Matt Oppenheimer co-founded Remitly eight years ago after working in Kenya and experiencing the pain of transferring money across borders first hand. After working for Barclays as part of an MBA rotational program for nearly two years, he moved back to the U.S. and launched Remitly in 2011. The Seattle-based company has since grown at a rapid pace — it currently moves more than $6 billion in funds a year. Earlier this month, Remitly raised $220 million to continue its growth trajectory. 

The digital money transfer industry, however, is a competitive field, with large startups like TransferWise, WorldRemit, and legacy players like Western Union vying for market share. Oppenheimer spoke with Bank Innovation — appropriately, at a Seattle Starbucks — about Remitly’s business model and the changes in the $689 billion global remittance industry as new technologies like blockchain and Facebook’s Libra take shape. An edited version of that conversation follows. 

Facebook claims Libra will be a less-volatile cryptocurrency that will simplify cross-border payments and create other financial services. Does that concern you?
From a consumer standpoint, Libra and Facebook’s association is the most interesting of the cryptocurrencies. They haven’t announced many details yet, so it’s hard to get a sense of what the actual product will be. The story is still playing out.

You spent 11 months as the head of mobile and internet banking initiatives at Barclays Kenya. How did that inspire you to start Remitly?
I was living in Nairobi. I was part of an MBA rotational program, so I joined Barclays in London and then moved to Kenya. Because I joined in the U.K., I was getting paid in British pounds, living off Kenyan shillings and had to get money back in U.S. dollars. What was more painful and complex was the fact that a lot of my Kenyan friends were getting their basic living expenses from remittances. Eighty-plus percent of [customer] transactions now go toward basic living expenses.

There are many new companies out there promising speed and cheap transfers through new technology. Does that worry you?
Back in 2012 and 2013, we were paying attention to bitcoin. When we were talking to investors, the narrative was “bitcoin is going to disrupt global currency and disrupt financial services.” Obviously, that hasn’t happened. If you look at the reasons why that’s the case, it includes trust. It’s really hard to build trust with consumers. Some of it comes down to volatility. Ultimately, for a digital currency to disrupt any sort of financial services, people need to get their payroll into it. They need to use it for all different types of payments, whether it’s peer-to-peer, merchant payments or remittances. Nobody wanted to get money in bitcoin that’s doubling or halving in value.

See also: Remitly secures $220m to add services beyond remittances

It’s a very scary proposition to give a nameless, faceless digital provider a bunch of personal information like your social security number, tax ID or date of birth. Companies often underestimate that.

How do you view Remitly’s relationship with banks?
The main thing is, as a money transmitter, we’re processing a debit card or an ACH transfer. In order to do that, we have numerous corporate banking accounts and payment processing accounts with our corporate banking partners. It’s a lot larger than your average corporate banking relationship. So to banks, we just look like a merchant that is doing $6 billion in sales. Having payment processors and corporate banking partners is crucial to our customer experience and also our variable costs.

The other thing about money services businesses is that we’re in a high-risk category. We have invested a ton in our compliance systems. So we onboard some of the largest banks that have some of the highest KYC and AML standards. There will be other financial services that we’re thinking about in the future that we also think are interesting opportunities on which to partner with banks.

What about legacy companies like Western Union and MoneyGram?
When I was in Kenya, seeing how M-Pesa was transforming domestic financial services, it seemed like the right time to disrupt the Western Unions and the MoneyGrams of the world. Western Union only has 17% global market share, which is kind of amazing. Most people assume Western Union has some sort of dominant market share. MoneyGram only has 5% of global market share. It is a very fragmented market right now, and I think it will consolidate around a few digital players.