Zepz Group, the mother company of cross-border remittance service provider WorldRemit, has recently appointed Robert Mitchell as the group’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). I had the privilege of meeting him during his visit to the country this October 2022.

Mitchell has under his belt more than a decade of senior global finance and operational experience in payments and fintech sectors, having held multiple financial leadership positions for other financial institutions such as PayPal, Venmo, Cisco, and Triplepoint Capital.

For Zepz Group, the Philippines is currently their largest market in Asia with more than 20 million remittance transactions sent to the Philippines in the company’s history based on the company’s H1 2022 Performance Update.

The group’s CFO shared that WorldRemit is expanding its operations in the Philippines and this will entail a lot of investments to further enhance its customer experience. At present, the company directly employs (not as a third-party hired) around 500 staff in Manila and Cebu covering different areas from customer support to back-office functions. The fintech company is so bullish on the Philippines that they are also expanding its Sendwave brand in the country.

Sendwave is a money remittance service available in countries that other transfer providers don’t serve. The service makes sending money from anywhere as easy and affordable as sending a text message.

The two leading global remittance brands — WorldRemit and Sendwave — try to address the problem where the financial system may not be as robust and accessible to a local population. By providing very competitive services that one may access digitally using a computer or a mobile device, sending and getting funds (mobile-to-mobile or cash pickup) from family or friends can be as easy as using a social network. Zepz also plans of having a wallet-type service in the Philippines soon.

“We know that the Philippines is switching over towards more of a digital experience versus traditional cash pickup, and we know that some of the hardships through the pandemic have that usage and there’s a lot more comfort and preference towards using a digital solution, which is really what we’re offering our end users,” according to Mitchell.

Part of WorldRemit’s plan to expand in the country is to further optimize its current service offerings, platform features, and benefits. The company is looking at expanding its existing local partnerships aimed at further contributing to the remittance flow in the Philippines, which will eventually help the country’s economy.

“To change consumer behavior is very hard, I think we have a very strong brand that’s well recognized by the Filipino market. We will continue investing in our brand and our experience, and making sure our users have the experience that they would expect for remittances. I expect a continued shift that the Filipino market is experiencing on the digital side,” added Mitchell when I asked him about the future trends in the industry that their group of companies is currently in — FinTech.