This article is part of Fintech Leaders, a newsletter with over 36,000 dreamers, entrepreneurs, investors, and students of financial services. I invite you to share and sign up here!
I sit down with Ankur Sinha, Chief Technology Officer at Remitly, a financial services provider for immigrants and their families in 135 countries and one of the leading fintech companies in the remittance space, with offices in Seattle, London, Krakow, Manila, and Managua. Founded in 2011, Remitly went public on the Nasdaq in 2021.
We discuss:
The long and complex history of remittances and his take on whether crypto will revolutionize and transform the international payments industry
“Some of the current remittance companies were founded in the 1850s... and the evolution from a customer standpoint, has been around three big factors:
(1) the cost of doing a remittance, How much am I paying in fees?
(2) What is the speed of it? How long does it take?
(3) Peace of mind or convenience of doing a remittance - do I know what's happening?”
Joining Remitly after a long career at Google and Microsoft. What did Ankur learn in big tech and what are some of the key differences between these two companies?
“Microsoft is really the king of enterprise in some senses, right? They've really mastered how to do enterprise… you can see that inherent in the culture of how Microsoft evolves and builds products and services for those companies... and Google historically has been a consumer company. Search, Gmail, YouTube, a lot of those consumer companies. I think a lot of the culture at Google is around consumer centricity.”
The CTO role. What are the most important responsibilities of CTOs and what companies and business leaders should consider when hiring a Chief Technology Officer
As CTO, Ankur oversees all technology investments at the company. His role is no different from many other CTOs at fintech and tech companies, with his top three responsibilities including:
Managing the technology strategy and investments across the company and its product units.
Managing Remitly’s platform and engineering architecture, from a scalability, reliability, and all the different sub-platforms perspective.
Ensuring they can build and support this in a self-sustaining, self-growing fashion from a people, product, and process standpoint.
Exciting trends in the world of Remittances and how his team plans to ride an upcoming wave of growth and innovation… and a whole lot more!
“As the general population goes more global, as we are seeing a lot more growth in this notion of cross-border, cross-country transfers, I think what I'm most excited about is being able to play a part towards driving that seamlessness of how do we do remittances really well.”
Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.
Previous Episodes You May Enjoy:
Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
Ankur Sinha, CTO of Remitly – Focusing on Customer Delight, The Wild World of Remittances, & How to Maximize Impact at a New Company