Khalid Ashmawy remembers the first time he wired money home while studying in Europe.
He had just received his monthly scholarship as a graduate student in Stuttgart and would send part of it back to his family in Cairo. It was usually a slow and expensive process, he remembered. For example, a $ 400 bank transfer can cost $ 40 in fees and take three working days to arrive.
Years later, while working at Microsoft and Uber in the United States, and even after founding a startup, this experience had not improved much.
The persistent pain point across different phases in his career eventually inspired Ashmawy to launch Munify, a cross -border Neobank designed to give the Egyptians abroad a faster, cheaper way to send money home and for residents of the country access to us bank.
Earlier this year, the start of the Y Combinator’s Summer 2025 -batch, a rare participant outside the US and one of the few without a core tone height in a class dominated by generative AI startups. The company also raised $ 3 million in seed financing from the accelerator and other regional investors, including abscess and DCG.
“Banking was not built for people like me. It’s very expensive, takes a long time and is fragmented,” the founder and CEO told TechCrunch in an interview. “It’s a problem I’ve personally experienced and one that resonates with a lot of people who want to send money home quickly and effectively.”
Ashmawy grew up in Egypt, studied computer science and developed a deep love for software early. A scholarship took him to Europe, where he completed two 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 world of disturbing technologies and startups.
His next step was inevitable. In 2019, Ashmawy left Uber to launch Founders Fund -backed Huspy, a PropTech platform that focused on priority loans in the Middle East and served as his Chief Technology Officer until 2022.
Leaving Huspy gave him room to reflect on his own immigrant journey. Once again, the question of transfers was great. Meanwhile, in other new markets, platforms such as Nigeria’s Lemfi and India’s aspora already started, which helped migrants from these countries to send money home.
Egypt is one of the world’s largest transfer markets and receives almost $ 30 billion in influx annually.
While bank lines and traditional transfer platforms such as Western Union and Moneygram remain the dominant options, Munify hopes to be the first choice in a growing crop of digital banks promising cheaper and faster transfers.
According to Ashmawy, Munify Egyptians earn abroad – primarily in the US, UK, Europe and Gulf – who will send money home right away and at better prices.
Munify also supplies companies, external employees and freelancers in the Middle East a way to open a US bank account and card by using only one local ID to receive and spend money, as well as hedge against local currency volatility.
“The main reason why we are different is that we build our own rails and directly connect the banking systems across different countries,” CEO told TechCrunch, adding that the platform that was just launched two weeks ago already sees early adoption through mouths with thousands of registrations.
“We have really tailored this experience for people from the region,” said Ashmawy.
On the business side, Munify has signed contracts with medium -sized businesses and companies representing an expected $ 50+ million in monthly cross -border volume, according to Ashmawy.
Start-up operating on a double consumer and business model (offers transfer and banking services for individuals, while APIs provide APIs to send and receive cross-border payments), plan to expand beyond Egypt to other Middle Eastern and adjacent countries that gradually sew regional bank rails.
Its revenue comes from, for example, straps, exchange and payment streams.
Y Combinators Batches over the past few years have favored AI and developer tools from the United States. So how did the Egyptian fintech come in? Ashmawy credits the acute nature of the problem.
“If you solve a big and urgent problem, that’s what really matters, whether the current wave is AI or something else,” he said.
But there is also a precedent for this support. YC has historically invested in startups that solve hard financial infrastructure problems, from Stripe to Coinbase. Similarly, transfers are one of the most rooted pain points in global funding and one of the accelerator’s consistent focus areas when supporting startups from new markets (case in point: Lemfi and aspo), before its recent AI slope.
In the midst of this, Munify represented a chance to support a founder with experience with two American tech giants, a track record to build one of Mena’s Top Proptech companies and a personal connection to the problem.