Zepz, the cross-border payment platform created by Ismail Ahmed of Somalia, has sent shockwaves through the digital banking market after successfully securing more than $800 million in debt and equity investment from a variety of investors.
According to Billionaires Africa, the company’s total funding has increased from $600 million to $800 million in two years owing to investors such as Accel, TCV, and Leapfrog, a private investment group specialized in high-growth financial services and healthcare startups.
After obtaining $292 million in additional primary funding, Zepz, which manages two market-leading brands, WorldRemit and Sendwave, and has over 11 million users in over 150 countries, was valued at $5 billion. Once WorldRemit purchased Africa-focused remittance software Sendwave in a $500 million deal in 2021, Zepz was formed as a parent business. According to WorldRemit, Zepz’s brands completed more than 4.5 million monthly transactions on its platform in 2020, earning about $10 billion in Gross Send Volumes and $338 million in income.
How Zepz started
While studying in London, Ahmed encountered a number of difficulties in sending money home. He was irritated by the inconvenient and expensive nature of moving funds through traditional agents. Ahmed founded WorldRemit in 2010 in an effort to establish a better and more effective manner of transmitting money, using compensation from the UN for exposing alleged corruption.
He created WorldRemit to assist migrants in remitting funds to friends and family. After raising more than $375 million in financing and expanding its worldwide workforce to 600 individuals, the company was valued at $900 million in December 2018. WorldRemit (Zepz) is now available in 150 countries worldwide, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Belgium.
Before becoming a migrant, Ahmed faced numerous hardships as a result of Somalia’s civil war in the 1980s. He witnessed the war’s casualties and devastation.
He journeyed arduously for a month and a half to the neighboring country Djibouti and he was smuggled out in a truck to the UK. To fund his education, he had to pick fruits. “It was one of the toughest job I’ve ever done,” he said in an interview. Recounting how tough his first day of strawberry picking was, he said: “I went back to my hostel. I fell asleep without eating or even thinking of my muddy shoes because I was so tired.”
Like many other migrants, he had many jobs in addition to his full-time study, but what kept him going was his resolve to remain positive in the face of obstacles. He worked multiple jobs to send money home to his family. By doing so, he discovered how difficult it was to send money back, which piqued his interest. He began to consider better ways of sending money home at a reduced cost and with greater ease, which resulted in the creation of WorldRemit.
For Ahmed, the digitization of mobile money is important because of its huge success, especially in Africa where there are over 400 million mobile money accounts.
“Today migrants can just send money by just taps on their phone. There are countries that suffer hyperinflation where sometimes carrying an equivalent of $100 requires a wheel barrow,” he told BBC community affairs correspondent, Adina Campbell.
In 2020, Ahmed was named the most influential Black Briton on the Powerlist 2020, which highlights the most powerful people of African and African Caribbean heritage in the UK.