Spark Capital leads new round to fuel expansion of mobile cross-border financial flows, benefiting those who need it most
Taptap Send, a community focused cross-border financial platform, announced a $65M Series B funding round led by Spark Capital, with participation from Unbound and previous leads Reid Hoffman and Canaan Partners, along with Slow Ventures, Breyer Capital, Wamda Capital, Flourish Ventures, and additional investors from the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Taptap Send’s total funding now exceeds $80 million.
“We’re committed to reducing global inequality by providing accessible, usable financial tools to individuals who need them most.”
Taptap Send provides individuals with a simple, convenient platform to send cross-border payments instantly and without fee1. The company enables remittances for some of the most underserved markets globally. The new capital will allow the team to expand to additional diaspora communities, invest in product development and hire new talent to further improve the quality of service.
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The formal $540B remittance market is the largest source of capital for low and middle income countries, surpassing foreign direct investment and official development assistance, combined. Informal remittances are estimated to be almost as large as those through formal channels: more than 7x since 2002.
The mobile money revolution has also changed the limit’s of what is possible with cross border flows, particularly in frontier markets. Connecting more than a billion people to the financial grid for the first time, mobile money allows more people to be reached more quickly, securely and efficiently than ever before. Taptap Send is building products to capture this opportunity, providing senders peace of mind with a secure, affordable solution, and recipients with an accessible, convenient way to receive this capital.
The importance has never been greater: COVID has not only had a devastating impact on many recipient communities, but also made traditional box-store solutions even more difficult to access. “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,” said Michael Faye, co-founder and CEO of Taptap Send. “We’re committed to reducing global inequality by providing accessible, usable financial tools to individuals who need them most.”
Reflecting this need, there has been an acceleration of the shift to simple, digital, mobile solutions. Whereas the World Bank predicted a 25% decline in remittances since the onset of COVID, Taptap has seen more than 8x growth; during this time, the team has more than doubled to 100+ with an additional 13 receive markets launched including Bangladesh, Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam beyond those previously offered: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal and Zambia.
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“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. 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.” said investor James Kuklinski of Spark Capital.
“I left Ghana 17 years ago as an economic migrant. The plan was to make money to send home and eventually go back to help build the economy of Ghana,” said Mawutor Abraham, who leads Taptap Send Africa. “When I found Taptap, I realized I had the opportunity to do that now and to build something to improve the lives of my people: my little family, my wider family, my village of Peki, my country of Ghana, my continent of Africa and my world. Taptap is the fastest, easiest, safest, and lowest-cost solution I’ve used and I am proud to be spending my time to make the product even better and bring it to others who also want to send money to their loved ones.”
In the words of Reid Hoffman, who led Taptap Send’s initial round and participated in the Series B: “I invest for scaled global impact and team, and Taptap is among the best combinations I’ve seen.”
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