Cross-border fintech stands out in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort

Cross-border fintech is hot right now. The cross-border payments market is forecasted to reach over $250 trillion by 2027, according to the Bank of England. And experts say fintechs are giving banks a run for their money (pun intended) here, especially in the business-to-business sector where artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain come into play — all emerging technologies fintechs love.

So it’s no surprise that one of the trends among Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batch of nearly 30 fintech startups is how to more easily move money globally. Here’s a rundown of what I saw during this week’s YC Demo Day:

Numo

What it does: Offshore bank for international contractors

Numo focuses on payroll systems and banking for remote and international contractors. Users get a U.S. bank account and access to low-cost local payment rails. CEO Derrick Wolbert met co-founders Reuben Balik and Q Carlson while at Hologram.com, a global cellular network. Wolbert said the company “stitched together the best carriers in each market” so that users can withdraw their funds instantly in their local currency. The startup tested this first in Nigeria and already has 1,000 users signed up and 330 contractors who were verified by Numo. Wolbert called Numo “financial infrastructure for the new generation of tech workers.”

Cleva

What it does: U.S.-based banking for Africa

Similar to Numo, Cleva provides a U.S. bank account where users, even those who are non-residents, can receive funds and then convert them into their local currency. Co-founder Tolu Alabi previously built cross-border issuing and banking products at Stripe, while co-founder Philip Abel built multi-region infrastructure at companies, including AWS and Twilio. Alabi said that one of the drivers for the startup was the fact that about 70% of people in Nigeria lost their wealth last year due to currency devaluation. With Cleva, “Africans can receive dollars from anywhere in the world,” Alabi said. This market is quite large, $18 billion, she said. There’s really no bigger proof of the market like reaching profitability, and that’s exactly where Cleva is — six months after launch. It is also generating $120,000 in monthly revenue.

xPay

What it does: International payments API for businesses in India and Southeast Asia

xPay acts as an international reseller and enables merchants to “start selling internationally right away, without a U.S. bank account or entity,” CEO Aniket Gupta said. The company touts that it can help companies sell into the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia with one integration and in “one-tenth” the time. xPay launched four weeks ago and already has 25 signed contracts and more than 200 people on the waiting list. Could this be a potential future Stripe acquisition? We’ll have to wait and see. But for now, the company expects to process $5 million in annualized transaction volume by the end of the month.

Swift

What it does: Instant money movement anywhere in the world

Moving money from account to account still takes days, so two engineers, David Lalor and Rakeeb Hossain started Swift to provide a “unified API for risk-free instant funding,” according to the company. They are building instant account-to-account international transfers to speed up the flow of over $150 trillion that goes through banking rails each year. Swift’s first product is an instant deposit API for brokerages and digital banks that is already running on Venmo, Zelle and FedNow.

Infinity

What it does: Cross-border banking for small businesses in India

We heard from a lot of childhood friends during the past two days, so it was refreshing to see two siblings form a company. In fact, for Sourav Choraria and his brother, Sidharth Choraria, this is their second startup together after a health tech startup they sold. Sourav is the former head of growth at wealth management giant Paytm Money, and Sidharth is a former project manager at Amazon who helped launch its Appstore’s in-app purchase SDK.

Now the pair is building in the fintech space with Infinity. The company built a treasury management platform and is now adding multi-currency accounts and global payments. Businesses in India account for $700 billion in cross-border trades per year, and Infinity makes 1% from those transactions. That $7 billion prospect translates into a huge opportunity. In three months, Infinity secured 110 customers and is growing 20% week over week, according to Sourav.

“Our goal is to create a financial oasis for cross-border companies,” Sourav said.