Money-transfer app Remitly has taken significant market share from incumbents like Western Union since its 2011 founding, but its stock price has languished this year.
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Remitly, a financial technology company that lets consumers in places like the U.S. and Canada send money home to countries like Mexico and the Philippines, may finally be seeing the effects of President Trump’s immigration crackdown on its business.
The 14-year-old Seattle business announced its third quarter financial results yesterday, and a couple of metrics rattled investors, sending the stock down 24% today and shrinking its market value to $2.6 billion.
Chief financial officer Vikas Mehta said the company expects revenue in the fourth quarter to reach about $427 million, representing growth of about 22%. In 2026, sales growth will be “in the high teens range.” These expected rates of expansion are big declines from Remitly’s 24% to 34% quarterly growth over the past year, even though the company has recently released new products, including a send-now, pay-later feature has already attracted 100,000 active customers. Remitly’s profits also fell slightly in the third quarter compared with the second, according to the company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) metric.
If Remitly’s stock decline holds for the rest of the day, it will mark one of its biggest single-day drops since it went public in 2021 at a $7 billion valuation. Compared with the end of last year, Remitly’s stock is off 44%. Concerns about cryptocurrency-based stablecoins disrupting its business have also likely weighed on the stock.
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Remitly has 8.9 million active customers, many of whom are immigrants. They send about $20 billion each quarter through the app, and Mexico is one of the top three markets they send money to. In the first nine months of this year, as a result of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration from Mexico to the U.S., consumer remittance payments to Mexico have fallen by 5.5% to $45.7 billion, reversing a years-long trend of increases, according to Mexico’s central bank.
During yesterday’s earnings call, CFO Mehta said Remitly customers’ remittances to Mexico grew “meaningfully faster in that corridor than the broader industry,” aided by innovations like QR code-based cash pickup. Yet when discussing the company’s 2026 forecast, he said that “recent immigration headwinds” in countries including the U.S. and Canada “could potentially weigh on new customer acquisition.” The U.S. immigrant population began declining this year for the first time in 50 years, according to Pew Research.
When FT Partners research analyst Gunn asked what’s causing the expected slowdown in the fourth quarter and for all of 2026, the only explanation Mehta gave was about how in the second half of 2024, the company had “very strong revenue growth,” which sets a higher bar that’s harder to exceed.
The lack of a clear explanation for the deceleration may be another reason why the stock is down so much. Beyond the immigration crackdown and lower potential remittances to Mexico, it’s unclear what’s truly driving the weaker growth expectations, and investors hate uncertainty. In a summary report, Gunn wrote that the third quarter earnings release “leaves us with more questions than answers.”
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