By Nkiruka Nnorom

Zepz, formerly WorldRemit Group, a digital cross-border payments platform said it has raised $292 million in new primary financing to maximise strategic flexibility and drive further growth.

Zepz, which operates two market-leading brands -WorldRemit and Sendwave, it acquired in 2021, said the funding round has helped it to achieve a  valuation of $5 billion.

The round, according to the firm, includes new equity investors Farallon Capital among others, as well as backing from existing investors Leapfrog, TCV and Accel.

 The funding round will allow Zepz to continue to invest in its technology, platform and customer proposition. Zepz sees significant growth opportunities both in its existing markets by driving engagement and deeper market penetration, as well as expanding into new markets and further extending its platform to offer additional value-added services to its users.

Zepz is revolutionizing the P2P cross-border payments market, an estimated $1 trillion market opportunity which continues to be predominantly offline and is characterised by high prices and poor customer experience.

Zepz reaches over 5,000 money transfer corridors, including emerging markets with high barriers to entry, establishing digital connectivity into geographies that had previously been underserved. WorldRemit and Sendwave brands offer a faster (85% of transactions settled in minutes) and more flexible (digital offering with multiple pay-in and pay-out options) user experience at fairer prices.

The company stated that the superior value proposition has enabled multi-year customer engagement on its platform, saying that most users transact in a frequent, habitual manner – with Zepz’ average customer transacting c.4x per month on the platform.

Breon Corcoran, CEO, Zepz said: “Today’s announced raise is another important step in the execution of our strategy. Following the acquisition of Sendwave, we have made significant progress with the integration of the different businesses and are retaining both the Sendwave and WorldRemit brands. In that context, we are proud to announce the rebranding of our holding company to Zepz. The additional funds raised enable us to accelerate investment to prosecute our very sizeable growth opportunity whilst further strengthening our high-quality investor base and our mission to provide fair, fast, flexible payments for our customers”.

In 2020, Zepz brands enabled over 4.5m monthly transactions on its platform generating almost $10 billion of Gross Send Volumes and $338 million in revenues.