One of Europe's largest fintechs, the specialist SME trade finance and foreign exchange services provider Ebury Partners, has quietly established a permanent presence in Australia. Ebury Partners is the world's largest non-bank for small and medium-size businesses that trade internationally. The fintech set up in Australia a year ago, when it hired Rick Roache, head of corporate dealing for international wire transfer outfit WorldFirst, as its local managing director.Based in Sydney, Ebury Australia initially offered foreign exchange related products and services. The fintech has since stepped into Australia's non-bank SME funding market adding trade finance services to its FX offering three months ago. Roache said Melbourne has been identified as the key market in Australia for its global expansion plans. "Melbourne is growing faster than Sydney and in 2018 generated almost 20 per cent of Australia's GDP," Roache said. "This increases to 23.3 per cent of national GDP if regional Victoria is included." A spokesman confirmed to Banking Day that Ebury's Australian revenues "are currently growing at 400 per cent quarter-on-quarter", and by 2020 Australia could become the firm's third largest trade finance market, by loan value. Ebury Partners UK, founded in 2009 by tech entrepreneurs Salvador Garcia Andres and Juan Lobato, is backed by private equity and angel investors, including the British-Israeli firm 83North, along with Envestors, Vitruvian Partners and Angel Co-Invest (which in turn is supported by capital from the British Business Bank). As of mid-2018 Ebury Partners had secured funding in excess of US$150 million, including a funding round that raised US$83 million. It has offices in 22 countries and is handling US$2 billion in FX transactions per month.Ebury Australia operates as the branch of its UK parent, which is regulated as an Authorised Electronic Money Institution by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority. Consequently, ASIC has granted Ebury Australia an exemption from holding an Australian Financial Services License.Given a valuation of "more than US$350 million" by fintech data analytics firm Invoyo earlier this month, Ebury has long coveted "unicorn" status (ie, a valuation of US$1 billion), with its VC investors said to be eying an exit via an IPO on the London Stock Exchange next year. Fifteen months ago Ebury was ranked as one of Europe's "billion-dollar contenders" by technology dealmaker GP Bullhound.