LemFi, a trailblazing player in the remittance landscape, has successfully raised $33 million in Series A funding. With a track record of serving African migrants in Canada and the UK, LemFi aims to streamline remittance payments for immigrants on a global scale. The latest funding round, spearheaded by Left Lane Capital, witnessed participation from prominent investors such as Y-Combinator, Zrosk, Global Founders Capital, and Olive Tree. With this infusion, LemFi’s Series A funding accumulates just shy of $34 million since its establishment in 2019.
Each year, a substantial number of migrants relocate to Europe, Canada, and the United States for work, education, or permanent residence. In a notable instance, in 2019, Canada, with a population of 37 million at the time, welcomed 341,000 new permanent residents—a feat achieved for the fifth time in the nation’s history. This surge exceeded previous records set in 1911 to 1913 and 2018. The inflow of migrants to Canada has consistently outpaced prior years, except for the exceptional circumstances of 2020, which saw immigration plummet to 184,000—its lowest point since 1989.
Most migrants arriving in Canada originate from Asia. For instance, in 2019, of the 341,000 newcomers, around 86,000 hailed from India, while less than 20,000 were from African nations like Nigeria and Eritrea. This trend echoes across migrants moving to Europe as well.
Despite their diverse origins, immigrants confront shared challenges. One prominent issue revolves around newcomers grappling with the financial systems in their new host countries. Sending money back to their home countries poses a significant struggle. In 2022, global migrant remittances reached a staggering $626 billion, with these transfers holding vital importance for many African nations as a key source of foreign exchange. Certain countries even encourage their citizens to seek employment overseas to facilitate money transfers back home.
However, this massive market of migrant remittances remains fraught with challenges. Traditional and local banks, global transfer messaging systems like SWIFT, and traditional money transfer services like MoneyGram coexist alongside informal transfer operators in the black market, such as the Hawala system. Navigating this intricate web of systems proves complex and expensive, particularly for Africans.
Amidst the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the pandemic’s aftermath in 2020 and 2021, Ridwan Olalere and Rian Cochran embarked on a journey to address this issue. They founded Lemonade Finance, now shortened to LemFi, to offer instantaneous international transfers to the African diaspora community in Canada. Prior to LemFi’s emergence, sending money home often entailed stitching together various payment or money transfer services, incurring fees that could devour up to 8% of the transaction. Receiving money from home was equally intricate.
“In 2020, we set out to begin staking our claim in the global financial services area, starting with Africans and obtaining our first authorization in Canada,” Cochran tells TechCabal. “As a money service business, we began by offering remittance services and then slowly built out our footprint,” he adds.
Ridwan Olalere, the CEO and co-founder of LemFi, played a pivotal role in developing key payment products at Flutterwave and led Uber’s Nigeria business at one point. Cochran, on the other hand, ascended through the ranks at Opera Software AS from 2008 to 2020, eventually reaching the position of Senior Finance Director, as the company’s payment product, OPay, achieved rapid growth in Nigeria.
Starting from Canada, Lemonade Finance swiftly expanded its reach, venturing into the UK by 2021. The company was also diligently working to expand its reach to more African countries, enabling users to transfer money to and from these nations. By the close of 2021, LemFi had introduced 10 new African remittance corridors. Now, LemFi aims to extend straightforward, zero-fee money transfers to migrants from emerging market nations. The company generates revenue through narrow foreign exchange spreads. Since LemFi’s UK license permits wallet creation and user fund holding only, the company refrains from offering lending services (to accrue interest on user deposits), as traditional banks do.
Notably, LemFi distinguishes itself by facilitating intra-African transfers, setting it apart from some of its counterparts. “Our primary focus is on immigrants who now have residency in North America and Europe,” Cochran affirms.
This development carries positive implications for African governments struggling with depleting foreign exchange reserves. In this context, countries like Egypt are contemplating collaborations with fintech companies after initiatives promoting formal remittances through banks failed to gain substantial traction. Earlier this year, LemFi announced its acquisition of an International Money Transfer Operator (IMTO) license from the Central Bank of Nigeria. This license empowers LemFi users to transfer funds directly to Nigerian bank accounts, bypassing intermediaries. This contrasts with other remittance fintechs that enable cross-border payments using stablecoins (cryptocurrency versions of fiat currency).
Cochran expounds on the company’s perspective, stating, “There’s an opportunity to generate revenue in Africa. But in terms of our objectives, we believed that what we were aiming for wasn’t yet being done extensively in North America and Europe. Conversely, there was already significant competition in Africa for the service we intended to provide.”
Resonating with emerging market migrants living in North America and Europe, LemFi endeavors to be recognized as the premier remittance service dedicated to migrants from the Global South, residing and working in the Global North.
“We took a global view and realized that there is still ample opportunity to build something—primarily for Africans abroad or, more broadly, immigrant communities resembling Africans abroad, who require similar products and services,” Cochran elucidates. The company is presently poised to acquire EU licenses, a strategic move to extend its services to migrant workers and families within the European Union.
Source : Tech Cabal