The Seattle-based startup Remitly closed a $135 million round last summer, to go beyond money-transfer services into a wider range of financial products.
“No-one should be excluded from banking and financial services,” said Matt Oppenheimer, the CEO and co-founder of Remitly, in an interview in London last week about Passbook.
Now, it’s launching a new product. It’s called Passbook, a new bank aimed at immigrants that lets a person use a wide number of picture IDs — whether they are from the US or not — to sign up.
Passbook is solving a problem where collectively 1.7 billion people globally remain “unbanked,” with no access to bank accounts and therefore mostly off the financial grid, and therefore unlikely to have access to services like credit that can potentially help them improve their financial station in life.
“Passbook is the next step in Remitly’s mission to transform the lives of the millions of immigrants around the world who make the huge sacrifice of leaving their families behind to live and work in another country,” says Matt Oppenheimer, Remitly CEO.
