About Helm

What Helm is for

Helm is banking built for international trade. It gives importers, exporters, wholesalers and trading companies USD, EUR and GBP accounts in their own company's name, international payments on bank rails and in digital dollars, and trade finance arranged around their orders.

A trading business runs on a small number of money movements: a buyer pays, a supplier is paid, a balance is held in hard currency, and sometimes an order needs financing before the goods have sold. Helm puts those four movements in one account, with the fee and the arrival date shown before each one.

Forty years of payments, banking and licensing

The people behind Helm have spent forty years, between them, in payments, banking and the licensing of regulated financial firms. That experience shapes the account: one document list at onboarding, a compliance specialist who reviews it, payments screened before they are sent, and the outcome of any review given in writing within one business day.

Helm is part of a group whose advisory arm has obtained and maintained payment, e-money and digital asset authorisations for financial firms since 2010.

How Helm is built

Helm is a financial technology company, not a bank. Accounts and payments are provided through licensed banking and money transmission partners, named in each client's account agreement. Helm uses more than one partner so that each payment travels on the rail best suited to its corridor, and so that no single partner's outage stops a client's trade.

Client funds are held with those licensed partners. Helm's own systems hold the account records, run the screening and give every client a named account manager.

Read more on the Security and Regulatory disclosures pages.

Who Helm serves

Registered businesses that move goods across borders: importers, exporters, wholesalers, distributors, trading and sourcing companies and freight firms. Helm serves businesses worldwide, with the exception of businesses registered in the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area. Supported countries and industries are on the Eligibility page.

Company details

Press and partnership enquiries: hello@helm.business.