London-headquartered money transfer outfit Zepz, which combines the former WorldRemit and Sendwave brands, is laying off 420 employees.
Zepz has a total head count of around 1,600, meaning the cuts translate to about 26% of its workforce.
WorldRemit last raised $292 million in primary financing in August 2021 at a $5 billion valuation and changed its name to Zepz.
The company pushed back plans for an IPO in July last year owing to reported accounting issues and churn in its senior management team.The firm was seeking to go public in the US at a valuation of up to $6 billion in the second quarter, but was forced to put the plans on ice as it resolved "accounting difficulties" in checking and verifying accounts.
The fresh wave of staff cuts, as told exclusively to CNBC, will mainly impact Zepz’s customer care and engineering teams as Zepz looks to shift those operations from multiple countries to more centralized hubs. The move follows the the 2020 acquisition of Sendwave by WorldRemit and the pressing need to realise cost synergies from the union.
“Having hit profitability last year, the Zepz team has been focused on efficient growth and continuing to build a large, sustainable business,” Harry Nelis, a partner at Accel, told CNBC. “Following the acquisition of Sendwave a couple of years ago, the next stage in the integration of the two companies is to remove the duplication of roles across the brands’ locations.”
Collectively, Sendwave and WorldRemit are used by more than 11 million users across 150 countries.
It is the second time in just under a year that Zepz has laid off staff. In June 2022, Zepz implemented job cuts affecting around 5% of its workforce, according to Sky News.
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