Munify, a digital bank for Egyptians living elsewhere, has closed a $3 million seed round and joined the accelerator program of Y Combinator. The accelerator and regional investors including BYLD and DCG are among the backers. The company’s mission is to make remittances easier and bring U.S. banking to individuals living in Egypt and the greater Middle East.
Founder brings Microsoft and Uber experience
Khalid Ashmawy, left, the founder and chief executive of Munify and a native of Cairo, studied computer science in Europe. He spent several years at Microsoft and Uber before co-founding Huspy, a proptech startup backed by Founders Fund, where he was CTO.
His challenges were his own difficulties in sending money back home while studying in Stuttgart, which he discovered revealed a deep divide in cross-border finance, where transactions could cost a lot, take a long time to settle, and with limited access to foreign banking for people who live in countries like Egypt. Those frustrations informed Munify’s product priorities.
The 30billion remittance market
Egypt is one of the world’s top remittance recipients. Remittances into the country are huge according to World Bank data, suggesting a large TAM for faster, cheaper payment rails.
Bank wires, Western Union and MoneyGram still rule, the latter two helped by a network of storefronts in 200-plus countries, but fintech entrants catering to migrant workers and the diaspora — like Nigeria’s LemFi and India’s Aspora — have shown the demand for digital-first alternatives. Munify gears up to win Egyptian remittance customers in the U.S., U.K., Europe and Gulf
Products: instant transfers and U.S. banking for residents
Munify offers two core products. For the diaspora, it offers instant cross-border transfers with competitive foreign-exchange rates. For residents in Egypt and neighboring markets, it makes it possible to open U.S. bank accounts and payment cards with a local ID, which in turn allows customers to receive, hold and spend money in dollars, and to protect themselves from local currency fluctuations.
The startup also offer APIs for businesses, payroll providers and freelance marketplaces that have to make and receive international payments, effectively bringing consumer remittance features to an enterprise-grade payment rail.