Sending money across borders should be simple by now.
We live in a world where you can order groceries from your couch and open a bank account on your phone. But for millions of people who need to move money across borders, the experience still feels stuck in another era. It’s slow, expensive and riddled with friction.
That’s the frustration that Sebastian Gunningham walked into when he took over as CEO of Remitly about 75 days ago. His blunt assessment of the market? It’s an “underserved and overcharged community” where too many people pay too much for transfers that are unpredictable in timing and quality.
Gunningham shared that view with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster on the same evening Remitly posted first-quarter earnings.
The conversation that followed wasn’t really about the numbers, although those were strong, with send volume up 37% and active customers hitting 9.6 million. It was about the bigger question. Why does moving money across borders still feel so broken, and what would it take to fix it?
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Part of the answer lies in how the plumbing works. Or doesn’t. International payments typically bounce through layers of correspondent banks, foreign exchange providers and settlement systems. Every layer adds cost and delay.
“Sending money across the world is no fun,” Gunningham said. “It’s expensive. It’s messy.”
That messiness is exactly what’s pushing small businesses onto Remitly’s network, he said.
Webster pointed out that what Remitly is building looks less like a remittance service and more like a global platform business, especially as it moves into services for freelancers, small businesses and consumers who wish to move larger payments cross-border for real estate purchases, tuition payments and bill pay for themselves or family members.
Peeling the Onion, and Liking What’s Inside
The earnings were solid. Revenue was up 25% year over year, and the company turned a profit. But Gunningham seemed more interested in talking about what he’s found since taking over.
He used the metaphor of peeling an onion.
“When you join a company, one or two things happen,” he said. “You start to peel the onion.”
Sometimes what you find underneath is a mess. In Remitly’s case, every layer looked “better than I thought,” he said.
One of the surprises? Adjacent markets were already showing up on the platform. People were using Remitly for real estate purchases, savings transfers and business payroll. Those are use cases that go beyond the typical $250 remittance.
What does Gunningham think those customers actually want? Three things, including “low cost,” “speed of money,” and “great service.” Simple enough to say. Much harder to deliver consistently across 175 countries.
That formula will sound familiar to anyone who’s studied Amazon, where Gunningham previously helped build its marketplace and platform businesses. Webster drew the parallel to Amazon’s flywheel mode. The idea that trust and convenience, once established, become self-reinforcing competitive advantages.
Gunningham said he sees the same dynamic playing out in cross-border payments. If people consistently get cheap, fast, reliable transfers from one platform, they stop shopping around. That’s when the flywheel kicks in.
Meanwhile, the customer mix is changing. Remitly’s bread and butter has been transactions averaging about $250, but Gunningham said transfers of $5,000, $20,000, even $30,000 are increasingly common. Those are tied to savings, investments and property purchases.
Then there’s the freelancer economy. Gunningham described meeting workers in Manila who provide virtual assistance, booking services and operational support to companies overseas. They need fast, cheap cross-border payments. And they’re finding Remitly.
The small business opportunity could be enormous.
“If you get 1% of the small business market, that’s like two or three Remitlys right there,” Gunningham said.
That’s a big claim, but it underscores how much room Gunningham sees beyond the company’s traditional consumer base.
Where AI Actually Helps (and Where It Doesn’t Yet)
Every payments CEO is talking about artificial intelligence these days, and Gunningham was specific about where it’s making a difference at Remitly, and where it’s not.
“The killer product in AI right now is the software manufacturing,” he said.
In plain terms, AI is supercharging how Remitly’s engineers build and ship products. The old math of headcount times hours no longer applies, and that’s fundamentally changing how fast the company can move, he said.
Consumer-facing AI? That’s a different story. Remitly has experimented with ChatGPT integrations and conversational interfaces, but Gunningham said those efforts are still in the early stages.
Stablecoins are another area where Remitly is testing the waters. In corridors where consumers prefer holding U.S. dollars over local currencies, the company has been experimenting with wallet products and payment cards linked to stablecoin balances.
But Gunningham isn’t rushing in.
“There are a lot of gray areas,” he said of stablecoin regulation. “We are moving very carefully.”
There’s a good reason for that. Countries like Brazil and India are taking different approaches, and regulators globally are still figuring out where they stand.
The net effect is a patchwork of rules that makes it hard to move fast, even when the underlying technology is ready.
Still, the broader opportunity is hard to ignore. Remitly already supports transfers across more than 175 countries, and its infrastructure is increasingly stretching into business payments and financial products built for the people receiving money, not just those sending it.
Gunningham said he knows the competition is coming. Banks, wallets and other FinTechs are all chasing the same market. But he said he doesn’t think branding is going to decide who wins.
“If you are not low cost, fast money, great service, you’re not winning,” he said. It comes back to the basics.
He said he sees the long-term conditions lining up in Remitly’s favor, particularly as software-driven infrastructure lowers the cost of reaching underserved markets.
“We have this big core market and these emerging new markets for us,” Gunningham told Webster. “Some of the tailwinds are that we’re getting much faster growth in these new segments than we had anticipated. And I think it bodes well for the future.”
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