 

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