Supporting Open Source: fastFOREX Sponsors the Swap PHP Ecosystem

Open source quietly runs a huge share of the software the world depends on, and currency conversion in PHP is no exception. If you've built a PHP application that needs exchange rates, there's a good chance you've reached for one of Florian Voutzinos' libraries — whether you knew the name or not.

Today we're proud to share that fastFOREX is now the primary sponsor of that ecosystem.

What we're supporting

The "Swap" project isn't a single library — it's a layered toolkit that has been maintained for the better part of a decade:

• Swap — the high-level, easy-to-use API most applications interact with. A clean builder, sensible defaults, and a single call to fetch a rate.
• Exchanger — the provider layer Swap is built on. More than thirty exchange rate services behind one common interface, with chainable fallback and PSR-16 caching.
• Laravel Swap — the Laravel and Lumen integration, with a service provider and facade.
• Symfony Swap — the Symfony bundle for the same.

Together, these packages have been installed millions of times via Composer and sit inside countless production applications doing exactly the kind of work fastFOREX is built for: turning a currency pair into a reliable, up-to-date rate.

Swap is also a recommended package for moneyphp

Why we're doing this

The honest answer is that this is the kind of project we'd want to exist whether or not we sponsored it. Well-designed, well-maintained infrastructure libraries make every developer's life easier, and they rarely get the financial backing they deserve relative to how widely they're used. Sponsorship is a small way to help keep a useful project healthy and maintained.

It's also a good fit. fastFOREX has been an implemented provider in this ecosystem for some time, so supporting it isn't a stretch — it's backing software our own users already touch. Maintained open source is good for them too: fewer breaking surprises, faster fixes, and a project that stays current with modern PHP.

We're not interested in sponsorship that distorts a project. The libraries remain MIT-licensed, vendor-neutral, and support every provider they always have. That's the point — a healthy ecosystem is one where developers pick whatever provider suits them.

Thank you

A genuine thank you to Florian and every contributor who has put time into these libraries over the years. Maintaining infrastructure that thousands of developers quietly rely on is unglamorous, important work. We're glad to support it, and we'd encourage other companies that build on open source to do the same where they can.

If you build in PHP and need fast, reliable exchange rates, you can get started with a free fastFOREX key — and you can do it through the same Swap libraries you may already be using.

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