- Singaporean international money transfers firm commences operations in Europe
- Company on course to achieve profitability and IPO by 2021
Southeast Asia’s biggest digital international money transfers platform InstaReM has reached into the European market, headquartering its front of house operations in London.
The firm’s European ambitions are identical to its successfully-realised ambitions in Southeast Asia, namely to bottom out the market and become the continent’s “price champion” – an accolade it secured for itself with remarkable speed in its region of origin (it only launched in 2014).
Due to its clear dominance in the Southeast Asian cross-border payments market, InstaReM stands on solid commercial ground for its forecast of similar spectacular successes in Europe, where it will begin with immediate speed and price advantages over its competitors. Company calculations show that cross-border payments to European markets (where it enjoys an appreciable competitive advantage over its rivals) amount to more than a third of all international money transfers from Britain.
InstaReM currently has the ability to enable money transfers for 3.2 billion people living in over 60 countries. Given that it boasts a partner network encompassing more than 8,000 banks worldwide, this is hardly surprising. What is surprising, though, is that’s its achieved its breathtaking rate of growth, its impressive global reach, and its top-tier devotion to delivering only the best value for its customers on less than $20m in capital and in well under four years.
The company, which offers business as well as individual consumer payments services, says it’s on course to achieve profitability and then IPO by 2021.
It first raised the prospect of a public listing last July after raising $13m in new funding, when it also announced plans to expand into the European and North American markets. On the back of that funding, the company dipped its first toe into the European market by opening a new office in Lithuania housing 25 new staff (its headquarters remain in Singapore and the bulk of its development team are based in India, although that could be about to change).
There can be little dispute that its chief competitive advantage comes down to cost – it charges a transaction fee of just 0.35% on average.
Last month, InstaReM announced a partnership with the market-leading São Paulo-based cross-border payments provider BeeTech using Ripple’s premier enterprise blockchain network for payments, RippleNet (both firms had earlier inked deals with Ripple, the world’s only enterprise blockchain solution for international money transfers). The development effectively opens a new payments corridor between Southeast Asia and Latin America, enabling InstaReM customers to send real-time payments to South America and BeeTech customers to send instant payments into InstaReM’s 60-country-strong international market.
Commenting on the company’s launch into the European market, InstaReM CEO and Co-founder Prajit Nanu said: “We want European consumers to get what they want when they transfer money across borders: speed and the lowest possible rates. This is what we’ve delivered in Southeast Asia, and this is what we’ll bring to Europe by bottoming out the market on behalf of consumers. No one can compete with our presence in the markets that our customers want to transfer money to.”
