WorldRemit

Last updated
WorldRemit Limited
WorldRemit logo.svg
Available inEnglish, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, German
Founded2010;14 years ago (2010)
Headquarters London
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Founder(s) Ismail Ahmed
Richard Igoe
Catherine Wines
ChairmanIsmail Ahmed (Non-Executive Chairman)
CEO Breon Corcoran [1]
Services Financial services, Remittance
Employees848 (2021) [2]
URL www.worldremit.com/en

WorldRemit is a digital cross border remittance business that provides international money transfer and remittance services in more than 130 countries and over 70 currencies. It was founded in 2010 by Ismail Ahmed, Catherine Wines, and Richard Igoe. [3]

Contents

History

WorldRemit was founded in 2010 by Ismail Ahmed, a former compliance advisor to the United Nations Development Programme. [4] In October 2018, the company announced that they would be bringing in Breon Corcoran as CEO. [5] During his tenure WorldRemit acquired SendWave and Zepz was created as the group business housing both the WorldRemit and SendWave brands and businesses. Breon Corcoran left the organization in August 2022, [6] when Mark Lenhard, former COO of bill.com, was appointed Group CEO of Zepz. [7]

Operations

WorldRemit focuses on cross border remittance money transfers from over 50 countries to over 130 countries around the world. [8] For those receiving money, it offers pay out options including bank deposit, mobile money, mobile airtime top-up and cash pick-up as well as cash delivery.

The firm has a network of more than 5,000 corridors. It is connected to mobile money services globally, including Zaad (Somaliland/Northern Somalia), M-Pesa (Kenya), MTN (Africa and Asia), and bKash (Bangladesh). As of October 2019, it can send funds to 115 different countries; this includes all African countries except for Sudan, South Sudan, Eswatini, Eritrea, Libya, and Algeria. [9]

In 2021 WorldRemit acquired Sendwave, another cross-border digital payments company. In 2020 the two processed 50m transactions and facilitated the sending of over $10bn.[ citation needed ]

Sanctions for illegal practices with Sendwave app

In 2023 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that Chime Inc, a WorldRemit subsidiary which operates Sendwave, had violated the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and the CFPB Remittance Transfer Rule. [10] [11] [12] Some of the specific violations were:

In its consent decree Chime was ordered to pay $1.5 million in refunds, fined $1.5 million, and it agreed to change its practices. [11] [12]

Funding

WorldRemit is backed by venture capital companies Accel Partners [13] and Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). [14]

In February 2015, the firm announced a $100m Series B funding round led by TCV. [15] It was also announced that TCV General Partner John Rosenberg would join its board. [16]

In 2017, the firm received $40 million in their Series C round of funding, with LeapFrog Investments as the lead investor. [3] In 2019, it raised a $175 million Series D funding round, led by TCV, Accel, and Leapfrog Investments. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Remittance</span> Money transfer by a foreign worker to their home country

A remittance is a non-commercial transfer of money by a foreign worker, a member of a diaspora community, or a citizen with familial ties abroad, for household income in their home country or homeland. Money sent home by migrants competes with international aid as one of the largest financial inflows to developing countries. Workers' remittances are a significant part of international capital flows, especially with regard to labor-exporting countries.

In the legal code of the United States, a money transmitter or money transfer service is a business entity that provides money transfer services or payment instruments. Money transmitters in the US are part of a larger group of entities called money service businesses, or MSBs. Under federal law, 18 USC § 1960, businesses are required to register for a money transmitter license where their activity falls within the state definition of a money transmitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stripes (growth equity firm)</span> American equity and venture capital firm

Stripes is a private equity and venture capital firm based in Manhattan, New York, founded in 2008. In 2024, Stripes has US$7 billion of assets under management and more than 80 investments. Notable investments include On Running and Monday.com.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stellar (payment network)</span> Cryptocurrency

Stellar, or Stellar Lumens (XLM) is an open-source, decentralized cryptocurrency protocol for digital currency to fiat money low-cost transfers which allows cross-border transactions between any pair of currencies. The Stellar protocol is supported by a Delaware nonprofit corporation, the Stellar Development Foundation, though this organization does not enjoy 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the IRS.

Invoice2go is a mobile and web app designed as a simple invoicing, expense-tracking, and reporting tool for micro and small business owners. Headed by Silicon Valley veterans CEO Mark Lenhard and CFO Sean Deorsey, this software processes $24 billion in transactions each year and is used by over 220,000 customers in more than 160 countries. It was acquired by Bill.com in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eagle Eye Networks</span> American cloud-based video surveillance firm

Eagle Eye Networks, Inc. (EEN) is an American company providing cloud-based video surveillance products for physical security and business operations applications.

Breon Thomas Corcoran is an Irish businessman, the CEO of IG Group and a non-executive director of Tilney Investment Management Services and Bestinvest, both part of the Tilney Group. He was CEO of Paddy Power Betfair from February 2016 to January 2018 and CEO of WorldRemit from October 2018 to August 2022.

Oxigen Services is an Indian fintech company. It is involved in the micropayment of services and remittances in real time.

Grovo is a New York City-based company established in 2010 by Jeff Fernandez, Nick Narodny, and Surag Mungekar that develops a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform focused on microlearning, to allow users to create, manage, and distribute educational content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PayU</span> Fintech company that provides payment solutions to online merchants.

PayU is a Netherlands-based payment service provider to online merchants. The company was founded in 2002, and is headquartered in Hoofddorp. It allows online businesses to accept and process payments through payment methods that can be integrated with web and mobile applications. As of 2018, the service is available in 17 countries. The firm is owned by the Naspers Group, which also owns a stake in one of its sister companies, Tencent.

bKash Mobile money transfer service

bKash is a mobile financial service (MFS) in Bangladesh operating under the authority of Bangladesh Bank as a subsidiary of BRAC Bank PLC. This mobile financial service company started as a joint venture between BRAC Bank Limited, and Money in Motion LLC.

Nium is a Singapore-headquartered cross-border payments company. Initially founded by Prajit Nanu and Michael Bermingham, and launched as a consumer-remittance platform Instarem in 2014. In 2016, the company introduced its B2B payments platform and rebranded as Nium in 2019, subsequently elevating Pratik Gandhi to co-founder in 2021. However, Gandhi left Nium in October 2023, around the time Nium's Chief Product Officer also left the company and Nium announced a layoff of over 10% of its global staff.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scripbox</span>

Scripbox is a Bengaluru-based digital wealth management service founded in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lola.com</span>

Lola.com is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is best known for developing corporate travel management and expense software for web browsers, the App Store and Google Play. The company was founded in 2015 by former Kayak.com executives, Paul M. English and Bill O'Donnell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Azimo</span> Dutch money transfer company

Azimo B.V. was an online remittance service headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It also had offices in Kraków, Poland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chime (company)</span> American financial services company

Chime Financial, Inc. is a San Francisco–based financial technology company that provides fee-free mobile banking services through two national banks, Stride Bank and The Bancorp Bank.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arjun Sethi (entrepreneur)</span> American entrepreneur, investor and executive

Arjun Sethi is an American internet entrepreneur, investor and executive. He is co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Tribe Capital. Previously, he was a partner at Social Capital and an executive at Yahoo!, where he launched Yahoo! Livetext. Prior, he was co-founder and CEO of MessageMe and was the CEO of Lolapps, the developer behind Ravenwood Fair. In December 2023, he became Tribe Capital's chairman and CIO.

Remitly is an American online remittance service based in Seattle, United States that offers international money transfers to over 170 countries. It was founded in 2011 by Matthew Oppenheimer, Josh Hug, and Shivaas Gulati and became publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange in September 2021.

Flutterwave is an American fintech company that provides a payment infrastructure for global merchants and payment service providers across the continent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rewire (company)</span> Israeli banking and financial services company

Rewire by Remitly is a multinational digital financial platform operated by the fintech company Remitly Israel that provides online financial services tailored. The Rewire by Remitly platform was originally built by the Israeli startup Rewire which was founded by Guy Kashtan, Saar Yahalom, Adi Ben Dayan, and Or Benoz. In August 2022 an acquisition agreement was signed between Rewire and leading remittance company Remitly. In January 2023, the deal closed and Rewire officially became part of Remitly, an American fintech company traded on Nasdaq. After the acquisition, the company in Israel was rebranded as Remitly Israel and the financial platform was rebranded as Rewire by Remitly.

References

  1. ↑ Kleinman, Mark (22 October 2018). "UK fintech star WorldRemit transfers in Corcoran as new boss". Sky News.
  2. ↑ "WorldRemit company profile". Craft. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  3. 1 2 Lunden, Ingrid (6 December 2017). "WorldRemit nabs $40M at a $670M valuation to boost its money transfer business". Techcrunch.
  4. ↑ Smale, Will. "The man changing the world of remittances". BBC News.
  5. ↑ "WorldRemit brings in former Paddy Power boss as CEO". sky News . 22 October 2018.
  6. ↑ "WorldRemit chief Corcoran steps down as IPO prospects stall". Sky News. Retrieved 2022-09-02.
  7. ↑ "WorldRemit Parent Names Lenhard, Ex-Bill.com Executive, as CEO". Bloomberg.com. 2022-08-31. Retrieved 2022-09-02.
  8. ↑ "About us". WorldRemit. Retrieved 2022-09-02.
  9. ↑ "Send money to Africa". WorldRemit. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  10. ↑ Witkowski, Rachel (October 26, 2023). "CFPB Cites Sendwave For Misleading Users, Charging Wrongful Fees". Forbes Advisor. Retrieved 2024-06-06.
  11. 1 2 "CFPB Takes Action Against Operator of Sendwave App for Illegally Cheating People on International Money Transfers" (Press release). Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. October 17, 2023. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  12. 1 2 "Chime Inc. agrees to pay CFPB $3 million to resolve remittance app allegations". ABA Banking Journal. American Bankers Association. November 1, 2023. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  13. ↑ Lunden, Ingrid. "Money Transfer Startup WorldRemit Collects Its First Investment, $40M From Accel". TechCrunch.
  14. ↑ "Somali Entrepreneur Raises $100 Million For Money Transfer Startup WorldRemit". Forbes.
  15. ↑ "London money transfer startup just raised $100m". Business Insider.
  16. ↑ "WorldRemit announces John Rosenberg to its Board and having raised $100m in Series B funding round led by TCV". Talent4Boards.
  17. ↑ "WorldRemit raises $175m in Series D funding". WorldRemit.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.