Remitly Global, Inc. (RELY) September 2026 Conference Transcript

All right. We are going to get started at the next session. We are very pleased here to have both Sebastian Gunningham and Vikas Mehta from Remitly here, CEO and CFO respectively. Thanks for joining us. Always a pleasure to have Remitly at the conference. And congrats on the conference. Thank you. It's not over yet. Very impressive. All right. Sebastian, thanks for being here. You've been in the seat for a little over six months. You came into a business that was already compounding at a very high rate. What have you learned in the first six months, and what have you changed, and where do you think you can have the most impact from here?

Yeah, well, first I'd say that when you join a business and you start to peel the onion, one or two things can happen. The more you peel, the worse, the less you like, Well, the more you peel, the more you like. And I'd say that I had the luxury of joining a very solid company, been put together over many years. The moats are real around the network, the infrastructure, the compliance. You know, customers love the products. There was a lot of boxes that checked right, and I think the company is really a fantastic company. I'd say that my focus since joining has been, number one is diversifying the revenue stream. We have a very good core business, but we've built this amazing network with hundreds of licenses around the world. We can distribute to almost 5 billion bank accounts, users in bank accounts, about a billion wallet users. We have about 500,000 cash pickup points around the world. So diversifying the revenue on the shoulders of that network means we are focusing on higher-value senders. We're focusing on remitting business. You saw an announcement this morning. We're now in the platform business also, which means we're using this fantastic infrastructure that we've built to offer it to companies who want to pay people cross-border. Etsy has millions of sellers. We're now plugged into the Etsy ecosystem. We have a pipeline of other companies that are interested. And finally, we've launched a cards business where we offer our customers a whole bunch of benefits in their cross-border lives for the cards. So I'd say objective number one has been to start a very aggressive diversification revenue. So far, so good. We're seeing some really good signs. Number two is I think I've AI'd the company, and this AI journey has many, many angles to it. I'm AI-ing the cost side. We've seen a lot of product launches since I joined. The speed at which we're launching features, we launched, you can now email money. You can send money across the world almost as easily as sending an email. We call it send with link. We've launched a bunch of features for business. So on the revenue side, AI has allowed us to reinvent the software factory, generating many more features, many more features improve the product, and improved product generates revenue, and hopefully we'll see growth into the future. On the cost side, like every other company, seeing a lot of efficiencies, what five people could do, now two people can do, and on down the line. So you're seeing that in our bottom lines, in our expansion, in our margin expansion. And then finally, number one, as I said, number one is diversification. Number two is the acceleration of AI across the whole company. And number three is continuing to expand this mode that we've built with this distribution network around the world. We're launching new corridors, new cent countries, new licenses, we just got UAE, I was in Japan a month ago, we got that license, so we continue to expand around the world as we move money across borders, so super, you know, fantastic first six months, I like the business, I think the market is big, we've earned the right to win, and so we're going to keep at this speed.

Great. And a lot to cover there. I'll try to keep it high level for one more before diving in. So you continue to gain share at, you know, 20% plus growth, while some of the legacy cash-oriented players in the industry, you know, clearly seeing lower levels of growth, struggling with share. how would you frame where we are in this offline to digital conversion cycle in the remittance space and how much runway is left in that shift before it's simply a market growth story rather than a share shift story?

Yeah, well, if we'd met three years ago, we'd already see the data points. Clearly, the shift from cash to digital is happening. Here we are today. Let's say the world is 50-50. It's not hard to predict that if we were sitting here three years from now, that trend is going to continue. Different countries are moving at different speeds. Remember, for us, the cash, we do not deal with cash in the send countries. We only deal with banked customers. But we send the receiving market receives in cash. So when you ask the impact to us, it's that transition. So in the CENT countries, a lot of customers are transitioning to digital, and we get the benefit of that, a little bit of some tailwinds from these tax benefits. But I think just, you know, generally customers are just finding it easier to deal with cash and the economics are better. And on the receiving side, it's all over the map. I mean, there are some countries that are going all digital. You know, Brazil's a very digital market for us. Mexico's probably 50-50, and it varies across the world. So, you know, we're on the right side of that trend. And by being on the right side means you've got all your energy in producing great digital experiences. You've got all your unit economics figured out for digital-only experiences. You've got all your compliance. You've got all your regulatory. You've got all your licenses. So, you know, we were born digital and we're as digital as ever now, and I think we're going to continue to benefit from that trend.

Maybe just before we go any further, I'll get kind of the obligatory macro question out of the way. What are you seeing in terms of activity levels in your customer base? And specifically, Vikas, I think you flagged some softer, higher-value send volumes in June tied to some of the recent actions by the Indian government. Maybe just unpack what's happening there and what the range of outcomes could be.

First of all, as you saw, our first half annual results have been outstanding. And, you know, as a part of that, our high-value center story is the one that actually helped us drive strong growth as one of the factors. And what we saw in the second quarter was that, you know, with the Indian government using, you know, different programs to, you know, manage their foreign exchange volatility, they came up with schemes which created funds being moved in a different way than the usual cross-border remittance or payments. And that scheme ended early. It was supposed to end end of September, but has ended end of August, which means that going forward will not see impact from that, But it will have similar to what we saw in Q2, a little bit of a headwind in the Q3 time frame. But, you know, that's call it the detail part of it. If you zoom out from what we can control, we have made big headways with regards to high-value sender. The first thing is, as you have seen us talk about, we have continued to raise the limits of what people can send. You know, we started with 25,000, 50, 100. Now, more recently, in the last quarter, we talked about transactions, which are not for $300,000. Beyond that, we talked about one customer who sent more than a million dollars, and this was a U.S.-India transaction as well. So we are seeing great use cases. You know, from additional aspects, we are putting more concierge-type services for these high-value services. high-value senders, so that the experience for them is a VIP experience. Outside of that, every aspect of that transaction, we are refining it and making sure that these can go through quickly. We are giving an additional feature we added was a wire transfer facility that has just eased things for the senders as well. So overall, very excited about what we have for the high-value sender. It's a key growth accelerator for us in the coming years. As we've said, we're just scratching the surface. We have not really targeted marketing in a big way in those use cases. And as we do that, we'll continue to drive strong momentum in that space.

Yeah, all very clear. And just on the point in India, did the guidance assume three months of headwinds, and it sounds like it's going to be two? Correct. Okay, got it. Sebastian, just coming back to the topic of AI, You framed AI around three benefits, kind of speed, trust, and cost. I think cost has been the most visible so far. You know, you've seen pretty significant outperformance on the OPEC side. How would you frame the opportunity for AI to accelerate momentum in either revenue growth or profitability from here?

Yeah, I think that, you know, we're all – this is a journey that we're all on. I'm sure you guys are on it also. when I'd say that the initial killer app is in the software factory, which is this amazing productivity that you can gain in building products and engineering. I think all companies are at a different stage, but I will tell you internally, I don't think the week goes by without a wow moment with our engineering teams or with our product building teams. And it looks like the models are going to continue to get better and better, So I anticipate we have many more wow moments ahead. So that's obviously a big tailwind in productivity and cost. The revenue side, you know, we all have to prove the revenue piece of this. I think every CEO right now is trying to say, okay, I got the tailwinds of cost. What do I see on the revenue side? For us, as I see it right now, the speed at which we're launching these features, you see it in the, especially features that customers love. I mean, there's no benefit in launching features that customers love, but in the adoption of the features that we're launching, you know, those generate more engagement, they generate more revenue, and so we, you know, our growth, I can't attribute a specific piece of our growth to AI, but I'm seeing it every day. And I assume that over the next few years, we're going to get very good at measuring the cost of AI and the growth impact of AI. But for us, it seems quite impactful for the business right now. You know, we launched an entire card business in less than 60 days. And, you know, we have 10 million customers. If you picture that, you know, 10 million customers with a card that they can use to spend, that they can use for liquidity, that they can use for loyalty, that they can use for store money. You know, that's two or three times the size of Remitly right there just with cards. and we were able to do that very fast. That's the kind of impact that AI can have. And we have, on that card business alone, we've got a very long list of great features that are going to be coming to market every week here.

Related question, Vukas, is one that we get a lot post-print. You raised the full-year EBITDA guide to roughly 20% margins, or 21% margins, up more than 400 basis points year over year. you're already tracking well ahead of the pace implied by the long-term targets laid out at Investor Day. So how are you thinking about the margin framework from here given the momentum that we've seen over the last year?

I'd say that the way we look at the business is more broader than that. We think about the growth, the profitability, and the investment. And we don't look at a quarterly view. We look at annual and medium-term and long-term. And as we think about that, we did see a lot of benefit from a margin perspective, especially as we were very disciplined on some of the projects. And even all the projects that Sebastian mentioned, whether it was rolling out the card or doing partnerships on Remitry business or expanding those, we have been very disciplined through that. AI was also a factor which has continued to help us. As we look forward, we'll continue to maintain that balanced growth equation or balanced equation with growth, profitability, and investment. As you know, second half of the year is a very important time to set the foundation for next year. So clearly, marketing is an area where we'll be very, very focused and we'll be looking at making the right programs and campaigns that set us up well for the next year. In addition to that, as you know, we saw some really positive transaction loss numbers in the first half, and while we are, you know, very excited and optimistic, you know, the transaction loss is an area which is volatile, and as we know, you know, keeping that 11 basis point average that we have given as a guide would be the right thing. So all in all, I feel that the story is really great for us where we have been able to drive growth along with expanded margins while we invest into the new businesses. While being disciplined, we also know that there's no shortage of growth opportunities and we want to invest and we will invest.

Makes sense. All right, let's talk about the core SEND business, which is still the vast majority of the revenues. When you look at the core business specifically, stripping out the growth accelerators, What are the biggest drivers of durable growth from here, and how do you think about the balance between corridor expansion and share gains within the existing corridors?

Yeah, I think, first of all, you've got to be priced right. This is a customer that likes a good service at a good price, and so I'd say that the first focus to make sure we're very efficient in the service we provide and how we price them. And by the service, I mean the speed, the cost, and the broadness of the network that we offer. So that are the core businesses. And, you know, that won't change. We'll be focused on that forever. The second piece that's driving the growth is, you know, we have a very good app. The stickiness of it, I don't like the word stickiness, but customers come back to us a lot, whatever you want to call it, the long-term value or the stickiness of the customer or the repeatability, our numbers are very, very strong. And we know when we get a customer, we can keep it. We've built the trust. We've built the network. We've built the support. And so that's another key component of the core business. And that's, you know, you see it in our market share numbers. You know, we're very personalized. We've got all these different, we treat the Mexican corridor. We treat the China corridor. We took the Japanese corridor, all very uniquely for the needs of that customer. And then the final one, which is a more obvious answer, is we just have to keep expanding the markets we serve. We have 5,000 corridors. We think we're halfway through the potential 10,000 corridors in the world. We deal with hundreds of currencies. But, you know, we launched Brazil as a same country. We launched Japan as a same country. We continue to expand to places in the world where you can send money. So those are the three things that keep fueling the core business. So far, it looks really healthy. We continue to gain share. We continue to do our customer growth. We crossed 10 million active customers last quarter. That growth seems to be solid. Customers are finding us. They're staying with us, and they're using us to send more money.

Great. That sounds like a lot of momentum. Maybe going over to the Remitly Global card, you launched this a few weeks ago. It looks like a pretty significant step. It's a debit card, a wallet, stable coin balances, lines of credit, direct deposit, all into one product, like a really significant of the core product, which you just went through. Could you walk through what this product does for the customer, what types of demand that you're responding to with that product, and then importantly, how do you expect it to augment the growth profile of the course and business?

Yeah, well, it's early days. The signals right now are great. As you said, I like the way you put it. It is a – it's going to be the best card on the planet for our customer who lives cross-border. And we're very focused on the needs of that customer, how the card can help them, whether it be, as you say, with liquidity, short-term liquidity loans, with better rates when they're sending money, better speed. They can use it to spend. They can use it as a USDC card. So we have a, and as I said, we have a long list of things to do it, to inject into the card. Early days in the rollout, it's only U.S. We have all the countries in the world to get to. We're super excited about it. I think it's a construct our customers understand. People know that you can accumulate value with cards, know how to use them. we believe we can start to build deposits into those cards which we're already seeing so there's just a lot of wins and the way to the end of your question this keeps the customer more engaged the unit economics of the card are as good or better as the unit economics of the remittance business so you can picture all kinds of scenarios where the card helps the remittance business The remittance business helps the card, and we think that flywheel can be very beneficial to us. So only upside from here. So far, so good. I've been using the card for a month.

It's fantastic.

And I think most customers will get to the – we have a free version. We've got a membership. We have a lot of ideas here. But, by the way, you should get a card. I'll send you a note and have you start using the remittance card.

I can find someone to send money to. Okay. High value senders. I think this is one of the most concrete drivers of growth among the growth accelerators. It's the one where you're farther along. You've seen a lot of initial success. We talked a little bit about some of the near-term dynamics a second ago with the cost. What is your strategy around sustaining the growth in that product longer term? And how do you think about scaling the marketing engine around that product?

Yeah, I can share a few thoughts, Sebastian, feel free to add. Overall, the high-value sender business is in its very early innings. We have really not gone in a more deliberate way thus far. And as we are now maturing our product with increased send limits, our next step will be to create more focused marketing campaigns as well as going after specific use cases. The other aspect is also geographic. We have seen a lot of our high-value centers are naturally in the domain where the incomes are higher, and this is where it has created some concentration of corridors. Our next step there would be creating more diversification, similar to what we did in core over the last 15 years. So as we drive that diversification, the revenue will be more, I'd say, stable and durable, along with the growth trajectory. Finally, I'd say that internally, we have created more focused teams on these use cases, which has created a dedicated focus on reducing the friction for these customers. So to your point, HVS, as we call it, is farthest along across the growth accelerators. Again, we see huge opportunity in this space, especially as we add more marketing muscle to it.

Yeah, I think when you create, when you spend 10 years creating this network to move a dollar in one second anywhere in the world, it turns out that you can move a dollar or you can move a trillion dollars. It doesn't really, once you've built the infrastructure. And so for us, this is just expanding our market, TAM, by going by mostly customers finding us so far. We'll get to the point where we start to market to customers. But right now, we're just getting this inbound of people that are just sending a lot more money using this awesome network that we've built. So it's a tailwind for the business. We think it's a big market. and it's, you know, the quality of our network has just opened up this new TAM for us.

All right, let's maybe move to the next growth accelerator, which is Remitly Business. How has your level of confidence in this growth accelerator evolved and, you know, what evidence are you seeing that, you know, you might be able to devote greater resources to this? I'm sure the Etsy announcement will maybe play into that.

Yeah, well, the business is, I mean, I look at the numbers every day. it's really hitting its stride you have to get the product there's so many use cases for small businesses whether they're paying freelancers whether people are requesting to be paid in different parts of the world to businesses in the UK or the US we have this platform business that we've just launched with Etsy so there's multiple sides to the business to a business business. Again, standing on the shoulders of this broad cross-border network that we built. And we're out there. Again, early days, very strong signals. We're seeing week-on-week growth. I look at the numbers. And so far, so good. We have a lot of features that we continue to. This is also, it has a component that's a bit of a partnership business. So these big e-commerce networks or gig-type companies that have all these employees that are moving money around the world. Remittly Business is not only a consumer for small proprietors or small businesses, it also ends up being a partnership-type business. So we're building out all the pieces and it seems like a very large market, larger than the consumer market. So we believe we're going to get our fair share of that market and I think it's going to have a meaningful impact on our revenue, too.

And, Bill, one of the best parts about partnerships like this is that the business model is really good. And, you know, all of a sudden we get access to new customers and there's no cash, right? There's no customer acquisition cost. That's a big, you know, big game changer for us. Secondly, it is one-to-many. And, you know, we work very hard to create a partnership like this and then all of a sudden, step changes in the equation. So from a business model perspective also, partnerships like this are excellent to the business.

I mean, I think maybe we can double-click a little bit on the Etsy partnership. It's a really interesting announcement. Can you talk about who do you view as the customer in this relationship? Is it the marketplace or is it the end customer or the small business selling on that marketplace? And, you know, there's other competitors in this market. What's Remitly's right to compete in that market versus some of the incumbents?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, both the marketplace, Etsy is a customer, of course, as is the merchant who's using Remitly to move money or get paid around the world. The, you know, the completeness of our network, there are a few competitors. I think that we have as good a network as anybody. I think we have an excellent service for these merchants. So I think it's one of many models that we can have in business. I think millions of sellers now have access to move money remotely, and I think we're going to win our fair share of this market.

Finally, on the receiver strategy, I know this one's a little bit more nascent, more experimental. Scaling two-sided networks and payments is kind of notoriously difficult. But could you help us dream the dream on what success would look like here three to five years out if it plays out?

Success would look like we have 10 million customers that send money, send $100 billion to 30 million or so customers in 170 countries. That's the picture of Remitly. And I think success would look like if all those customers had a remitly account on both sides. Once that happens, and then, you know, if you're receiving money in Argentina and you have a remitly account, you can still distribute that money to the network that we've put in place, whether you want cash or you want to go to bank account. Once all those pairs are put in place with a Remitly account, we have a lot of optionality on speed, on price, on services, on extra offerings. I'm not going to disclose, but there was one of our partners in one country said, you know, we receive a lot of money from Remitly. We'd like you to offer our customers a pre-approved loan on the send side. So by the time the receiver gets the money in this country through this bank, the bank had pre-approved the loan. Why? Because we know the sender. They knew the receiver. So once you establish those pairs, there's a lot of optionality that you have in the business, and that's how we're thinking about it. I think there's a lot of positives to it for both the customer, for Remitly, for our network, And as you said, early days, really nice signals.

All right. The cost, I want to tap you in here on pricing and the philosophy around pricing. Take rate has drifted lower on a reported basis over time. I think you've said that's almost entirely due to mix, high-value center scaling, business customers, digital payout mix. So two parts. How should investors think about the underlying pricing trends, kind of net of these mix dynamics? and second, how do you expect headline take rate and transaction margins to trend over time?

I'd say we think slightly differently compared to how you framed the question and the way we think about it is in two aspects. One is what does it mean for the customer and second is how do we think internally about the financials. From the customer, we think about the value that is delivered to the customer which is across, you know, the trust experience as well as providing a fair as well as transparent pricing. And as we think about that, you know, we rigorously manage all these different, you know, measures to make sure that the customer gets a great experience and overall value. As far as the second point with regards to take rate, which is, again, we don't talk about take rate internally as much. We think about free cash flow and more at a customer level gross margin dollars. And the goal is to expand gross margin dollars and grow that on a continuous basis. If you go further into that, I would say that the important thing is if we can do the right things with regards to the value to the customer, we can drive gross margin dollar growth, especially if we are driving continuous scale benefits across the partner ecosystem with transaction expense, with transaction loss, we touched upon that earlier, as well as the overall customer support. So, you know, overall, it's a broader equation for us with regards to value, as well as thinking about gross margin dollars.

Makes sense. Sebastian, you picked up several regulatory licenses recently. Recently, UAE, UK, you mentioned Japan at the top of the conversation. Can you talk about the priorities from a regulatory and licensing perspective and maybe call out where you see the biggest opportunities where licenses are the big unlock?

Yeah, well, on the regulatory side, the opportunity is you have to be perfect, basically. This is, you know, moving money around the world is highly regulated and remotely from day one was built from the bottom up, even the tech, to make sure that this is, that we are world class. I don't, you know, you don't get, you don't get to participate in this business if you're not world class in this area. We've had a very good playbook of getting licenses, managing them. We have 100 plus licenses around the world. we have a long list to still keep going we've got plans for two or three years these licenses take a long time the application process is complex so it's a differentiator for us we're very good at it we keep working at it I think once you get the license then you've got to get the product then you've got to start your marketing engine then you've got to get the customers you've got to build the trust and market by market is different You know, if you look at UAE, the major corridors are India, Bangladesh, Pakistan. You've got to get that right. You've got to get how the customers pay into the process right. You know, some of these economies are cash first, so you've got to go to places where they're depositing their cash and then onboard it onto Remitly. So, you know, we know how to do this. We continue to expand it. I think it's going to be part of our growth story. and it is a real differentiator for anybody wanting to move money across borders.

We're almost out of time, but maybe one final question here on capital allocation. You generated $130 million of free cash flow in the quarter. You stepped up buybacks meaningfully. The share count actually declined sequentially in Q1 this year for the first time. How are you thinking about capital allocation framework holistically, including thoughts on the potential to see more M&A over time?

Yeah, I can start. I'd say that, you know, again, very balanced capital allocation approach. The first most important use of cash for us is our organic growth. You know, we talked about it a lot during the last 30 minutes, but no shortage of growth opportunities in the core continue to expand markets. Beyond that, growth accelerators are all, you know, running on full cylinder. Second, best use of cash is buyback. Again, we'll be very opportunistic and take the benefit of any dislocation in pricing. Those would be the two. There's a very high bar for inorganic. At the same time, we are always going to be looking around to find the best opportunities, but the bar is very high.

That makes sense. The last couple of seconds here, Sebastian and Makass. Any final closing remarks?

No. Thank you for the invitation. we're very optimistic and I think we have a real nice growth opportunity in the years ahead it's a very large time we have a lot of good ideas and I'm super optimistic about the trajectory that we're on.

That's great. Well we can leave it there. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much.