A UK-based online money transfer company, WorldRemit, that helps Kenyans in the diaspora to send money directly to M-Pesa accounts back home, has secured funding of Sh9.13 billion ($100 million) for its global expansion.
This comes almost a year after it got a Sh3.2 billion funding from Accel Partners, which helped facilitate its Kenya entry. The US-based venture and growth equity firm and another US firm Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) provided the new funding.
The new funding will enable users of WorldRemit’s service to transfer money from 50 countries to 117 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
World Remit CEO, Ismail Ahmed, described the funding as an opportunity to shake up the stale money transfer industry. “We are taking money transfers into the mobile age, where people send from apps and receive on mobile money services.”
The remittance firm noted that over 90 percent of the money transferred last month were done to mobile money accounts.
To ensure an effective transfer service, Ahmed said the firm is striking partnerships with mobile money service providers, as it taps into lucrative commissions earned from an estimated $550 billion that expatriates and migrant workers send back home every year.
On why they decided to fund WorldRemit’s expansion, Accel and TCV said it was because of the attractiveness of the industry as the use mobile money transfer increases.
“The $550 billion global remittance market is undergoing significant disruption with a clear shift to online and mobile solutions, for international money transfer,” said TCV general partner John Rosenberg in a statement.
