WorldRemit rebrands to Zepz and raises $292m in bumper Series E

Great news, terrible name.

Joining Wise and Dext in the running for worst rebrand of 2021, WorldRemit has become Zepz and simultaneously closed a colossal funding round.

Now valued at $5bn, making it one of the UK’s most valued fintech unicorns along with Revolut and Checkout.com, Zepz last night confirmed a $292m funding round.

New investors in the cross-border payments group include Farallon Capital, along with existing investors Leapfrog, TCV and Accel.

The rebrand comes after WorldRemit acquired African payments giant SendWave last year for $500m, giving it a solid foothold in the vast region and transitioning the company into a holding company structure.

“Today’s announced raise is another important step in the execution of our strategy,” said Zepz CEO Breon Corcoran.

“Following the acquisition of Sendwave we have made significant progress with the integration of the different businesses and are retaining both the Sendwave and WorldRemit brands. In that context we are proud to announce the rebranding of our holding Company to Zepz.”

With Sendwave under its belt, Zepz operates across 5,000 money transfer corridors and its 11m customers make 4.5m monthly transactions.

In 2020 that amounted to nearly $10bn in gross send volumes which generated $338m for Zepz.

Corcoran said the newly-raised cash would enable Zepz to “accelerate investment to prosecute our very sizeable growth opportunity whilst further strengthening our high-quality investor base and our mission to provide fair, fast, flexible payments for our customers.”