Rewire, a neobank for expats, raises $20 million to extend financial services

Rewire, a fintech start-up that develops cross border online banking services tailored for the needs of expatriate workers worldwide, on Thursday announced a Series B funding round of $20 million and a significant line of credit from a leading bank.

The round, led by OurCrowd, included new key investors Renegade Partners, Glilot Capital Partners (through its early growth fund Glilot+), and Jerry Yang, former Yahoo! CEO and director at Alibaba, through AME Cloud Ventures. They were joined by current investors including Viola Fintech, BNP Paribas through their venture capital fund Opera Tech Ventures, Moneta Capital, and private angel investors.

The funding round further builds on the firm’s growth in South-East Asia. Since launching its services in the region in 2016, Rewire has seen users remit hundreds of millions per year to Asia, and has acquired over 230,000 users originally from China, the Philippines, India and Thailand. The firm’s userbase continues to grow rapidly, with users from the Philippines and Thailand growing at 300 per cent year-on-year. Similarly, the number of users originally from India is growing at 350 per cent while the pool of users originally from China is growing at 1000 per cent year-on-year, the company said in a statement.

Rewire was founded with the vision to empower every migrant to fulfil their financial potential for a better future, for themselves and their families. The current round of funding will enable the fintech startup to continue enhancing its product portfolio and services, as well as its strategic partnerships in the migrant’s country of origin and the country in which they currently reside.

Rewire has recently secured its EU Electronic Money Institution licence (EMI), granted by the Dutch Central Bank, which allows the fintech start-up to issue electronic money, provide payment services, and engage in money remittance. Rewire was also granted an expanded Israeli Financial Asset Service Provider. Acquiring these licences is another major step for the fintech start-up in its mission to provide secure and accessible financial services for migrant workers worldwide.

Rewire CEO Guy Kashtan said: “At our core, we aim to create financial inclusion. Everything that we do at Rewire is aimed to help migrants to build a more financially secure future for themselves and their families. To do so, we aim to provide services that go beyond traditional banking services such as insurance payments in the migrant’s home country and savings accounts. This investment and licences are major steps towards fulfilling our company’s vision and will be used for additional expansion of geographies and products.”

To boost its cross border solution, Rewire plans to enrich its platform with new value-added services such as bill payments and insurance, in addition to credit and loan services, investments, and savings. Adding these to its existing remittance services, payment account, and debit card, Rewire is able to make its first-rate financial services more accessible to migrants and, thus, include them in the financial systems.

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