NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

By Ingrid Lunden

The value of remittances globally continues to rise, and today a startup that has built a business targeting money transfers into emerging markets has raised a large round of growth funding to capitalize on that. WorldRemit, the London startup that has focused on enabling competitively-priced, quick money transfers from migrant workers and immigrants living in developed countries back home, typically in developing countries, has raised $175 million in a Series D round of funding from TCV, Accel and Leapfrog.

The company has to date focused on providing remittance services to individuals, specifically to help people  living and working abroad to send money to friends and family back home, by way of an app. That business now covers 50 ‘send’ countries and 150 ‘receive’ countries, and some 4 million users, with the US (where it has a license to operate in all states) its biggest ‘send’ market today.

Photo courtesy of WorldRemit Comms.