Khalid Ashmawy bears in mind the very first time he wired money home while studying in Europe.
He had just obtained his monthly stipend as a master’s student in Stuttgart and wished to send component of it back to his family members in Cairo. It was normally a sluggish and costly process, he remembered. A $ 400 cord transfer, for instance, might set you back $ 40 in charges and take 3 business days to show up.
Years later, while operating at Microsoft and Uber in the U.S., and even after starting a startup, that experience hadn’t improved a lot.
The relentless discomfort point across various phases of his occupation eventually influenced Ashmawy to introduce Munify , a cross-border neobank developed to provide Egyptians abroad a quicker, cheaper means to send cash home and, for citizens in the nation, accessibility to U.S. banking.
Earlier this year, the startup joined Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 batch , an unusual participant from outside the U.S. and among the few without a core AI join in a course dominated by generative AI startups. The business additionally raised $ 3 million in seed funding from the accelerator and other local investors, consisting of BYLD and DCG.
“Financial wasn’t developed for individuals like me. It’s very pricey, takes a long period of time, and is fragmented,” the owner and chief executive informed TechCrunch in an interview. “It’s an issue I have personally experienced and one that resonates with a lot of individuals that intend to send money back home swiftly and effectively.”
Ashmawy matured in Egypt, studied computer technology, and created a deep love for software application at an early stage. A scholarship took him to Europe, where he finished 2 master’s degrees in Germany and Switzerland.
From there, he spent seven years as an engineer and team leader at Microsoft and Uber– experiences that opened his eyes to the globe of turbulent innovations and startups.
His next action was unpreventable. In 2019, Ashmawy left Uber to launch Founders Fund– backed Huspy , a proptech platform focused on home loans between East, acting as its primary innovation officer up until 2022
Leaving Huspy provided him space to review his very own immigrant journey. Once more, the problem of remittances loomed huge. Meanwhile, in various other emerging markets, platforms like Nigeria’s LemFi and India’s Aspora were currently removing, aiding migrants from those nations send out refund home.
Egypt is among the world’s largest remittance markets, receiving nearly $ 30 billion in inflows annually
While bank cords and conventional remittance platforms such as Western Union and MoneyGram remain the dominant alternatives, Munify wish to be the first choice in an expanding plant of electronic financial institutions that assure less expensive and much faster transfers.
According to Ashmawy, Munify offers Egyptians abroad– mainly in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and the Gulf– that wish to send out cash home immediately and at far better prices.
Munify also offers companies, remote employees, and freelancers in the Middle East a means to open a united state checking account and card utilizing only a neighborhood ID to receive and invest cash, along with hedge against local money volatility.
“The primary reason that we’re various is that we’re building our own rails and straight attaching the financial systems throughout various countries,” the chief executive officer informed TechCrunch, including that the system, which just introduced two weeks back, is currently seeing very early fostering with word of mouth with hundreds of sign-ups.
“We have actually really customized this experience for individuals from the region,” stated Ashmawy.
On the business side, Munify has actually authorized agreements with mid-sized firms and business, representing a predicted $ 50 + million in month-to-month cross-border quantity, according to Ashmawy.
The startup, which operates on a double consumer and company design (offering compensation and financial services for people, while giving APIs for organizations to send out and obtain cross-border settlements), intends to expand beyond Egypt to other Middle Eastern and adjacent countries, gradually stitching together local banking rails.
Its income comes from FX spreads, interchange, and payment circulations.
Y Combinator’s batches over the past number of years have preferred AI and programmer devices from the United States. So, how did the Egyptian fintech get in? Ashmawy debts the severe nature of the problem.
“If you’re solving a large and urgent problem, that’s what truly matters, no matter whether the existing wave is AI or something else,” he stated.
However there’s criterion for this backing as well. YC has actually traditionally bought start-ups addressing difficult financial framework issues, from Red stripe to Coinbase. Likewise, remittances are one of the most established discomfort points in global finance and among the accelerator’s consistent focus areas when backing startups from emerging markets (situation in point: LemFi and Aspora) prior to its recent AI tilt.
In the middle of that, Munify stood for an opportunity to back an owner with experience at 2 united state tech giants, a record of building one of MENA’s leading proptech business, and a personal link to the trouble.