Cross-border fintech is hot right now. The cross-border payments market is forecast to reach $250 trillion by 2027, according to Bank of England. And experts say fintechs are giving banks a run for their money (pun intended) here, especially in Greece business to business sector where artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain come into play — all emerging technologies love fintech.
So it’s no surprise that one of the trends among Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batch of nearly 30 fintech startups is how to more easily move money globally. Here’s a rundown of what I saw during this week’s YC demo day:
Numo
Numo’s verified profile is attached to every invoice sent. (Image credit: Numo)
What is he doing: Offshore bank for international contractors
Numo focuses on payroll systems and banking for remote and international contractors. Users get a US bank account and access to low-cost local payment rails. CEO Derrick Wolbert met co-founders Reuben Balik and Q Carlson while at Hologram.com, a global mobile network. Wolbert said the company “connected the best providers in each market” so that users can withdraw their money instantly in their local currency. The startup tested it first in Nigeria and already has 1,000 registered users and 330 contractors verified by Numo. Wolbert called Numo “an economic infrastructure for the next generation of tech workers.”
Steal
Image credit: Cleva
What is he doing: Banking for Africa based in the US
Similar to Numo, Steal provides a US bank account where users, even non-residents, can receive funds and then convert them to their local currency. Co-founder Tolu Alabi previously built cross-border publishing and banking products at Stripe, while Philip Abel built multi-region infrastructure at companies including AWS and Twilio. Alabi said one of the factors behind the launch was the fact that about 70% of people in Nigeria lost their wealth last year due to currency devaluation. With Cleva, “Africans can receive dollars from anywhere in the world,” Alabi said. That market is quite large, $18 billion, he said. There really is no greater proof of market than achieving profitability, and that’s exactly where Cleva is — six months after launch. It also generates $120,000 in monthly revenue.
xPay
Image credit: xPay
What is he doing: International payments API for businesses in India and Southeast Asia
xPay acts as an international reseller and enables merchants to “start selling internationally immediately, without a US bank account or entity,” said CEO Aniket Gupta. The company claims it can help companies sell to the US, Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia with one integration and in “one-tenth” of the time. xPay launched four weeks ago and already has 25 signed contracts and over 200 people on the waiting list. Could it be a possible future acquisition of Stripe? We will have to wait and see. However, for now, the company expects to process $5 million in annual transaction volume by the end of the month.
Rapid
Image credit: Swift
What is he doing: Instant money movement anywhere in the world
Transferring money from account to account still takes days, so two engineers, David Lalor and Rakeeb Hossain started Rapid to provide a “unified API for instant, risk-free funding,” according to the company. They create instant international account-to-account transfers to accelerate the flow of more than $150 trillion that passes through bank rails each year. Swift’s first product is a direct deposit API for brokerages and digital banks that already runs on Venmo, Zelle and FedNow.
Infinity
Image credit: Infinity
What is he doing: Cross-Border Banking for Small Businesses in India
We’ve heard a lot about childhood friends over the past couple of days, so it was refreshing to see two brothers forming a band. In fact, for Sourav Choraria and his brother, Sidharth Choraria, this is their second startup together after a health tech startup they sold. Sourav, former head of development at wealth management giant Paytm Money, and Sidharth, former project manager at Amazon who helped launch the Appstore’s in-app purchase SDK.
Now the couple is building in the fintech space with Infinity. The company built a cash management platform and is now adding multi-currency accounts and global payments. Businesses in India account for $700 billion in cross-border transactions annually, and Infinity does 1% of those transactions. This $7 billion opportunity translates into a huge opportunity. In three months, Infinity has secured 110 customers and is growing by 20% every week, according to Sourav.
“Our aim is to create a financial oasis for cross-border companies,” said Sourav.
