TIVP032: REMITLY (RELY): FUTURE MULTIBAGGER OR STABLECOIN CASUALTY?

DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

TIVP032: REMITLY (RELY): FUTURE MULTIBAGGER OR STABLECOIN CASUALTY? W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

10 August 2025

Daniel & Shawn dive into Remitly, the digital remittance platform aiming to disrupt a $2 trillion global market. After years of prioritizing customer acquisition and corridor expansion over profits, Remitly is now approaching a critical inflection point, one where scale, margin leverage, and cash generation could unlock a new phase of investor confidence. But there are risks as well: crypto-native challengers, regulatory uncertainty, and broader concerns about the remittance industry all raise the question of whether the upside is worth the risk.

Here, they unpack Remitly’s moat, including its direct payout network, risk engine, and customer trust, and assess whether these factors are enough to fend off cheaper, faster payment rails, such as stablecoins. They walk through the company’s unit economics and what the valuation model implies under both steady-state and high-growth scenarios. Along the way, they compare Remitly’s customer lock-in strategy to Booking.com, examine the remittance corridor dynamics in India, the Philippines, and Latin America, and debate whether this is a misunderstood fintech with enduring staying power or a product ripe for crypto disruption.

Prefer to watch? Click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to watch this episode on YouTube.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why and how Remitly was founded
  • How the remittance market works
  • Why Western Union struggles to compete with Remitly
  • What digital-first companies compete with Remitly
  • What competitive advantages Remitly has
  • Why scale is everything in the payments sector
  • How stablecoins could disrupt the remittance industry
  • What risks Remitly faces
  • Whether Remitly is attractively valued at its current levels
  • Whether Shawn & Daniel add RELY to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio
  • And much, much more!

 

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

[00:00:00] Daniel Mahncke: Remitly is one of the fastest growing companies in the payment space, but the big opportunity lies in the fact that it’s not priced for that growth at all. It’s kind of like an early Uber. The business has tremendous potential, but current expenses to increase scale and reach still cover up the underlying earnings power.

[00:00:19] Shawn O’Malley: We are just now hitting the inflection point, though Remitly is already free, cashflow positive, and if we look at it at a steady state valuation, the business is profitable across the board.

[00:00:30] Daniel Mahncke: So those inflection points tend to be when the market wakes up to the potential of a company, and therefore also its stock and the returns are huge.

[00:00:39] Intro: You are listening to The Intrinsic Value Podcast by The Investor’s Podcast Network since 2014 with over 180 million downloads, we’ve learned directly from the world to best investors. Now we are applying those lessons to analyze businesses and investment opportunities every week, helping you uncover intrinsic value. And now here are your hosts, Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke.

[00:01:08] Shawn O’Malley: Today we are talking about a company that most of you have probably never used and perhaps have never even heard of, but millions of people around the world do rely on it every single month. Today’s pitch is on Remitly. Remitly operates in the well remittance space, hence the name. It is a fast growing company and from what you’ve already told me, Daniel, it is at an inflection point where in the next few quarters the true earnings power of that business will show through and, and the other big change is not so much on a company level, but on an industry level.

[00:01:50] Shawn O’Malley: For decades, legacy players like Western Union have dominated the field, but we are clearly starting to see that this dominance is vanishing at a record speed, which leaves a lot of room for digital first companies like Remitly to gain market share. Before we get into all that, how about you give us an overview of Remitly and maybe the remittance space overall, and I should say Daniel, we spent about an hour beforehand talking about payments, so we should be pretty primed for this conversation.

[00:02:16] Daniel Mahncke: We had a long introduction, that’s safe to say, and you always did a great job of outlining why we Remitly might be such an interesting pick. Right now it’s much smaller company than the ones we usually look at a market cap of one, three and a half billion dollars. And it’s a lot younger as well. Remitly was founded in 2011 by Matt Oppenheimer who was working for Barclays Bank in Kenya at the time.

[00:02:39] Daniel Mahncke: And for us living in the US or the EU, it’s probably hard to imagine how much of a headache payments can be in other parts of the world. But Matt saw that firsthand and he saw how expensive, frustrating it was for people to receive money from abroad just because of long lines, high fees, and also unpredictable wait times.

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