WorldRemit will be the latest fintech to cut jobs when the outlook gets darker | Business news

The international money transfer service WorldRemit has become the latest fintech unicorn to take an ax to its workforce, as falling valuations force founders to survive.

Sky News has learned that Zepz has released many employees in recent months in a move that reduced the global number of employees to about 1,000.

The news of the dismissals comes just days after Sky News revealed that Breon Corcoran, Zepz’s CEO, had stopped in the middle of fading short-term prospects for a listing of the company.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Zepz said: “In February this year, the Zepz management shared internally a strategy to reduce our cost base and seek a stronger degree of financial independence to ensure we can serve our millions of customers worldwide sustainably. and independent of additional external funding.

“Unfortunately, some of these changes affected a number of roles across the organization, and redundancies were announced.

“These redundancies affected less than 5% of WorldRemit roles globally.”

The company’s staff team had “conducted a thorough review process to retain as many colleagues as possible in alternative internal roles across the Zepz group”, the statement added.

“WorldRemit currently has over 1,000 permanent employees and continues to employ exceptional talent around the world in a newly introduced remote-first recruitment policy.”

Zepz claimed that it had been “ahead of similar moves in the broader economy” by cutting the workforce earlier this year, although a spokeswoman acknowledged that they had not previously published these actions.

In recent weeks, other large fintech companies such as Klarna, buy now, pay later platform, have laid off significant parts of the workforce.

Zepz had prepared to be listed on the US stock exchange with a valuation of 6 billion dollars as soon as this year.

However, the declining likelihood of an IPO, with public markets plummeting from the war in Ukraine and the possibility of a severe global economic downturn, is said to have been a factor in Corcoran’s exit.

WorldRemit was established in 2009, and has established partnerships with a large number of international banks and mobile network operators.

Last summer, it raised nearly $ 300 million in new funding in a series of E-rounds that valued it at $ 5 billion, according to a public statement at the time.

By 2020, Zepz’s brands – which also include Sendwave – enabled over 4.5 million monthly transactions on the platform, generating $ 338 million in revenue, it said.