Ephelia Group

The Ephelia platform has four layers that build on each other. The first layer holds the licenses and a compliance-as-a-service unit for onboarding, monitoring and reporting. The second is core banking for fiat money and blockchains, with accounts, wallets, payments, swaps, card issuing and acquiring, delivered through APIs or as a white-label product. The third layer settles payments in es-Currencies, and the fourth uses AI for reconciliation, screening, the choice of payment rail and programmable treasury.

With Asset Management-as-a-Service, wealth managers, asset managers and family offices open multi-currency current accounts and securities accounts for their clients under their own brand. They manage these portfolios under a mandate and can tokenize funds and other real-world assets with programmable distributions, while Ephelia runs the accounts, the rails and the back office. Ephelia has ready-made playbooks for asset management, gaming and digital platforms, remittance and money transfer, and FX brokers.

es-Currencies are fiat-backed e-money tokens that Ephelia builds into its core banking system. Legally they are electronic money: each token is a claim on fiat that a licensed bank or e-money institution holds in safeguarded accounts, and holders can redeem it through authorized institutions and approved apps. The first currencies are the US dollar, the euro, the pound sterling and the Swiss franc, written es-USD, es-EUR, es-GBP and es-CHF. The same token moves between bank accounts, cards, local payment systems and blockchain wallets, so a customer can pay by card while the settlement behind the payment runs in es-Currencies.

The tokens can also stream, which means that value moves as a continuous flow, per second if needed. Ephelia names salaries paid daily or hourly, subscriptions billed per second of use and marketplaces that pay sellers with each sale as examples. In programmable escrow, funds are locked and released step by step as a supplier meets the agreed milestones.

Kiedo Kompliance is the AI-first compliance-as-a-service platform of Ephelia for KYC and KYB checks, anti-money laundering screening and transaction monitoring across fiat and onchain activity. Specialized AI agents help compliance teams pre-screen and escalate cases during onboarding and ongoing monitoring. In the Agentic AI Framework of Ephelia, autonomous agents work directly with the core banking system to reconcile payments, choose a payment rail or run corporate treasury rules.

The Finance Interoperability Layer, or FIL, is the architecture Ephelia proposes for an open layer between e-money, banks, stablecoins and blockchains. FIL has four parts: verifiable credentials for identity, machine-readable compliance rules that travel with each transfer, a routing mesh that picks a path across fiat and crypto rails by cost, speed, liquidity and risk, and connectors to SEPA, ACH, card networks and instant payments. Ephelia wants other banks, e-money institutions and payment providers to implement FIL as an open standard, so that one transfer can start as e-money, cross a stablecoin corridor and settle in a bank account.

Ephelia US PS LLC is registered as a money services business in the United States and holds VASP permissions and the right to issue e-money tokens. Ephelia CA PS Ltd is a money services business in Canada, and Ephelia NZ PS Ltd provides e-money, payment and asset management services in New Zealand. In Italy and the United Kingdom, Ephelia Corporate (ITA) Srl and Ephelia UK EMD Ltd distribute e-money and support card issuing and acquiring.

Swiss Structuring Ltd, a protected cell company in Guernsey, structures and issues actively managed certificates, credit-linked notes and tracker certificates for the group. The two Swiss companies, Ephelia SwissTech SA and Ephelia Capital GmbH, are based in Lugano and cover e-money services and portfolio management. Clients deal with one coordinated group of licenses and do not have to contract each company separately.

Charles McManus is the chairman of the board of Ephelia Group. He co-founded ClearBank, the first new clearing bank in the United Kingdom in more than 250 years, and was its Group CEO from 2015 to 2025. Franco Mignemi founded Ephelia and leads it as Group CEO, after founding several fintech companies, among them a payments and investment firm authorized in the United Kingdom.

The non-executive directors are Mattia Rattaggi, who co-founded AMINA Bank after risk and regulatory roles at UBS, Davide Steffanini, a former General Manager Italy at Visa Europe, and Eddy Abramo, a former regional CEO at Société Générale Private Banking. The executive team adds Oriklinda Goci as Group COO, who managed operations at Thredd before, Steven Borg as Group CFO and Ermanno Attardo as Group CTO.

Ephelia Group has its head office at 7 Manchester Square in London, in the United Kingdom. The group runs operational offices in Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and both of its Swiss companies are registered in Lugano.

Ephelia SwissTech SA is the Swiss payments company of the group, with its registered office at Via Nassa 3A in Lugano. The company is a financial intermediary under the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act, because it helps customers transfer and convert electronic money, and it is affiliated with the self-regulatory organization PolyReg. Customers receive IBAN accounts that Ephelia SwissTech opens through licensed financial partners.

Ephelia Capital GmbH in Lugano holds a FINMA authorization as a portfolio manager under Article 17 of the Swiss Financial Institutions Act. The supervisory organization AOOS supervises the firm, and clients sign discretionary portfolio management mandates with it entirely through digital onboarding. Within the group, Ephelia Capital also handles distribution and the structuring of actively managed certificates.

Ephelia works with es-Currencies, which are e-money tokens and count legally as electronic money. Only licensed banks and e-money institutions can issue them, and each issuer must hold the matching fiat reserves in safeguarded accounts. In the United States, Ephelia US PS LLC holds the group permission to issue e-money tokens, and Ephelia sets standards with issuers for minting, burning and managing es-Currencies.