LemFi, a financial services platform for immigrant communities, has raised $53 million in a Series B funding round led by Highland Capital.
Starting with payments and remittances, LemFi enables users to open multi-currency accounts and send and receive money globally.
The firm was founded in 2021 by Ridwan Olalere (CEO) and Rian Cochran (CFO), who met whilst working at fintech unicorn OPay, incubated by Norwegian browser provider Opera.
With over one million customers in diaspora communities across Europe and North America, the pair have now set their sights on building a full-stack financial services platform.
Ridwan Olalere, co-founder and CEO of LemFi, says: “When we started building LemFi, we were told remittance had already been solved. But for too many people, it is still too slow, cumbersome and expensive with customers telling us that in some instances it was cheaper to send money from the US via Canada than directly to their families back home. By targeting the communities most in need, we’ve built LemFi into the go-to remittance service for one million people, supporting them in building wealth across 20 countries. We’re not stopping there: this new funding will support us in our mission to build the financial services hub for immigrants globally from adding new features to expanding to new countries."
LemFi recently crossed $1 billion in monthly transaction volume and the new funding round brings total capital raised to $85 million to date.