Like Venmo Co-Founder Iqram Magdon and Paystone founder Tarique Al-Ansari, tech entrepreneur Abdul Abdulkerimov has simplified the way consumers transfer funds. The Paysend founder and Executive Chairman created the app to be a solution to inefficient international bank transfers.
“I’m really proud of my team, that we’ve been able to bring to the market a completely new product. A card-to-card money transfer that puts together twelve billion cards issued by three major repayment systems,” Abdulkerimov remarks in a “Future of FinTech” webinar.
Going forward, Paysend plans to use the $125 million Series B funding to expand its global services.
Abdul Abdulkerimov launches FinTech Companies
“I’m an entrepreneur with a computer engineering background,” Abdulkerimov says. “My interest was always finding some simple solution for complex problems. In terms of FinTech, the question that I always struggled with was ‘why are any transfers so complex and expensive?”
Abdulkerimov started Paysend in April 2017. Since then, the London-based financial services company has won recognition from Mastercard for Top tier (5%) processing quality in 2019. In 2018, the company won Leading FinTech (financial technology) Product from FinovateSpring and Best Consumer Payments in the PayTech Awards.
Prior to Paysend, Abdulkerimov launched Luxembourg-based Digital Space Ventures as a Founding Partner in 2015. The venture capital and private equity firm sponsors the growth of promising innovations in FinTech.
The business-savvy entrepreneur has been a Board of Trustees Member and sponsor in the Southern Federal University in Russia since 2006 and of the Luminary Foundation since 2007. The charity funds projects to inspire and mentor “young visionaries” to become the world’s next leaders.
Abdul Abdulkerimov transitions from engineering to business
Abdulkerimov speaks three languages fluently. In addition to English and Russian, he speaks Lezgian, a language spoken by only about 800,000 people in parts of Dagestan, Azerbaijan, and bordering countries.
Abdulkerimov earned his first degree in System Engineering from the Taganrog Radio Engineering Institute in Russia in 1993. Three years later, he graduated from Moscow Financial University with a focus in Banking.
The financial technology leader earned his TRIUM Global Executive MBA in 2006, nearly a decade later. He furthered his business education by completing the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010.
Abdulkerimov then launched Digital Space Ventures and Paysend before earning his Master’s in Business from Stanford University 2019.
Paysend to expand services to APAC region
“Our platform aims to democratise the service by providing a one-stop-shop to pay and send money to families, suppliers, employees and partners in any currency anywhere in the world at a significantly reduced cost,” says Paysend CEO Ronnie Millar.
Paysend allows customers and smaller enterprises to transfer money between over 70 countries around the world quickly and with low fees. The app now serves over 3.7 million consumers and 17,000 small to medium-sized enterprises since its conception four years ago. Over 110 countries receive payments from the more than 60 countries using the technology.
Private equity firm One Peak led the company’s latest Series B funding round. Some investors, like Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund Plug and Play, doubled down on their support. But the round also brought in new investors, like Infravia Growth Capital and Hermes GPE Innovation Fund.
“This $125m B Round investment will allow us to take our platform to the next stage, innovating and expanding geographically to target the $133tn opportunity in cross-border payment flows,” Millar says.
“Building from our existing partnership deals with Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay, and Alipay, among many others, I see enormous opportunities to expand our industry leading card-to-card direct transfer offerings further, providing additional benefits for the millions of unbanked individuals across Asia Pacific,” Abdulkerimov states.
Learn more about Paysend and the app’s plans for expansion here.
