Company: Remessa Online
Investors: KaszeK Ventures, Bewater Ventures, Global Founders Capital, MAR Ventures
Interview with: Co-Founder Alexandre Liuzzi
Brazil-based international money transfer platform Remessa Online raised US$20m from KaszeK Ventures, Brazil-based growth fund Bewater Ventures, and Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners in June 2020.
Remessa Online was initially focused on international money transfer for individuals. After validating their infrastructure and integrating a compliance system, their focus shifted to serving small businesses. Co-Founder Alexandre Liuzzi shares revenue has grown 2x this year despite the challenging scenario, after growing 3x annually from 2016-2019.
Origin story
Remessa Online was founded in 2016 with the mission to help connect Brazilian companies and individuals with the rest of the world. Co-Founder Alexandre Liuzzi shares: “We decided to launch Remessa Online because we had all lived through the pain point of making an international transfer at some point of our lives and knew how bad the process was and how expensive it was.”
Funding
Liuzzi shares: “The startup received its first seed investment in 2017 from Marcelo Maisonnave (co-founder of XP Investimentos). The investment was used to improve the online money transfer platform and build the company’s team.”
In 2018, Remessa Online raised a US$4m Series A led by Global Founders Capital and MAR Ventures. Liuzzi says this funded the creation of a proprietary infrastructure to process international payments.
In 2019 the company saw the opportunity to expand to small and medium businesses and launched its online platform by the second half of the year, which contributed to the success of the US$20m Series B, according to Liuzzi.
Fabio Armaganijan, former COO of Kraft Heinz US and current Partner at Bewater Ventures, will join Remessa’s Board of Directors.
Product
“Transferring money is just the beginning, and we are eager to build a global financial system that will make life easier for global citizens and businesses alike. We want to directly connect and serve our customers with what they actually want – that starts with a global wallet, partnerships to allow for direct access to global investments, and for SMEs, access to custody services, hedges and even credit.”
Liuzzi claims Remessa’s services are not only cheaper, but also much faster and efficient: “We have re-written the whole [international money transfer] process from scratch by building a proprietary infrastructure from local payments integrations, accounting and registrations, accounts reconciliation, automated AML & KYC verification with pre and post transaction monitoring, to direct integration with global payment corridors.”
Navigating C19
“This crisis is accelerating the digitization process of several industries, and we were ready to serve SMBs online since we launched our new business platform in the beginning of the year. Now, B2B has outpaced the B2C segment. On top of that, with everyone working from home, the frontiers for SMBs have expanded, and with the current FX rate, exporting services have become attractive for our customer, and we want to help them become global.”