Mobile Remittance Startup Azimo Raises $20M

Azimo, a mobile remittance startup out of London, has raised $20 million from investors at Frog Capital, MCI Investments, Greycroft Partners and e.ventures, according to a report in TechCrunch.

Azimo will use the funding to continue expansion into greater Europe, the article said.

"People assume they wouldn't use Skype or social networks or smartphones. But in fact we found that Eastern Europeans, Filipinos, and others massively over-indexed on services like VoIP and social networking, so in fact it completely makes sense to sell them digital remittance apps," Michael Kent, CEO of Azimo, told TechCrunch. "Rather than requiring them to walk into a Western Union and pay more, you could take the stuff they were using already for other reasons to deliver a cheaper and more cost effective service." 

Remittance providers that focus on digital services to undercut the pricing of traditional players such as Western Union and MoneyGram have gotten a new wave of attention from investors and the payments industry recently.

In competition with Azimo are two U.K.-based startups, TransferWise and WorldRemit. In January, TransferWise raised $58 million and in February, WorldRemit raised $100 million. Plus a handful of digital currency companies, most operating in Bitcoin, are going after the remittance market as well.

Azimo supports 73 currencies in 198 countries and has more than 270,000 cash pick-up locations, according to its website. In total, Azimo has raised $31 million since its launch in 2012.