Following the news that remittances provider Azimo has raised a further $20m, what’s next for the digital start-up, pushing 100 employees? How will it spend its latest funding and how does it see the market it’s operating in? Michael Kent, CEO, speaks to Anna Milne
Azimo’s market is migrant workers from the developing world: the Philippines, parts of India, Latin America, and Africa. The latter is a vastly-growing market for Azimo- particularly West Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, French speaking West Africa, Sierra Leone, Senegal.
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It makes you wonder who else might be going after this market- surely there is a race on to gain market share in populations where smart phone adoption is soaring at a rate of knots? Not so, according to Kent. He sees Azimo’s only viable competition in the space as Western Union and MoneyGram and even then, he sees Azimo as an entirely different service; as the challenger bank of the remittances world, if I may say such a thing.
"There’s a tipping point we are seeing right now, traditionally people have sent money using high street legacy operators like Western Union, MoneyGram. People are starting to realise they can save themselves a lot of money, hassle and time by using a digital solution. There is a trust hurdle that, as a new brand, we need to get over but once we have satisfied customers, that is powerful and makes people in the market aware," says Kent.
Kent explains the biggest push for Azimo is into the mobile wallet ecosystem, and more specifically, the one in Africa. Azimo already works with M-Pesa, in mobile wallet integration in 11 countries.
"This market is growing very fast, there are 2.2 billion financially excluded adults globally- who don’t have a bank account and these people increasingly have mobile phones and in having phones soon they will have pseudo bank accounts in the form of mobile wallets. That’s potentially life changing- it’s also a huge number of people who can then start to receive remittances digitally rather than in the traditional manner of a cash payout."
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By GlobalDataAnd it is not so much increasing the number of countries Azimo sends to but improving the service within the 200 it already serves. As Kent says, the UN only recognises 208 countries so there isn’t much scope for further country accrual anyway.
Kent plans to spend the fresh injection of funds on two things: technological development and marketing.
"We’re a technology company and our product in some ways is innovation. We’re paranoid about what’s coming next- and are experimenting, looking at block chain technology- looking at different parts of the world where already there are huge numbers of potential customers who are smart-phone enabled, like Asia, and unless you’re thinking like a start-up you get a bit fat and lazy."
It’s true banks tend not to go after this market- even recent remittance services, notably Transferwise, go after a wealthier segment with a higher average transaction value. That of Azimo’s is a modest $600, or thereabouts.
"We’re keen to take a chunk of European market share but we want to do that by serving customers better. We have to be ten times better than Western Union to get people to switch and we have to be better on price and convenience and speed, ground interaction- everything."
