TransferGo raises $10M to expand its remittance business in Asia, doubling valuation

TransferGo, the U.K.-based fintech best known as a consumer platform for global remittances, has raised a $10 million growth funding round from Taiwan-based investor Taiwania Capital, with a view to expanding in the Asia-Pacific region. It last raised a $50 million Series C funding round in 2021.

TransferGo claims its growth, combined with the new investment, doubles its valuation. In September 2021 Dealroom valued it at $200 million-$300 million, but TransferGo declined to go into specifics.

Daumantas Dvilinskas, TransferGo co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch: “We have been profitable for the last year in and out, and the only burn was marketing, but the burn was very limited. We achieved sustainability of the business and became profitable and we still have proceeds from the last funding round. So we are profitable. We don’t need external capital to grow.”

However, he saw the opportunity to raise funding from Asia to expand there. “We raised money because we wanted to expand faster in Asia Pacific. So that’s the next frontier for us,” he said. “We are still taking customers from incumbents: 75% come from cash, banks and Western Union — that’s still the gorilla in the room.”

He puts TransferGo’s growth down to focusing on the consumer experience. “We’ve always been probably the most consumer-centric company in the space,” he said. “This is evident in our Trusted Reviews — still better than others. We really build out the product for our consumers. So that instant settlement of 90%, 24/7 instant, consumers love that. And it’s not easy to do. It takes time. You have to solve existing technology issues.”

Still, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Last year TransferGo was hit with a €310,000 fine from the Bank of Lithuania for AML (i.e. anti-money laundering) failings.

“We’ve been going through inspection and they found some procedural gaps that we closed by the end of the year,” Dvilinskas told me. “Regulation is getting stronger, but we’re happy that we closed the door on that, because we received successful feedback from them after closing the mediation.”

TransferGo largely competes with market dominator Western Union, but newer upstarts such as Remitly and Wise are also in the competitive mix.