About us

Finance that empowers businesses and creates positive impact

Liberis has been on a mission to provide small businesses with accessible and responsive finance since 2007. We don’t put profit before purpose. The work we do empowers business owners and creates positive impact, through job creation, retention and contribution to the economy.

$1bn

Of funding to businesses worldwide

27k

Small businesses helped worldwide​

95%​

Of customers would recommend us

What we do

Liberis at a glance

Liberis provides partners such as banks, acquirers, brokers and e-commerce platforms with a flexible embedded finance platform and financial solutions to offer hyper-personalised and accessible funding, empowering their small business customers to grow their revenues. With over 15 global strategic partners and direct reach to more than 1 million small businesses, Liberis has provided nearly $1 bn of funding in over 45,000 transactions, enabling over 100,000 jobs to be created and saved.

Learn more about our platform
Our Leadership Team

An executive leadership team with decades of experience in small business finance.

Rob Straathof

Chief Executive Officer

Back to overview

Rob S Wanted to become an astronaut and visit Mars, but building out Liberis is a great second-best career. Born in the Netherlands, but lived in London, San Francisco, New York, Madrid for the past 15 years. Rob’s entire family are entrepreneurs, his parents setup their Cheese and Delicatessen business in 1975 and his brother runs that now. So when he talks about businesses, it’s something close to Rob’s heart! Rob lives in Fulham with his Italian wife and 2 kids, he loves playing tennis, squash, padel and weekly early morning bootcamp in the park.

Alexis Alexander

Chief Legal & Compliance Officer

Back to overview

Lex joined Liberis over three years ago to set up our global in-house legal function. She had such fun doing this that Lex then set her hands to work on our compliance function too. What makes our L&C functions special is that we are truly integrated business partners: we are not the departments of no and are just as excited about propelling Liberis forward on this turbo growth journey as everyone else!

Lex is a self-confessed exercise addict – and not just any exercise, if it doesn’t involve a trainer shouting at her and some serious high intensity it won’t hit the spot. Pretty much everyone at Liberis has met (in person or over Teams calls) her three little monkeys: 4-year-old boy-girl twins Jax and Hero and 8-month-old baby Lennox. Lex works very hard and has high expectations of herself and those she works with but she always likes to inject a good dose of fun and humour into everything she does.

Nima Montazeri

Chief Product & Technology Officer

Back to overview

Nima has built products that help millions of people access affordable healthcare in the world, most recently serving as the Head of Product at Babylon Health. As a key member of the executive team led the launch of Babylon products in the US, Canada and South East Asia. Nima played a significant role in Babylon’s $550m series C funding(2020) and public listing on NYSE(2021).

Prior to joining Babylon, Nima was Head of Technology for ThoughtWorks Ventures, working with scale-ups and startups on their product and technology strategy.

Nima is also serving as an advisor to early-stage technology startups in the UK.

Tom Bason

Chief Finance Officer

Back to overview

Tom joined Liberis over 12 years ago and has seen substantial growth in the business over the years. Tom brings many years of invaluable experience in financial and treasury management to Liberis; including two years spent at leading asset management and securities services firm, Bank of New York Mellon. He is responsible for the company financials, capital markets and the company financial control environment. Tom used to be a rugby player which included captaining Blackheath rugby club for several seasons and although it is still his passion, he keeps fit with running, golf and yoga these days whilst looking after his three beautiful children.

Rachel Cox

VP of People and Talent

Back to overview

Rachel joined in 2021 to head up our​ efforts to make Liberis a phenomenal​ place to work. Before Liberis Rachel held global People and Talent leadership roles​ in industries ranging from Financial Services to Consumer Goods. Rachel is passionate​ about creating a positive global people experience (and keeping engagement levels high with a regular supply of home-baked goods in the office)!

Rob Fairfield

Chief Operations Officer

Back to overview

Rob F joined Liberis in the summer of 2020. He helps to look after our Operations, Legal & Compliance, People & Talent and Data and Analytics teams. Before joining Liberis, Rob worked for Trussle, Founders Forum and McKinsey. He also is an angel investor in a couple of early-stage companies. Rob is a father to a little girl, Evie, and big golden Retriever, Freddie. Originally from North Yorkshire, Rob is very proud of his Northern heritage, and can regularly be found drinking Yorkshire Tea with our other resident Yorkshire ELT member, Rachel.

Alex Ivison

Chief Risk Officer

Back to overview

Alex has been with Liberis for 7.5 years and through that time has primarily focused on risk and analytics but has covered a wide variety of other areas and has good all-around knowledge of the business. In his rare free time, Alex likes to watch/play sports and to over-analyse anything he can find, from fantasy football strategies to spreadsheets for Christmas dinners!

Rob Straathof

Chief Executive Officer

Rob is the Chief Executive Officer at Liberis.

Alexis Alexander

Chief Legal & Compliance Officer

Lex is the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer at Liberis.

Nima Montazeri

Chief Product & Technology Officer

Nima is the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Liberis.

Tom Bason

Chief Finance Officer

Tom is the Chief Finance Officer at Liberis.

Rachel Cox

VP of People and Talent

Rachel helps make Liberis a great place to work!

Rob Fairfield

Chief Operations Officer

Rob is the Chief Operating Officer at Liberis.

Alex Ivison

Chief Risk Officer

Alex is Chief Risk Officer at Liberis.

Environmental, Social & Governance

Areas of focus

Liberis’ ESG Policy applies to all employees. It permeates how the business deals with customers, employees, shareholders, and the community at large as well as our product development and strategic imperatives.

Community: Social and Ethical Focus

Financial inclusion underpins our ethos. Liberis has an intentional and proven focus on creating lasting social impact and equality of opportunity. We continue to find smarter and more innovative ways to use multiple sources of data to facilitate those SMEs that face barriers to entry to finance.

Governance and Leadership

As a business we ensure that we are appropriately accountable for our decisions and that these decisions are made in an informed manner. We do this by identifying and managing all material risk factors, including ESG risks as part of an Enterprise Management Risk committee.

Workplace

We have created a positive working environment for our people, and we engage and promote diversity and inclusion through our Diversity and Inclusion Council that reports directly into our executives. We will always strive to respect the rights of workers and promote transparency and an open culture.

Environment

We are conscious of what do we do that harms our environment, and what we can do to protect it. Whilst our products and services have a low impact on the environment, we are committed towards resource efficiency (energy, water, waste) and greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Treating Customers Fairly

Treating customers fairly in all interactions is of the utmost importance so much so that the whole organisation receives Treating Customers Fairly training on an annual basis. We are committed to protecting customers from unfair outcomes and our endtoend processes are evaluated and considered, respectful, and individualised manner.

Customers and Marketplace

At Liberis we always ask ourselves at the outset: how do the products and services we provide benefit our end customers and our partners? Fairness in finance is at the heart of what we do. Liberis’ product is designed to democratise finance for sections of society that are underserved and SMEs who struggle to get finance from traditional banks.

Our history

We’ve supported small businesses since 2007

Starting out with a new product for SME’s
2007
logo

We started out under the name Merchant Cash Express with a processing agreement with Lloyds Cardnet. We funded our 100th advance in our first year.

Hitting the 1000 merchants funded milestone
2009
logo

We signed our second processing agreement with Elavon.

Backed by one of the biggest names in capital
2013
logo logo

We joined leading venture builders, Blenheim Chalcot, and rebranded as Liberis.

New partnerships, new heights
2016
logo logo

We partnered with one of the largest payment processors in the UK – Worldpay​. Surpassed £100m in funding and secured backing from the UK Government owned, British Business Bank.

More global partnerships, expanding our reach
2018
logo logo

Partnered with Global Payments and FIS.

Expanding into new regions!
2019
logo logo logo

Launched partnership with Nordic acquirer, Nets, in Finland and Sweden. Launched partnership with UK acquirer, Clover. Secured £32m in funding from FTV Capital and existing shareholder Blenheim Chalcot.

Partnerships paving the way for new opportunities
2020
logo

Only Revenue-Based Finance provider approved for CBILS in the UK, and provider of PPP in the US. Officially launched our embedded business finance platform partners powered by single API integration. Partnered with SME neobank Tide in the UK

A bumper year of funding
2021
logo

Surpassed £500m in funding. Barclays invest £34.5m into Liberis.

More global partnerships, expanding our reach
2022
logo logo logo logo

More global partnerships, expanding our reach
2023
logo logo logo

And we’re only getting started. Want to be a part?

Get in touch
Trusted by
Backed by