Remittance and payments industry is flourishing in the UK with 9.5 million migrants transferring about £7.58 billion every year. With notable opportunities in the segment, many players are vying to grab a big chunk of the market share. To challenge existing players, Germany-based challenger fintech OneFor has raised a notable £8.55 million in its latest funding round, and is now expanding its services for the UK and all EU countries.
Further expansion ahead
Dutch Private Equity company and Group B.V. invested in OneFor’s latest funding round. In a conversation with UKTN, the startups’ Co-CEO Marco Abele reveals that the company will utilise these fresh funds mainly to acquire and service their customers, and further develop their tech platform.
Founded in 2020, the fintech startup currently employs 40 people and as per Abele, they will grow their team to about 100 people by the end of 2021. The company will mainly add new roles in its customer service function division.
Faster transfer and lower costs
As mentioned previously, OneFor is now available in the UK and all EU countries with an immediate focus on the UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy and Spain. They are connecting these regions to the first receiving countries in North Africa, South East Europe and Latin America.
The startup offers national and international money transfer and payments. However, it aims to set itself apart by offering less than one second transaction time, and with up to 70% lower average transaction cost. In our conversation, we enquired how OneFor is able to pull this off.
Abele reveals that the speed is all thanks to their proprietary end-to-end platform, which includes one account with several cards. Each card can be assigned to a different family member, which is said to make transfers between them almost instantaneous. As for how the company charges lower than the competition, Abele notes, “There are mainly two reasons why we can operate much more efficiently than today’s competition: We are not running expensive brick and mortar establishments to serve our customers, and have a single proprietary platform where all costs are under our own control.”
The idea and the competition
The idea of OneFor came about with the founders’ personal experience. “With my professional and personal experience I have seen several occasions in my own environment how sending money back home wasn’t as it could be, which led to the point ‘we can do that much better’”, adds Abele
It’s true that in the hyper-competitive fintech space, every company needs to be on their toes. According to Abele, OneFor sets itself apart in various ways. “First, we are closing the gap between senders and receivers, keeping them on the same platform, with a stunning emotional user interface. Second, we build a borderless end-to-end proprietary platform, which provides a number of benefits: it makes money transfers faster, cheaper and safer,” says Abele. The third way, as per Abele, is by enabling more people in the unbanked population to participate in the digital payment world.
OneFor currently operates in first countries out of the Latam region, of the North African region and of the South-East Europe region. However, instead of regions the company views their operating areas as corridors, which take immigrants from one nation residing in certain EU countries into account. At present, OneFor serves 7 of these corridors and plans to add new ones in the coming months.
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