Remitly Global Inc

Overview

Remitly, founded in 2011, is a trusted provider of digital financial services that transcend borders. With a global footprint spanning more than 170 countries, Remitly’s digitally native, cross-border payments app delights customers with a fast, reliable, and transparent money movement experience.

The inspiration behind Remitly came when Matt, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, was living and working in Kenya. Living abroad, he experienced firsthand how painful it could be to send money across borders, and witnessed how far that money could go once it made it home. In Matt’s own words, remittances are all about trust. The long-term, trusted relationships we foster with our customers have enabled us to expand our core cross-border remittance product to over 5,100 corridors worldwide. We are working to expand our suite of products and features to further our vision and transform the lives of our 7.8 million quarterly active users and their families and friends.

Our brand promise is to bring “peace of mind” into everything we do. We focus on bringing trust, reliability, and a fair and transparent price to cross-border remittances and complementary financial services.

Remitly’s culture is key to our success, and our cultural values act as a blueprint for how we accomplish everything we do. We regularly refresh our values to align with our strategy. The one constant, and single most important, of these values iscustomer centricity, which serves as our north star in all that we do. To us, customer centricity means “we are here to listen to, learn from, and serve our customers.”

Our other core values fall broadly into three categories:

•Our purpose: Aim for the stars, be an owner, and earn trust through integrity;

•Building relationships: Lead authentically, be global, hire and grow exceptional people, be constructively direct, be a compassionate partner, and be joyful; and

•Taking action: Have a bias for action, be data-driven, sweat the details, deliver on promises, overcome fear, and continuously improve.

These values influence our actions every day. Living up to our values builds customer trust, inspires employee engagement, and makes “Promises Delivered” our fundamental ethos.

2024 Key Performance Metrics

Substantially all of our revenue today is generated through our remittance business, where we earn revenue from transaction fees charged to customers and foreign exchange spreads applied to the amount the customer is sending.

In addition to our financial results, we regularly review key performance metrics to evaluate our performance, identify trends affecting our business, prepare financial projections, and make strategic decisions. We believe that these key performance metrics provide meaningful supplemental information for management and investors in assessing our historical and future operating performance. The calculation of these key performance metrics discussed below may differ from other similarly titled metrics used by other companies, analysts, or investors. The key performance metrics that we use to measure the performance of our business are defined as follows:

•“Active customers”is defined as the number of distinct customers that have successfully completed at least one transaction using Remitly during a given period. We identify customers through unique account numbers.

•“Send volume” is defined as the sum of the amount that customers send, measured in U.S. dollars, related to transactions completed during a given period. This amount is net of cancellations, does not include transaction fees from customers, and does not include any credits, offers, or bonuses applied to the transaction by us.

We measure active customers on a quarterly basis and as a result this metric is only presented on a quarterly basis herein.

Our 2024 key performance metrics included the following results:

•Active customers for the fourth quarter of 2024 increased to 7.8 million, from 5.9 million, up 32% year over year.

•Send volume for the year ended December 31, 2024 increased to $54.6 billion, from $39.5 billion, up 38% year over year.

The charts below present the respective key performance metrics for the past five fiscal years (active customer figures below represent active customers during the fourth quarter of the respective year):

Our Services

We provide a digital cross-border remittance product that is accessible via our mobile app or the web. Our customers are able to set up an account and start sending money to international recipients generally within minutes. Recipients can receive funds in multiple ways using our diversified, high quality global disbursement network. Our customers can also track the status of their transactions as they are processed. Today, our customers predominantly engage with us via their mobile phones, either using our app or website, shifting what traditionally required waiting in line to speak with an agent to hand held devices. Providing our customers with a convenient, easy, and safe mobile experience underpins our approach to product development, marketing, and customer success.

Our remittance revenue is earned from transaction fees charged to customers who are sending remittances and the foreign exchange spreads between the foreign exchange rate offered to customers and the foreign exchange rate on our currency purchases.

While our journey began in digital cross-border remittances, we continue to evolve and invest in our technology to be able to deepen relationships with our customers and attract new customers by adding relevant services and features.

Substantially all of our revenue is currently generated from digital cross-border remittances.

Strategy

We operate in a large and fragmented cross-border payments market that provides financial products and services to approximately 1.0 billion customers around the world. Based on recent estimates from FXC Intelligence, the consumer to consumer cross-border payments market is approximately $2.0 trillion and is expected to reach $3.1 trillion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of approximately 6%. As of December 31, 2024, we had captured approximately 3% of this market. Our strategy is to build on our trusted brand and technology by offering products and services in the cross-border payments market. We also believe that the global scale and breadth of our global money movement network that we have built over many years provides additional opportunities to provide value to personal customers and businesses across the cross-border payments landscape. According to FXC Intelligence, the market for consumer to business cross-border payments is approximately $4.5 trillion, business to consumer cross-border payments is approximately $1.9 trillion, and small to medium business cross-border payments for goods and services is approximately $13.8 trillion.

Our approach to achieving our strategy has been rooted from Day 1 incustomer centricity, which means deeply understanding our customers’ unique and local needs to provide them with a differentiated experience in cross-border payments. Strategically, managing our business from this perspective has been key to our success since the very beginning and forms the framework for the remainder of our strategy, which includes the following focus areas:

•Deliver a fast, reliable and seamless end-to-end transaction experience that is tailored and localized to meet the needs of our global customer base. Delivering cross-border financial services in a trusted and reliable way to many customer geographies is incredibly complex. We are focused on delivering a fast, reliable, and seamless experience to customers that builds trust and drives repeat engagement with our services. Examples of complexity in cross-border financial services that we are constantly innovating in include localization across over 170 countries, reducing friction for customers across different payment methods and currencies, fraud and compliance systems that prevent bad actors while at the same time maintaining a great overall customer experience, sophisticated treasury and foreign exchange management, and delivering funds reliably and speedily to billions of bank accounts and mobile wallets and thousands of cash pick-up options across the globe. All of this requires a digital-first approach and importantly, a critical focus on reducing unnecessary friction across all stages of the remittance journey which Remitly is particularly qualified to deliver.

•Hyper localized marketing at attractive unit economics. We plan on continuing to invest in delivering a superior, trusted cross-border payment experience for our customers, creating loyalty and a long-term relationship with our customers while also acquiring new customers at highly attractive unit economics. We have been able to drive efficiencies in new customer acquisition by focusing on elasticity testing, scaling search engine optimization, developing high-quality content assisted by artificial intelligence tools, optimizing channel mix, deploying localized marketing campaigns, and by increasing word of mouth and referrals driven by our product enhancements. As we scale our customer base, we expect to benefit from increased leverage on our variable transaction costs which allows us to continue to invest in driving new customers to our services at attractive unit economics.

•Unlock incremental customers, corridor types, and geographies. We see an opportunity to generate value by expanding our cross-border financial services more broadly to additional customers and use cases around the world. While our global network spans over 5,100 corridors, we have plans to increase our reach to thousands of additional corridors. Although our customer base today is primarily immigrants that regularly send money home to family and friends in developing countries, we believe we can serve additional customers that have cross-border financial needs. We expect to deploy a data-driven approach to optimize the value we deliver to our customers, product features, marketing strategies, and customer economics as we expand and grow to new geographies and customers. Additionally, we expect to use our localization expertise and our technology to grow the number of disbursement, payment, and other partners in our global network and increase the quality and number of direct integrations with such partners. We will also continue to establish new disbursement partnerships and add new payment methods to enhance our cross-border payment remittance experience for current and potential customers in our existing corridors.

•Deepening our customer relationships, including adjacent and novel use cases. We believe there are enormous opportunities to create a more inclusive financial system that caters to customers that have cross-border financial needs. In connection with these opportunities, we are using the trust and insights we have with our customers to develop additional services and features that are highly relevant for our customers. We believe these investments will deepen and expand our relationship with our customers, creating a unique and virtuous cycle that leads to increased customer value, long-term customer engagement, and a competitive advantage for Remitly.

What Sets Us Apart

Our brand promise is to bring “peace of mind” into everything we do. We focus on bringing trust, reliability, and a fair and transparent price to cross-border financial services.

To deliver on our brand promise, we have a differentiated approach that aligns with the specific needs and interests of our customers who are sending money across borders and solves the problems they often face. There are four core elements to our differentiated approach:

•Mobile First. Our mobile app for cross-border remittances provides an easy-to-use, end-to-end process with a simple and reliable user experience that delivers peace of mind. In just a few minutes, customers are able to set up and send money for the first time with Remitly, and repeat transactions are easier with just a few taps. Our users can also track the status of their transactions as they are processed, and we provide a reliability promise to customers which is underpinned by our sophisticated risk models, high quality network, and empathetic customer service. This mobile-first experience enables us to engage beyond the initial transaction, generating strong repeat usage and high customer loyalty. Our services are highly non-discretionary for many of our customers which results in high revenue visibility throughout economic cycles. As of December 31, 2024, our Remitly app had a 4.9 iOS App Store rating with approximately 3.2 million reviewers and a 4.8 Android Google Play rating with over 950,000 reviewers. App rating is based on all countries or regions and the rating may vary based on user location and device type.

•Global Presence and High Quality Money Movement Network. Our global network of funding and disbursement partnerships enables us to complete money transfers efficiently in over 5,100 corridors without the need to deploy local operations in each country. We are able to do this while complying with global and local licensing and regulatory requirements. A corridor represents the pairing of a send country, from which a customer can send a remittance, with a specific receive country to which such remittance can be sent. As a result of the quality of our network and the foundational investments we have made, in general, every new send country we add results in a significant number of new corridors, as we are able to quickly connect send countries with receive countries, allowing us to continue to scale rapidly. Our significant global presence and direct integration strategy allows us to negotiate favorable terms with both funding and disbursement partners while providing a great end-to-end customer experience including rapid and reliable transfers.

We provide broad and high quality disbursement options to our customers allowing them to choose the method that is most convenient for their family and friends to receive funds. We have partner relationships with global banks, aggregators, and leading payment providers to give our customers an array of payment (or pay-in) options, including with a bank account, card-based payments, and alternative payment methods.

Our disbursement network enables us to send (or pay-out) funds to over 5.0 billion bank accounts and mobile wallets and approximately 470,000 cash pick-up options. We focus on creating financial inclusion by providing payout optionality and access for recipients who do not always have convenient access to traditional banking. We believe our focus on financial inclusion creates peace of mind for our customers and their families while attracting and retaining loyal customers.

•Highly Attractive Unit Economics. Our data driven approach to optimizing customer lifetime value combined with a localized and scalable marketing solution allows us to acquire new customers at highly attractive unit economics. As we continue to improve customer lifetime value through product enhancements and improvements to variable operating costs, we can optimize marketing spend to drive both growth and efficiency with a focus on maintaining strong unit economics. We believe our expertise in localizing our marketing, products, and customer support at scale is a key differentiator and enables us to provide customers with a personalized experience that drives peace of mind while also delivering high returns on marketing and product investments.

•Superior Technology. We believe that our differentiated approach to building our technology infrastructure enables a great customer experience and allows us to meet customer demands in a more flexible way. We have been able to reach more customers, more regions, and more use cases while continuing to get better at our reliability, speed, and performance due to our investments and approach to our technology. This enables not only our ability to scale, but also accelerates innovation on behalf of our customers - whether that is doing simple things well or about enabling new use cases like seafarers or micro businesses. Because our customers initiate transfers digitally, we capture a body of transaction-related data that provides insight into customer behavior and customer experience. This data and our analytics inform our marketing investments and product development prioritization. In addition, we use data and our proprietary models to improve our compliance systems and manage pricing, treasury, fraud risk, and customer support. Finally, our proactive investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning have continued to drive improvement in the areas of fraud and risk, pricing, customer support, and marketing.

Our Global Network

Our global network of funding and disbursement partners is at the core of our business. Over the last decade, we have strategically expanded and improved the quality of our network in existing corridors to provide our customers with increasing disbursement options and in new corridors as part of our expansion strategy. A key focus of our global network strategy is continuing to expand the number of direct integrations with local partners. These direct integrations allow for a better customer experience and lower costs and are a significant competitive advantage. Our partners, including those that are among the most trusted and recognized brands around the world, create a broad and effective payment acceptance (pay-in) and payment delivery (pay-out) ecosystem for our customers:

•Payment acceptance. We have relationships with top tier banks and leading global payment processors and networks. These relationships provide our customers an array of payment (or pay-in) options to fund remittances with a bank account, card-based payments, and alternative payment methods.

We can accept and settle transfers from hundreds of millions of consumer bank accounts, payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards. As a digital service, we typically do not have sending agents who accept cash. We, in turn, do not incur costs or commissions associated with physical agent-based sending and funding.

•Payment disbursement. We provide broad access to disbursement options for our customers including cash and digital disbursement options. Our broad disbursement network provides peace of mind and allows customers to choose whatever method works best for their family and friends to receive funds. We have access to many disbursement partners across the globe including major banks, aggregators, cash pick-up, and mobile wallet partners. These relationships provide our customers with choice of disbursement and enable us to send funds within minutes, or even seconds, to over 5.0 billion bank accounts and mobile wallets and approximately 470,000 cash pick-up options (including retail outlets and banks).

We select our disbursement partners based on our recipients’ preferences, quality of service, cost, brand recognition, and co-branding opportunities. Our disbursement partners make us a trusted source of remittances because our customers are typically already familiar with their chosen disbursement partner and recipients feel comfortable receiving money where they regularly bank or shop. In addition, we only select disbursement partners that meet or exceed: (1) our geographic coverage goals in the regions in which they operate; (2) our robust compliance and regulatory requirements; and (3) our specific operating metrics such as credit worthiness and error rates.

As a result of our significant global presence, we are able to establish multi-faceted partnerships. These partnerships enable the ability to source and settle foreign exchange rates locally, accept payments, or deposit customer funds directly to customer accounts. In addition, we have redundancies built into our global network for our various partnerships.

Today, our customers primarily send money from the United States and Canada. Our customers and their recipients are located in over 170 countries around the world; our largest receive countries include India, Mexico, and the Philippines.

Technology

Our Technology

Our purpose-built technology powers localized consumer experiences, enables a robust network of partner integrations, and uses data to optimize business performance, while enabling our ability to expand into complementary new products.

Our technology has broad and complex capabilities and, together with our proprietary data, gives us a distinct advantage in understanding our customers and being able to meet their needs. Given the scale of our business, the local nuances of the regions we serve, and the complexity of digital cross-border payments, investments in our technology have positioned us for efficiency and continued growth. Our technology is comprised of the following:

•Core transaction engine that underpins the entire transaction lifecycle along with a sophisticated pricing engine that enables ongoing price optimization;

•Customer experience interface, across Android, iOS, and Web with corridor-specific user journeys and multilingual self-service or real-time support;

•Disbursement network for partner integrations that supports a diverse set of disbursement methods for our customers and their recipients in over 170 countries;

•Our electronic Know Your Customer (“KYC”), machine learning-based fraud scoring and payment authentication processes that all take place in real-time to give our customers immediate feedback and are in compliance with highly complex and continuously evolving global and local regulations; and

•Marketing technology stack that enables our marketing team to efficiently operate and improve the quality of our customer experiences by supporting our localization strategies and efficiently capturing and analyzing data to ensure maximum long-term return on our marketing investments.

Customer Experience

We strive to make each customer interaction on our digital products intuitive and free of unnecessary friction. New customers can typically initiate a transaction with only a few taps after setting up their account and adding their recipient’s information. We have further streamlined the experience for existing customers completing repeat transactions. In addition, we recognize that customers' needs and preferences vary across corridors and continue to localize the customer journey in select corridors, from language, to product selection, to the specific flow and product options. Finally, when errors or delays do occur, we strive to enable our customers to take control of the issues and resolve directly within our product, whenever possible. For customers who want to contact us, we redesigned the Remitly Help Center and launched a new artificial intelligence powered virtual assistant which can resolve an issue faster than when interacting with associates.

We invest substantial resources and rely on data and insights to understand our customers’ needs in order to continually innovate to deliver even richer features, products, and services. We therefore have significant resources dedicated to technology and development across multiple teams including product, engineering, design, analytics, compliance, marketing, and customer service. These teams are responsible for the envisioning, design, development, and testing of our services. We focus the majority of our investment on developing new functionality, making it accessible and relevant globally, improving the customer experience and optimizing fraud loss rates, and further enhancing the usability, reliability, and performance of our services.

Competition

We have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, competition from a number of companies, including those who are well-established or who may have greater resources, and those who may become meaningful competitors in the future. Our competitors generally fall into the following categories:

•Incumbent providers with a scaled legacy footprint. Traditional providers with large networks of brick-and-mortar locations and agents around the world, that have been slow to adopt digital solutions.

•Traditional banks. Traditional bank networks that offer a wide variety of financial services, including international remittances, but have limited disbursement options and may have burdensome KYC processes that do not cater to immigrants or other global citizens.

•Digital-first cross-border payment providers. Digital-first providers of payments, money transfer, and remittance products that aim to be convenient, transparent, and affordable, with varying corridor-related focuses, such as developed-to-developing or developed-to-developed corridors.

•Emerging players focused on complementary financial products and services. Digital-only banks, wallets, and other emerging digital players typically offer a subset of the financial services offered by traditional banks, and generally place a greater emphasis on convenience and user experience. Similarly, those utilizing blockchain technology and digital or crypto assets often claim benefits of lower cost transactions and higher transfer speeds relative to incumbent money-movement providers. However, price volatility, various fiat conversion fees, user friction, lack of trust, legal and regulatory uncertainty, and other factors have limited the utility of cryptocurrencies, as well as digital assets broadly, for remittances. Still, Remitly continues to assess blockchain technologies and digital assets (and our users’ preferences towards them) as both an opportunity and competitive risk, particularly as the technology continues to evolve.

•Informal person-to-person channels. Bringing cash home when immigrants travel, trusting others to deliver cash back home, established networks of “IOUs” based on documentation or passwords, and other systems of trust-based cash transfers that evade tracking and regulation. As digital-first cross-border payment providers continue to expand reach and provide higher quality and accessible services, we believe the share of informal person-to-person channels will likely diminish over time, expanding the addressable market for the competitor categories above.

Digital-first companies are increasingly gaining market share from legacy providers and traditional banks. We believe that the principal competitive factors across experience, product, network, and technology include:

•Experience: Digital-first companies, like Remitly, are focusing on the customer experience, by providing a trusted relationship with customers and their families, especially during challenging times, which ranges from family emergencies to natural disasters. Digital-first companies also provide a simple and convenient customer experience, which is specialized to customers by region, which appeals to customers and their families on a hyper-local level.

•Product: Digital-first companies have the ability to focus on the product. With the various pay-in and pay-out options, the speed and certainty of transactions is a competitive advantage. Additionally, these companies are able to provide an adjacent suite of digital-first financial services with fair and transparent product pricing, while providing global and local customer service.

•Network: Digital-first companies leverage their expansive global network, which allows the companies to provide a vast array of easy-to-access disbursement options and the ability to accept alternative payment methods.

•Technology: In a world of being digitally connected, digital-first companies focus on technological differentiation, through service availability, performance, scalability, and reliability. The ability to innovate continues to be a competitive advantage. Additionally, technology allows for efficient fraud, compliance, and regulatory management in the highly regulated industry.

By focusing on the unique needs of our customers, we believe that we have built a differentiated and compelling value proposition, and that we compete favorably on the basis of these factors.

Specifically, we believe that our mobile-first suite of products, our vast global network, our localization expertise at scale, and our data-driven approach create sustainable differentiation against competitors.

Regulatory Environment

Our business is subject to a wide range of federal, state, and foreign laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance across the globe. The majority of these are applicable to us on the basis of the jurisdictions in which we operate and conduct our activities. These include, without limitation, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Economic Area (the “EEA”). We may also be subject to laws, regulations, and guidance on the basis of the jurisdictions in which recipients receive disbursements. These include India, Mexico, and the Philippines as well as other receive countries. These laws and regulations include strict requirements intended to help detect and prevent money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctioned persons and activity, fraud, data misuse, theft and misappropriation, and other illicit activity. In addition, the applicable regulatory framework includes laws, regulations, and guidance regarding money transmission and financial services licensing, operational risk frameworks including outsourcing oversight, consumer protections including disclosures, foreign exchange, safeguarding of customer funds, currency controls, unclaimed property, privacy, data sharing, and cybersecurity. The regulatory requirements applicable to our business in any given jurisdiction are typically extensive, complex, frequently evolving, and increasing in scope, and may impose overlapping and/or conflicting requirements or obligations. For more information, see the section titled “Risk Factors—Legal and Compliance Risks.”

We have developed and implemented a compliance program, including our anti-money laundering (“AML”) and consumer protection programs, composed of policies and procedures designed to comply with applicable regulatory frameworks. We also monitor these areas closely to continue to adapt our business practices and strategies to help us comply with the current and evolving regulatory environment.

Anti-Money Laundering. In the United States, our business is subject to federal AML laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance, which includes the Bank Secrecy Act (as amended, the “BSA”), as well as similar state laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance. The BSA, among other things, requires companies engaged in money transmission to register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury as money services businesses and to develop and maintain risk-based AML programs, report suspicious activity, and collect and maintain information about their customers and certain transaction records. These requirements may also apply to our disbursement partners and, if our partners have relationships with their own disbursement providers, those partners’ disbursement providers (“disbursement sub-partners”). Furthermore, FinCEN has interpreted the BSA to require money services businesses to conduct risk-based monitoring of their counterparties.

Similar AML laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance in the countries where we operate and those where we are licensed apply to our business internationally. These include laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, including obligations to collect and maintain information about our users, recordkeeping, reporting, and due diligence and supervision of our counterparties similar to, and in some cases exceeding, those required under the BSA. We may also be impacted by AML laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance in the other countries in which our disbursement partners and disbursement sub-partners operate.

As a money services business, we maintain a stringent AML compliance program that includes internal policies and controls, designation of AML compliance officers for each of our regulated entities, ongoing employee training and monitoring programs, and annual independent reviews.

Sanctions. Our business must also comply with U.S. economic and trade sanctions programs administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) and with similar sanctions administered by sanctions authorities in other jurisdictions in which we operate or where we are licensed. These laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance prohibit or restrict transactions in, to, or from certain countries, regions, or governments, as well as with certain individuals and entities such as traffickers in illegal goods or services, terrorists, and terrorist organizations. Sanctions are imposed to address acute foreign policy and national security threats and may change rapidly and unpredictably in response to world events or domestic or international political developments.

We have implemented policies, procedures, and internal controls that are designed to comply with these economic and trade sanctions programs. These measures include, without limitation, controls designed to prevent transactions to or from countries or territories that are subject to comprehensive sanctions, screening certain transactions and customer information against OFAC and other international government watch-lists, blocking funds of persons named on OFAC’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons and other persons and entities designated as prohibited persons by U.S. and non-U.S. sanctions authorities, and preparing and submitting blocking and other reports as required by relevant authorities.

Anti-Bribery. We are subject to regulations imposed by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the “FCPA”) in the United States, the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act in Canada (“CFPOA”), the U.K. Bribery Act in the United Kingdom, and similar laws in the other jurisdictions in which we or our disbursement partners or disbursement sub-partners operate, which generally prohibit companies and those acting on their behalf from making improper payments to foreign government officials for the purpose of influencing official action or otherwise gaining an unfair business advantage, such as obtaining or retaining business. We maintain a compliance program designed to comply with applicable anti-bribery laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance.

Money Transmission and Stored Value Licensing or Registration. We are subject to licensing and registration requirements in relation to our money transmission and stored value issuance activities on a state-by-state and federal basis in the United States and in almost every other jurisdiction from which our customers initiate transactions, including, but not limited to, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the EEA.

In the United States, we are registered as a Money Services Business with FinCEN, and we hold licenses to operate as a money transmitter (or its equivalent) in the 48 states where such licenses are required, as well as in the District of Columbia and various U.S. Territories. As a licensed money transmitter, we are subject to, among other requirements, restrictions with respect to the investment of customer funds, reporting requirements, bonding requirements, minimum net worth requirements, customer disclosure requirements, regulatory approval of directors and senior management of the licensed entity, AML and sanctions compliance, third-party risk management requirements, privacy and cybersecurity program requirements, requirements related to unclaimed property and escheatment, and examination by state regulatory agencies. In connection with certain licenses we hold in the United States, there are also different equity holding thresholds that may require a stockholder to obtain regulatory approval prior to exceeding such thresholds.

Outside the United States, we provide services to our customers in a variety of ways. In several jurisdictions, we have obtained licenses or are registered to operate as a money services business, payment service provider, or payment institution, as applicable. In Canada, we are registered with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada as a money services business and are pending registration with the Bank of Canada as a payment service provider. In the United Kingdom, we have obtained a payment institution license from the Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”). In Ireland, we have obtained a payment institution license from the Central Bank of Ireland, and such license permits us to provide certain payment services across the EEA. We also hold licenses in several other jurisdictions and plan to apply for money transmitter licenses or their equivalents in additional jurisdictions. Under these licensing regimes and associated regulations and supervision, we are subject to requirements such as capital and safeguarding rules, consumer protection requirements, privacy and cybersecurity requirements (including those under the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act), outsourcing oversight requirements, requirements related to unclaimed property and escheatment, and periodic regulatory examinations. Additionally, in several foreign jurisdictions, we work with disbursement partners to make funds available to recipients, and such partners may be locally licensed businesses or regulated banks subject to compliance requirements with local laws.

Consumer Disclosure and Consumer Protection. We are subject to laws, regulations, and disclosure requirements relating to consumer protection in the United States and other jurisdictions in which we have operations, where such laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance are enforced by numerous government agencies. In the United States, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “CFPB”) implements, examines compliance with, and enforces federal consumer financial laws governing financial products and services, including the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and its implementing regulation, Regulation E, which includes the Remittance Transfer Rule. The Remittance Transfer Rule requirements include: (1) a disclosure requirement to provide consumers sending funds internationally from the United States with pre-transaction written disclosures and receipts; (2) an obligation to investigate and resolve certain errors, including errors that may be outside our control; and (3) an obligation, upon a customer’s request, to cancel certain transactions that have not been completed. The CFPB has issued guidance regarding consumer fees and disclosures generally. We expect the CFPB to remain focused on remittance companies and their transparency of fees, delivery speed, and exchange rates.

In addition, under the Dodd-Frank Act, it is unlawful for any provider of consumer financial products or services to engage in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practice (“UDAAP violations”). The CFPB has substantial rule-making and enforcement authority to prevent UDAAP violations in connection with any transaction involving a consumer financial product or service. As a larger participant in the industry for international money transfers, we are subject to direct CFPB supervisory authority over our business. This includes the authority to fine and provide consumer restitution for violations and request information and data about our compliance activities. In addition, the CFPB requires that we track and respond to consumer complaints.

Similar laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance in the countries where we operate and those where we are licensed apply to our business outside the United States. These include laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance to provide disclosures, an obligation to investigate and resolve certain errors and complaints, and obligations to cancel certain transactions. In addition, there has been an increase in the level and regulatory scrutiny of consumer protection laws, regulations, and supervisory guidance relating to “treating customers fairly.” These laws apply to our international business (including in the United Kingdom and the EEA). In the United Kingdom, the FCA has issued, supervises, and enforces the Consumer Duty that places an obligation on firms to act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.

Indirect Regulatory Requirements. In addition to the licenses discussed above, we also seek, obtain, and maintain additional licenses to support new products and use cases, and we also are subject to indirect regulatory requirements based on the requirements of our product partners. At the current time, none of the businesses supported by these indirect or new licenses is material to our business.

For an additional discussion on governmental regulations affecting our business, please see “Item 1A. Risk Factors—Financial Risks” and “Item 3. Legal Proceedings” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property and proprietary rights (“IP Rights”) are important to the success of our business. We rely on a combination of copyright, trademark, and trade secret laws in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements, and other contractual protections to obtain, maintain, protect, defend, and enforce our IP Rights, including our proprietary technology, software, know-how, and brand.

As of December 31, 2024, we owned six U.S. registered trademarks, two pending U.S. trademark applications, 122 foreign registered trademarks, and 23 pending foreign trademark applications covering the mark REMITLY, our collapsed Clasped Hand logo, REMITLY (+ Clasped Hand logo), PASSBOOK BY REMITLY, 汇安易 (Hui Mei Yi in Chinese characters), and 睿每易 (Rui Mei Yi in Chinese characters). This includes six foreign registered trademarks for the REWIRE mark and REWIRE logo resulting from the purchase of Rewire (O.S.G.) Research and Development Ltd. (“Rewire”). We are pursuing additional trademark registrations to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective. Additionally, we own common law trademark rights in the above referenced marks as well as the REMITLY PROMISES DELIVERED (+ Clasped Hand logo) mark in the United States and certain other jurisdictions where common law rights are recognized. We also own several domain names, including www.remitly.com.

We monitor our trademarks and service marks through watch services, which notify us when applications for potentially conflicting marks have been filed in the United States and in other jurisdictions. We also enforce our trademarks, service marks, trade names, and domain names against infringing third-party trademarks, service marks, trade names, and domain names when we deem it appropriate by sending cease and desist letters, filing complaints, and commencing administrative and other legal proceedings in the United States and various other jurisdictions.

In addition, we rely upon a substantial amount of IP Rights licensed from third parties, including under certain open source licenses.

We also seek to preserve the integrity and confidentiality of our IP Rights through contractual protections and appropriate technological restrictions, such as physical and electronic security measures. It is also our practice to enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements (or similar agreements) with our employees, consultants, and contractors involved in the development of IP Rights on our behalf. We seek to enter into confidentiality agreements with other third parties to limit access to, and disclosure and use of, our confidential information and proprietary information. We further seek to control the use of our proprietary technology and other IP Rights through provisions in our terms of service.

See the section titled “Risk Factors—Cybersecurity, Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Technology Risks” for a more comprehensive description of risks related to our IP Rights.

Privacy and Cybersecurity

We collect, use, receive, store, transmit, disclose, and otherwise process a wide variety of data and information (including personal information and sensitive personal information) for various purposes in our business. This aspect of our business is subject to numerous laws, rules, regulations, industry standards, and other obligations in the United States and globally. Laws, rules, regulations, industry standards, and proposals thereof in this area have increased significantly in recent years and are expected to continue to do so. Our practices with respect to such data and information are also subject to contractual obligations.

In the United States, various federal, state, and local laws, rules, and regulations apply to the collection, use, receipt, storage, transmission, disclosure, deletion, and other processing of personal information, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (along with its implementing regulations, the “GLBA”), and various state laws, rules, and regulations relating to privacy and cybersecurity. The GLBA, a federal privacy law that applies to financial institutions, like Remitly, restricts certain collection, use, receipt, storage, transmission, disclosure, deletion, and other processing of certain nonpublic or otherwise legally protected information, requires notice to individuals of privacy policies and practices relating to sharing such information, and provides individuals with certain rights to prevent the use and disclosure of such information. The GLBA also imposes requirements for the safeguarding and proper disposal of such information through the issuance of privacy and cybersecurity standards or guidelines.

In addition to numerous privacy and cybersecurity laws, rules, and regulations already in place, U.S. states are increasingly adopting laws imposing comprehensive privacy and cybersecurity obligations, which may be more stringent, broader in scope, or offer greater individual rights with respect to personal information (including sensitive personal information) than foreign, federal, or other state laws, rules, and regulations, and such laws, rules, and regulations may differ from or conflict with each other. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (collectively, the “CCPA”), broadly defines personal information, gives California residents expanded privacy rights and protections, and provides for civil penalties for violations and a private right of action for data breaches. A growing number of other states also have enacted, or are considering enacting, comprehensive privacy and cybersecurity laws that share similarities with the CCPA. There are also ongoing discussions in the U.S. Congress of a new federal privacy and cybersecurity law to which we may become subject if it is enacted. Additionally, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and many state attorneys general are interpreting federal and state consumer protection laws as imposing standards for the online collection, use, receipt, storage, transmission, disclosure, deletion, and other processing of personal information.

Outside the United States, many countries have established their own privacy and cybersecurity legal frameworks with which we, our customers, and/or partners may need to comply. For example, we are subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), which imposes stringent privacy and cybersecurity requirements. The GDPR includes numerous requirements and changes from previously existing European laws, including more robust obligations on data controllers and processors, and more fulsome documentation requirements for data protection compliance programs by covered companies. Failure to comply with the GDPR can result in fines up to the greater of €20 million or 4% of annual global revenues of the violator. The GDPR also imposes strict rules on the transfer of personal data to countries outside of the EEA in respect of which the European Commission or other relevant regulatory body has not issued a so called “adequacy decision,” unless the parties to the transfer have implemented specific safeguards to protect the transferred personal data. As discussed in further detail below, the European Commission has adopted adequacy decisions with respect to transfers of personal data to the United States and the United Kingdom, but such adequacy decisions remain subject to legal uncertainty.

Moreover, following the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the GDPR was transposed into U.K. law as supplemented by the U.K. Data Protection Act 2018 (collectively, the “U.K. GDPR”), which currently imposes the same obligations as the GDPR in most material respects. Failure to comply with the U.K. GDPR can result in fines up to the greater of £17.5 million or 4% of annual global revenues of the violator. However, the U.K. GDPR will not automatically incorporate changes made to the GDPR going forward (which would need to be specifically incorporated by the U.K. government), which creates a risk of divergent parallel regimes and related uncertainty. For example, in 2021, the European Commission announced an adequacy decision concluding that the United Kingdom ensures an equivalent level of data protection to the GDPR, which provides some relief regarding the legality of continued personal data flows from the EEA to the United Kingdom. This adequacy determination will automatically expire in June 2025 unless the European Commission renews or extends it and may be modified or revoked in the interim. We cannot predict how the U.K. GDPR and other U.K. privacy and cybersecurity laws, rules, or regulations may develop, including as compared to the GDPR, nor can we predict the effects of divergent laws and related guidance. Moreover, the U.K. government has publicly announced plans, including legislative proposals, to reform the U.K. GDPR in ways that, if formalized, are likely to deviate from the GDPR. This may lead to future divergence and variance between the two regimes.

Recent legal developments in Europe have created complexity and uncertainty regarding data transfers from the EEA to countries outside of the EEA in respect of which the European Commission or other relevant regulatory body has not issued an adequacy decision. Furthermore, the United Kingdom similarly restricts transfers of personal data to countries outside of the United Kingdom to countries such as the United States that the U.K. government does not consider to provide an adequate level of personal data protection. While we currently rely on the standard contractual clauses promulgated and recently substantially revised by the European Commission and the United Kingdom’s International Data Transfer Agreement (or the United Kingdom’s approved international data transfer addendum to the European Union’s standard contractual clauses) for such transfers, on July 10, 2023, the European Commission adopted an adequacy decision concluding that the United States ensures an adequate level of protection for personal data transferred from the European Union to the United States under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (followed on October 12, 2023 with the adoption of an adequacy decision in the United Kingdom for the U.K.-U.S. Data Bridge). However, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (and the U.K.-U.S. Data Bridge) may be in flux as such new adequacy decision has been challenged, and is likely to face additional challenges, including at the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Additionally, many statutory requirements, both in the United States and abroad, include obligations for companies to notify individuals of data breaches involving certain personal information. For example, laws in all U.S. states require businesses to provide notice to consumers whose personal information has been disclosed as a result of a data breach. These laws are not consistent, and compliance in the event of a widespread data breach is difficult and may be costly. Moreover, states have been frequently amending existing laws, requiring attention to changing regulatory requirements. Furthermore, in July 2023, the SEC adopted new cybersecurity disclosure rules requiring public companies to disclose, among other things, a material cybersecurity incident within four days of determining that an incident is material. In addition, the enactment of the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (the “CIRCIA”) in 2022, once rulemaking is complete, will require, among other things, certain companies to report significant cyber incidents to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (the “CISA”) within 72 hours from the time the company reasonably believes the incident occurred (and within 24 hours of making a ransom payment as a result of a ransomware attack). On April 4, 2024, the CISA proposed a rule under the CIRCIA that would clarify the scope of cyber incidents to be reported and would further define covered entities subject to the CIRCIA to expressly include companies in the financial services industry that are required to report cyber incidents to their primary federal regulators. We also may be contractually required to notify consumers or other third parties of a cyberattack, cybersecurity breach, service outage, or other similar incident.

There are a number of pending legislative and regulatory proposals in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., at both the federal and state level, as well as other jurisdictions that could impose new obligations in areas affecting our business. We expect that our efforts to comply with the GDPR, U.K. GDPR, GLBA, CCPA, and other legislative and regulatory requirements will continue to require substantial investments, including investments in compliance processes and technical infrastructure. In addition, some countries are considering or have passed legislation implementing additional privacy and cybersecurity requirements, including requiring local storage and processing of data or similar requirements that could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our services.

We are engaged in ongoing privacy and cybersecurity compliance and oversight efforts, including in connection with the requirements of privacy and cybersecurity laws, rules, regulations, industry standards, and other obligations. Many of these privacy and cybersecurity obligations are subject to change, have uncertain and inconsistent interpretation and enforcement, and may conflict with one another, other requirements or obligations, or our practices or the features of our services.

For additional information about privacy, cybersecurity, and associated risks, see the section titled “Risk Factors—Cybersecurity, Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Technology Risks.”

Human Capital

As we continue to grow and serve customers around the world, we strive to build a global team that is open, curious, and values individuals’ unique experiences, cultural backgrounds, strengths, and perspectives. Fostering a sense of belonging in all environments allows for every Remitly employee around the world to do their best work in service to our customers.

Our Global Team. As of December 31, 2024, we had over 2,800 full-time equivalent employees working out of our global offices, which includes our headquarters in Seattle, Washington, several other office locations, or remotely. None of our team members is represented by a labor union or is covered by a collective bargaining agreement. We believe the positive relationship between our customers, our team members, and our mission-oriented culture differentiates us and is a key driver of our business success. Attracting, recruiting, growing, and retaining globally diverse talent enables us to deliver on our brand promise to customers and serve our broad set of stakeholders. We are focused on supporting our employees from recruitment and onboarding, to ongoing development, and have implemented programs designed to encourage engagement and personal wellness.

Our Culture and Values. Culture is the set of habits that allows a group of people to cooperate by assumption rather than by negotiation. It is composed of artifacts, norms, values, and behaviors—and it is not what we say, but what we do without asking. Culture serves as the invisible glue that binds together the intangibles (e.g., how we treat each other, how we make decisions, how we serve our customers) with business objectives.

Remitly’s cultural values define our ideal behaviors and interactions. Each of us as individuals, teams, and as a company has strengths and growth opportunities. We view our values as a north star and, with a ‘growth mindset,’ our aspiration to work towards. Our values give us a common language to guide our work, behavior, and decision making every day.

Remitly’s culture is the foundation of our success. We invested in our culture and values the day we started this company more than a decade ago, and we will continue to invest for the decades to come. Our values are not stagnant. Every so often we take a step back to refresh our values with the goal of continuously improving as we grow to serve millions of new customers, attract exceptional employees, globalize, grasp opportunities, and face challenges in our ever-changing world. Our cultural values define how we get things done. At Remitly we believe that how we accomplish our work leads to great outcomes in what we accomplish.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (“DEIB”) is deeply rooted in our purpose, culture, and values at Remitly. We have intentionally built education, support, and awareness for DEIB into all parts of our employee experience and continue to find new ways to learn, grow, and lead in ways that leverage the diverse strengths and experiences of our global team. Our focus every day is to tirelessly deliver for our customers. We invest in resources and created programs that encourage continuous learning and constructive dialogue at all levels of our organization, including employee-led global resource groups and delivery of DEIB-related learning content.

Employee Engagement and Retention. Employee voice and engagement is a cornerstone to how we foster a culture of belonging. This focus allows all of us to do our personal best to deliver for our customers every day. Activities and initiatives include annual employee engagement surveys, pulse surveys and action planning, ongoing feedback sessions, office hours, and 1:1s. Our cultural values are woven throughout our employee lifecycle processes including onboarding, performance management, and development planning, which help us to attract, inspire, and retain a world-class and globally diverse team.

Benefits and Compensation. In every geography with employees, we offer competitive compensation that includes equity to reward high performers and align our employee incentives with the long-term and customer-oriented success of Remitly.

We provide comprehensive benefits and services that help meet the unique needs of our employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a health savings account with company contribution, family and medical leave, flexible work schedules, paid holidays and flexible vacation time, as well as mental wellness access, which provides coaching and counseling services for employees and dependents in their household. To support parents and families, we offer benefits so all employees on any path to parenthood have 24/7 access to virtual care, ranging from prenatal support and family planning, to delivery, postpartum, and pediatrics that support diverse family structures. Remitly also participates in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (the “WPATH”) so our teammates who identify as Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People have access to the care they need. We sponsor a 401(k) plan that includes a matching contribution and offer financial coaching through a third-party provider. We also offer an employee stock purchase plan to enable eligible employees to purchase shares of common stock at a discount via accumulated payroll deductions.

Corporate Philanthropy

When people have access to financial tools and resources, they have the power to change the future for themselves, their loved ones, and the global communities where they live. These communities have a variety of needs and concerns that are best addressed by the people who live in them. That’s why we design our products to remove financial barriers so people can make an impact in their own families and communities. Yet, with such a vast array of communities around the world, we also understand that there are communities that need financial support in ways and places beyond what, where, and how our remittance offerings can serve today. To address this, we and our global teams participate in philanthropic programs and partnerships that advance financial inclusion and increase community resilience around the world. These partnerships are built on listening to, and learning from, our people and global communities—those who know each place’s local needs best. This creates an opportunity to extend our global impact and ignite long-term change around the world together. Our major corporate philanthropy programs include the following:

Pledge 1%. Our Pledge 1% commitment publicly acknowledges our intent to give back and expand our social impact in order to sustainably further our vision. As such, in July 2021, our board of directors approved the reservation of up to 1,819,609 shares of our common stock (which was approximately 1.0% of our fully diluted capitalization as of June 30, 2021) that we may issue to or for the benefit of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation or a similar charitable organization pursuant to our Pledge 1% commitment in equal installments over ten years. From 2021 to 2024, we donated 181,961 shares of our common stock each year to the Remitly Foundation. We also have a multifaceted social good program that aligns with our Pledge 1% philanthropic commitment.

Corporate and Employee Giving. We are committed to corporate and employee-giving programs that align with our long-term impact priorities, as detailed in our most recent Impact Report available on our investor relations website.

Our initiatives include the Remitly Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to elevate opportunity with students in the Philippines to pay for school fees, books, food, school supplies, and other resources they might need to successfully graduate from college. Through a multi-year partnership with a global micro-lending nonprofit, we contribute to advancing financial security and resilience around the world to build brighter futures. Additionally, we support communities affected by disasters through our disaster response program, prioritizing direct support to our customers and their loved ones. This includes offering $0 fee promotions and discount promotions for remittances to impacted regions, ensuring customers' funds can go further during critical times. We supplement this with philanthropic donations to aid in recovery efforts and strengthen community resilience for the future. These programs reflect our ongoing commitment to making a positive impact on our customers, their families, and the global communities we serve.

Available Information

Copies of our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), are available, free of charge, on our investor relations website as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material electronically with or furnish it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The SEC also maintains a website that contains our SEC filings. The address of the site is www.sec.gov.

We webcast our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we offer notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, and press and earnings releases through our investor relations website. We have used, and intend to continue to use, the Investor Relations section of our website at https://ir.remitly.com as a means of disclosing material nonpublic information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Further corporate governance information, including our board committee composition and charters, global code of conduct, and corporate governance guidelines, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading “Governance.” The contents of our websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.