A week after Condia deeply reported LemFi’s expansion into Europe and additional capital raised, the remittance-focused fintech has announced its $53 million Series B.
London-based growth-stage investment firm Highland Europe led the Series B round. Existing investors Left Lane Capital (led LemFi’s Series A), Endeavor Catalyst, Palm Drive Capital, and Y Combinator participated in the round. This brings LemFi’s total disclosed funding to over $85 million.
LemFi will use this funding to expand its service offerings and scale its payment network licenses and partnerships globally, enabling hyper-localised service delivery.
The company, which currently employs more than 300 people in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, will also invest in talent acquisition to fuel its next phase of growth.
What changed between our last article and LemFi’s Series B?
Previously, we reported on one million users for LemFi. Now, the company has one million active users, indicating that “60% of its customer base is active yearly.” This could mean the company now has over 1.6 million users.
Markets. We reported on 10 destination markets and named three send markets (minus EU countries). The latest official data is that LemFi “operates in 27 send-from markets and 20 send-to countries”. Condia’s analysis juxtaposing data from the company’s website reveals that the 27 send-from countries are the trio of Canada, the UK and the US, all 20 countries in the Eurozone, Poland, Romania and two others.
On the European (EU) licensing, the company began its expansion with Modulr whose host member state is the Netherlands. Now, LemFi told TechCrunch that it has acquired a licensed Irish firm with hopes to close by next month. Eventually, the company will look to passport its Irish licence to other EU member states with a focus on “…Italy, France and Spain…”
As of our previous article on LemFi, the startup processed $2 billion TPV in a year (2023). Now, the startup processes $1 billion monthly. The CEO, in a conversation with TechCrunch, credited the surge to their Asian expansion. “He credits this surge to strong adoption in the Asian corridor, which rakes in $160 million in monthly TPV and is growing 30% month-on-month within its first year of launch.” Since the company has expanded beyond countries with exotic currencies, we have to revise our estimated take rate from the previous 1%. Thus, a 0.4% take rate on an annualised $12 billion TPV will yield revenue of $48 million.
LemFi will launch other products to drive up its average revenue per user (ARPU). Condia already reported that Card is in the works and credit for migrants might follow suit. But that remains to be seen.
