A year after raising $100 million, London-based startup World Remit has picked up more funding. To compete against the likes of Western Union in the world of money transfers — and tap a remittance market that the World Bank estimates will be worth $610 billion in 2016 — the company has added another $45 million to its coffers.
This latest round, a debt round from Triple Point Venture Growth BDC Corp. and Silicon Valley Bank, will be used to expand its business both in developing markets and wealthier, mature regions like the U.S., CEO and co-founder Ismail Ahmed told Tech Crunch in an interview. (In other words, World Remit is focusing not just on areas where money is sent, but on places where the transfers are originating, too.)
Ahmed and World Remit are not disclosing the company’s valuation, but Ahmed describes this as a debt round that “could have been added at the same time as the last round.”
We understand from very reliable sources that the valuation is at the same level it was a year ago — $500 million. (An equity round could have likely shifted the valuation higher.) The funding is coming at a time when it’s getting harder for even the brightest sparks in the startup world to raise, is there in the event that World Remit needs it down the line. The company — which has picked up $192.7 million in funding to date from other investors that include Accel and TCV — still has money in the bank from the last round.
In the last year, World Remit has been working on licenses to add more sending regions to its network. It is now active in some 40 U.S. states and will be adding more key markets soon (one huge state it has yet to tackle, for example, is California).
On the receiving end, World Remit is focusing on mobile money services: these are the agreements between carriers and mobile money operators that let residents in many developing countries use their mobile numbers (and mobile phones) effectively as proxy bank accounts.
This is a very fragmented area: there are now 25 mobile money services that work with World Remit, including large companies like Mpesa and MTN, but Ahmed says that there still another 265 serving emerging markets.
This latest round, a debt round from Triple Point Venture Growth BDC Corp. and Silicon Valley Bank, will be used to expand its business both in developing markets and wealthier, mature regions like the U.S., CEO and co-founder Ismail Ahmed told Tech Crunch in an interview. (In other words, World Remit is focusing not just on areas where money is sent, but on places where the transfers are originating, too.)
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Mobile Money Transfer Business |
Ahmed and World Remit are not disclosing the company’s valuation, but Ahmed describes this as a debt round that “could have been added at the same time as the last round.”
We understand from very reliable sources that the valuation is at the same level it was a year ago — $500 million. (An equity round could have likely shifted the valuation higher.) The funding is coming at a time when it’s getting harder for even the brightest sparks in the startup world to raise, is there in the event that World Remit needs it down the line. The company — which has picked up $192.7 million in funding to date from other investors that include Accel and TCV — still has money in the bank from the last round.
In the last year, World Remit has been working on licenses to add more sending regions to its network. It is now active in some 40 U.S. states and will be adding more key markets soon (one huge state it has yet to tackle, for example, is California).
On the receiving end, World Remit is focusing on mobile money services: these are the agreements between carriers and mobile money operators that let residents in many developing countries use their mobile numbers (and mobile phones) effectively as proxy bank accounts.
This is a very fragmented area: there are now 25 mobile money services that work with World Remit, including large companies like Mpesa and MTN, but Ahmed says that there still another 265 serving emerging markets.
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