Taptap Send, a tech startup that helps immigrants send money to people in their home countries, announced Monday it raised $65 million in fresh funding. The Series B was led by Spark Capital and is coming at a crucial time for the larger cross-border finance space.
Cross-border remittance — the exchange of money between people living in different countries — is a crucial part of the global economy, especially in developing countries. An estimated $589 billion will be sent in this manner in 2021 alone, according to The World Bank, and it will likely keep growing as more countries continue to bounce back from a devastating 2020.
This is a market NYC-based Taptap Send wants to capture by providing people with a space where they can send and receive money instantly without any added fees. The platform can also be integrated with whatever mobile money wallet users already have access to locally, so recipients don’t have to download anything new.
“With the pandemic pushing more than a hundred million people into extreme poverty and countless others into economic hardship, the importance of capital and the ease of moving it where it’s most needed has rarely been greater,” co-founder and CEO Michael Faye said in a statement. “We’re committed to reducing global inequality by providing accessible, usable financial tools to individuals who need them most.”
There are dozens of companies out there trying to seize this moment, too, from longtime incumbents like Western Union to startups like Remitly, which filed for a $100 million IPO over the summer and has since begun trading on the Nasdaq. However, James Kuklinski, an investor at Spark Capital, seems to think Taptap Send has what it takes to come out ahead of the pack.
“We’ve looked at a lot of fintech companies in the space, and think Taptap’s team and community-led approach are best in class,” he said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to be joining them on our mission to bring low-cost, accessible, cross-border financial products to underserved diaspora populations around the world.”
Since the start of the pandemic, Taptap Send says its business has grown more than eight-fold and launched in 13 additional markets, including African countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and Ghana, as well as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Pakistan. To keep up, its team has also doubled to more than 100 employees around the world, and it is continuing to grow.
