The London-headquartered company, which has regional offices in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, raised the capital from TriplePoint Venture Growth and Silicon Valley Bank. The firms join existing investors Accel Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures.
Funding will be used to support the mobile-first platform’s rapid growth, as WorldRemit generated $39m in revenue in 2015 and currently supports around 400,000 transfers each month. Running as an app, WorldRemit users are able to send money directly from smartphones and recipients can collect the funds as a bank transfer, mobile money, cash collections or as a mobile top-up. Those on the receiving end of the cash are generally in developing countries and the firm will use the capital to grow its partner network worldwide to increase access to instant money transfers. For comparison, WorldRemit highlighted that payments through traditional transfer agents usually take days to process.Read more on the fintech sector:
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Ismail Ahmed, WorldRemit’s CEO and founder, said: “We want to give people the power to share money anytime, anywhere. This latest financing will help more people send instant money transfers to their loved ones through the WorldRemit app.
“WorldRemit will continue to build partnerships with Mobile Money services, banks and payout networks around the world so that our service becomes universal.” For TriplePoint’s president Sajal Srivastava, he believes WorldRemit represents everything the fintech revolution stands for – innovation, empowerment and opportunities for consumers and finance firms alike. Phil Cox, head of EMEA and president of UK branch at Silicon Valley Bank, added: “Operating across the world gives WorldRemit diversified revenue streams and a huge customer base. “This is a great story of tech for good – the social impact of connecting remittances to Mobile Money services in the developing world has been huge and looks set to continue.”In the summer, the industry was recognised in a big way as George Osborne named Eileen Burbidge, Tech City chair and Passion Capital partner, the government’s special envoy of British fintech – a newly created role designed to “champion” the sector nationwide and also overseas.
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