Alumni Feature: ReWire
ReWire, the 2020 Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) FinTech Award Winner, recently raised a $20 million Series B investment. The funding round was led by XTC regional partner OurCrowd, and XTC Global Finals judge Jerry Yang, co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo!
Launched in Israel in 2015, ReWire has carved out a niche in the cross-border payment processing and remittances space. The company’s founders, Or Benoz, Guy Kashtan (CEO), Saar Yahalom (CTO) and Adi Ben Dayan (VP of R&D), saw a need for an increasingly easy-to-use app for migrant workers to send money to their home countries, securing financial stability for both international workers and their families.
ReWire CEO Guy Kashtan said, “At our core, we aim to create financial inclusion. Everything that we do at Rewire is aimed to help migrants… build a more financially secure future for themselves and their families. To do so, we… provide services that go beyond traditional banking services, such as insurance payments in the migrant’s home country and savings accounts. This investment and licenses are major steps towards fulfilling our company’s vision and will be used for additional expansion of geographies and products.”
With ReWire’s first customers sending money to the Philippines just a few months after product release, the business began to focus on SouthEast Asia as its primary market in 2016. ReWire quickly onboarded more than 200,000 users and is now transacting hundreds of millions of dollars every year in the region. It increased its user base 300 percent year-over-year and continues to become a popular solution for cross-border payments in the Philippines and Thailand with increasing user bases in India and China.
ReWire is just one of many XTC success stories, executing on a global level while effectively addressing one of the UN SDG-inspired category areas. Collectively, the class of 2020 has raised over $120 million dollars since being selected as finalists. The competition empowers young companies by extending opportunities to achieve global visibility, to raise capital, to network with major corporate entities and to access world-class mentorship benefits with an aim towards pioneering technological breakthroughs that address our most extreme global challenges.
With over 45 corporate partners, including Samsung, Ford, NXP and Zoom, amongst others, XTC has significantly expanded its umbrella since last year. Executive Managing Director, Victoria Slivkoff, says, “Extreme Tech Challenge is a launching pad for the moonshot ideas that can power a more sustainable, equitable, healthy, inclusive and prosperous world. The strengths of the XTC community come from the commitment and support of our partners, stakeholders and volunteers. Through our collective efforts XTC is truly emerging as the world’s number one ecosystem for purpose driven innovation and technology.”
In addition to the one global winner, and the seven category winners, this year’s competition introduces four special award recognitions: the COVID-19 Innovation Award, the Female Founders Award, the Ethical AI Award and the Positive Home Award. The 2021 Global Finals Event on July 22nd, 2021 is co-hosted by TechCrunch, which will bring much broader exposure to contestants by tapping into TechCrunch’s readership of over 16 million worldwide.
Applications are still open for the 2021 XTC competition, but not for long! April 25 is the final day startups can apply to the general competition and have the chance to be included in the 2021 Global Finals presented by TechCrunch. Learn more and apply here.