Seattle fintech company Remitly has built technology to make it easier to send remittances — which is the act of sending money to someone abroad. The company has made a name for itself in the $600 billion global remittance industry since it was established in 2011. But now Remitly is ready to make an even greater impact thanks to the backing of a major financial partner: Visa.
On Tuesday, Remitly announced that it received a new equity investment from Visa. This follows Remitly’s $85 million Series F from July of last year, which valued the company at $1.5 billion. The company didn’t disclose the exact size of the Visa investment, but a company spokesperson called it “sizable.”
In addition to the funding, the two companies announced they were extending their partnership to bring Visa Direct to Remitly customers. Visa Direct is the company’s real-time payments platform that allows people to send money quickly to billions of different cards or bank accounts. This will allow Remitly customers in the U.S. to send money to eligible Visa debit cards in countries around the world.
Remitly first partnered with Visa in March 2019 in order to help create a fast and secure way to send money across borders. There are often rules and regulations that a person must navigate in order to do this, so the company’s tools can help simplify this process.
Remitly has seen demand for these tools grow dramatically over the past year, as people send money to loved ones abroad to provide financial support during the Covid-19 pandemic. To meet this demand, the company has doubled the number of countries that its users can send payments to — growing from 49 to over 100. Its mobile wallet network also grew by over 100 percent.
“Over the last two years, our partnership with Visa and integration of Visa Direct, has bolstered our cross-border money transfer network and provided our customers with even more options to send and receive money all over the world,” CEO and co-founder Matt Oppenheimer said in a statement. “After a strong initial collaboration with the world’s leader in digital payments, we’re excited to bring even more payment disbursement innovations to the forefront in the years ahead, and serve our customers with speed, convenience and optionality.”
