![]() ![]() The plan was to make money to send home and eventually go back to help build the economy of Ghana,” said Mawutor Abraham, who leads Taptap Send Africa. “I left Ghana 17 years ago as an economic migrant. We couldn’t be more excited to be joining them on our mission to bring low-cost, accessible, cross-border financial products to underserved diaspora populations around the world.” said investor James Kuklinski of Spark Capital. “We’ve looked at a lot of fintech companies in the space, and think Taptap’s team and community-led approach are best in class. Whereas the World Bank predicted a 25% decline in remittances since the onset of COVID, Taptap has seen more than 8x growth during this time, the team has more than doubled to 100+ with an additional 13 receive markets launched, including Bangladesh, Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam beyond those previously offered: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Zambia. Reflecting this need, there has been an acceleration of the shift to simple, digital, mobile solutions. “We’re committed to reducing global inequality by providing accessible, usable financial tools to individuals who need them most.” “With the pandemic pushing more than a hundred million people into extreme poverty and countless others into economic hardship, the importance of capital and the ease of moving it where it’s most needed has rarely been greater,” said Michael Faye, co-founder and CEO of Taptap Send. The importance has never been greater: COVID has not only had a devastating impact on many recipient communities but also made traditional box-store solutions even more challenging to access. Taptap Send is building products to capture this opportunity, providing senders peace of mind with a secure, affordable solution, and recipients with an accessible, convenient way to receive this capital. Connecting more than a billion people to the financial grid for the first time, mobile money allows more people to be reached more quickly, securely, and efficiently than ever before. The mobile money revolution has also changed the limits of what is possible with cross border flows, particularly in frontier markets. Informal remittances are estimated to be almost as large as those through formal channels: more than 7x since 2002. The formal $540 billion remittance market is the largest source of capital for low and middle-income countries, surpassing foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined. The new capital will allow the team to expand to different diaspora communities, invest in product development, and hire new talent to improve service quality. The company enables remittances for some of the most underserved markets globally. Taptap Send provides individuals with a simple, convenient platform to instantly send cross-border payments without a fee. Taptap Send’s total funding now exceeds $80 million. Taptap Send, a community-focused cross-border financial platform, recently announced a $65 million Series B funding round led by Spark Capital, with participation from Unbound and previous leads Reid Hoffman and Canaan Partners, along with Slow Ventures, Breyer Capital, Wamda Capital, Flourish Ventures, and additional investors from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In this episode, Michael and host Charlie Bresler talk about the ripple effects of financial stability in small communities, the notion of UBI (Universal Basic Income), the cultural challenges of convincing potential donors to give cash, and the technological challenges of getting cash in the hands of recipients.įind out more about Michael Faye and learn about (and donate to!) GiveDirectly at. The data doesn’t support that, says Michael - in fact, recipients generally use the money to feed their families, invest in businesses, upgrade their living conditions, and so on. Many of us in the west balk at handing over cash without some middle organization vetting how the money is spent we’ve heard too many stories of recipients using the money for drugs or alcohol or other wants we might find objectionable or frivolous. Once it became apparent that cash in the hands of recipients worked as well or better than any other intervention for relieving poverty, Michael shifted focus to finding ways to make it simple for donors to give and recipients to receive. Michael was working on his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University, evaluating ways to help bring about the end of extreme poverty. Michael Faye, co-founder of GiveDirectly and Segovia, and CEO of Taptap Send, came to this “cash works” realization in the early 2000s. It seems almost ridiculously simple: when donors give money directly to recipients, poverty goes down.
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