For London-based tech startup Clearsettle, liquidity isn't just important to support the business—it is the business. The company provides a technology platform that settles cross-border transactions for online merchants.

Alistair Cotton, treasury manager for Clearsettle, explains his company's service by describing a hypothetical U.K. footwear retailer: “Maybe their shoes suddenly become fashionable in Asia, and lots of Japanese customers start coming to shop on their website,” he says. “But if the merchant only has a U.K. card acquirer, Japanese customers' credit cards won't work. What Clearsettle does is connect to acquirers and other organizations that provide payment settlement. So for the merchant, instead of having to do integrations with a lot of different banks around the world, they do one integration with us and we allow them to globalize their acceptance of payments on their websites.”