International payments processor Xoom has raised $20.29 million Series E in a round led by DAG Ventures and joined by previous investors Fidelity Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia Capital.
Xoom’s international payments platform allows users to transfer money to overseas accounts; think Western Union without the excessive fees, and you can use funds in your PayPal account for the payment.
I’ve used Xoom in the past, and it’s a great service that steps in when Paypal withdrawals (or in some cases Paypal altogether) isn’t available in the country you’re paying to. The fees are reasonable, varying between 4% for a small payment down to 1.1% for larger payments. The service is also a convenient way to make international wire transfers that compare well in price to most major banks.
The Series E round takes Xoom’s total funding to in excess of $50 million.
(via PEHub)
So does this service allow you to send money all over the world or a list of countries, anyway another great info Duncan
They need to handle themselves a 1 way ticket to the resurrection!
-Tony Montana
It will take more than 1.5 billion dollars in transfers for them to make back that 50 mil in commission. Think it can be done?
No… People don’t get it. Every time you rise more money. How does the company make money?
The company name, brand, logo, and web design isn’t attractive. What makes Investors attract that website?
There are some Entrepreneurs here spend most time working hard to create Web 2.0 product. They couldn’t get VC or angels fund. Why is Xoom getting special access to VC clubs?
People like here. They don’t like lies, conspiracies, not getting access to VC, etc… People want the truth come out public. People don’t want to waste their hardworking time submitting business plan to VC portfolios. Now, Getting VC… Does this mean you have live middle or upper class to get VC?
If @4 is answered by VCs or Investors.
It would save Entrepenurers time. They start using self-funded method. They don’t have to submit NDA business plan. If not answered. Then…
You are chicken to tell the truth.
Ritu
a list of countries, but it includes a prominent number that don’t support Paypal withdrawals such as the Phillipines. It’s a fair extensive list though.
Commenter 4
Again: think Western Union, but online and cheaper. International money transfers are big business.
Aaron
I don’t disagree, it’s a hard ask. I know that I’ve found use for it when paying folks in non-paypal countries, it’s a lot cheaper and more usable than Western Union (which is a complete pain). I think with a little bit more market awareness this is a company with a lot of potential: simple, proven market, attractive offering.
only crappy ideas and lazy people need funding.
a good idea should fund it self.
There is a draw back to Xoom that has not been mentioned. Its exchange rate SUCKS. Fees may be cheaper but I have found the total cost to send is the same or more by xoom becasue of the rates being so much lower than Western Union. So I generally use western Union. Also they have a monthly limit.
Hopefully they fix these items.
I don’t like the website. It doesn’t even have original founder & launched date. It looks like they stole idea from people’s business plan. If these guys are experience I wonder what is revenue forecast in 10 years?
I like to give advice to Entrepreneurs here never give out unsigned NDA Business plan. If you did it… You could end up getting business idea stole and management would change different name you never know.
So do they have shop-fronts where you can go and pick up cash, or is it just bank account transfers?
I guess I should have read the web site:
1. Enter your contact information, your recipient’s information, and the amount you want to send. We protect your personal information, and share it with our partners only for the purposes of completing your money transfer.
2. Select a delivery method.
Your recipient can pick up the money, have it delivered, or have it deposited directly into their bank account. Available delivery methods vary by country.
3. Select a payment method.
To fund your money transfer, enter your bank account, credit card, or PayPal information. We use state-of-the-art technology to keep your financial information secure.
4. Let your recipient know their money is on the way!
We will email you a receipt containing your unique Xoom Tracking Number. You can use this number to check the status of your money transfer at any time.
Duncan, thanks. What’s so ridiculous about stuff like this is that it’s a good concept and it could work, but if there is way more money spent/invested than is needed to actually make it happen (because investors are impatient and think that hiring more/spending more on ads is going to somehow make the company grow in popularity quickly enough to pay off the investment) then the likelihood of the company NEVER being profitable is much higher.
So basically, they’re actually making the whole thing *more* of a crapshoot than it was *before* it had a huge investment behind it.
Bah, curse the internet!
I have used Xoom in the past and it is easy to send money to countries that don’t support Paypal withdrawals. Their service is good, reliable and efficient (unlike Western Union).
You guys are missing it. This is more than a % play. These guys are making a killing off of the exchange rate fluctuation.
I’ve been using Xoom here in the Philippines for over 3 years now and have had great experience with them. They allow many ways to receive money — home cash delivery, direct bank deposits and universal bank withdrawals.
Aside from the %age fee they charge the sender, Xoom gets its revenue from its internal exchange rate which from computation is about 2.86% (USD to Philippine Peso). However, one can avoid the exchange rate if you opt to receive the money in USD as well. In that case, the transaction charge goes up to 6% for the Sender.
I did a comparison between Paypal vs. Xoom here (http://www.yuga...for-publishers/) and its pretty competitive IMO.
In the Philippines, dollar remittances is a huge business with over $12 billion coming in annually. If Xoom can grab just 10% of that in a year, they’ve already recoup the investments.
The end of the western union powerful organization is near.
Cool Info,
World after all is not a small place.
http://tekno-wo...ld.blogspot.com
what about the countries not on their list? ie Turkey.
they have no support on their website, whom to ask?
Western Union is used by many scammers (Nigerian fraud) to send under-the-table money, either honestly earned, or earned by illicit practices, to their home countries.
To take this online reduces the anonimity wich WU offers.
I’m surprised that WU is not required to have camera & ID registrations of every transaction, considering the amount of black money which is transferred around the world using their service.
Someone is actually reusing the xoom.com domain name eh? I remember back in the old dotcom days when xoom was just another geocities. :p
Love how all these names like xoom and snap get recycled.
There are some Entrepreneurs here spend most time working hard to create Web 2.0 product. They couldn’t get VC or angels fund. Why is Xoom getting special access to VC clubs?
great
thanks
rc
trading tennis
Glad I’m not the only one who remembers that xoom used to be another geocities back in the day! It was fairly popular as I remember – they offered more space than geocities and nicer urls, and they had no ads, you just had to link back with a button
http://web.arch...m.com/webspace/
“XOOM.com offers more space and features to web page builders than any other site. Imagine — 11 MB of free space for starters, enough room for loads of graphics and sound files to make your site sing.”
hahaha awesome
I use Xoom on a daily basis to pay people in India etc and find it a great tool. I think the need to improve security a little but apart from that I can see them doing really well
I’ve used xoom for couple of times, its very easy to transfer money from paypal, specially in the countries like India.
The only support like 30 countries? Not much…
Xoom looks like a great service, but it can hardly be labled as an “International” service, when it is limited to accepting payments from US based accounts (I live in the UK, with a UK, US and South African accounts), yet I’m not able to transfer money to my South African or US account from my UK accounts. Also South Africa is excluded fom the service…Xoom will unfortunately be nothing more than a good story regarding investments received, until they are able to offer a truely international service.
I tried to use the service, and after completing all the registration stuff, I tried to transfer money…..NOT…..if you live in Colorado, you can’t use the site to transfer money.
Why didn’t they tell me that before I registered, or at least when I filled out the “State” field on the registration. What a bunch of Knuckleheads!
I also wonder about the viability of these services down the road. I tried to use the Western Union website to transfer money using my debit card. My transfer was rejected, since Wells Fargo has blocked any debit card transactions on the Western Union website due to fraud.
In fact, the act of trying to use my debit card on the site got the card blocked from any usage and I received two calls from the Wells Fargo fraud to make sure the card hadn’t been stolen…..
It doesn’t matter if they use https…
How do we know it’s safe to use?
Xoom goes Boom!
MSNcash.net is much better.
Opps sorry, the public acn’t use that just yet.
Well I know about this people very well.. and I can tell you all what is xoom now was a stolen idea… They were just a web development firm contracted for a Dominican Republic wire transfer company to build and mantain the first service of its kind in the country. They werent named Xoom.com at the time.. The services was a success, and they got wide open with the potential..
The founders of Xoom.com had some friend at paypal, including the paypal founder, that was the reason why paypal gave them the green light for this services, so the first they only accepted paypal payments. They then did a really bad move… they then competed with the client that contracted them to build this thing… even launching advertising in Dominican Republic sites… there was a little legal fight, but they have everything in their side because they signed the contract with paypal directly –a bad trusting move for the local company–, at the end the local company had to move to another provider to continue the services and they relaunch as XOOM as a whole new company…
Mollyguard Corporation was their original name… you can see their website at mollygard.com
Isn’t xoom used to be a free webhosting company that offered 11mb instead of geocities 10mb way back like 7 years ago? Does anybody remember that?
its very easy to transfer money from paypal,I’ve used xoom for couple of times
I remember Xoom. They offered free web hosting, before NBC bought them and ruined the service.
Just a few days ago, the Philippines, one of the countries that Xoom benefits from, got PayPal’s full support. So Xoom will definitely be history here.
Although a Series E sounds impressive, Xoom is in a tough spot, with Western Union on one end and PayPal on the other, and in a tough market with low margins and very little room for error. And their traffic looks slightly down over the last year, so it doesn’t seem that they are growing business much.
One has to wonder if the investors are just keeping Xoom afloat hoping that things turn around later. In other words, in poker terms, the investors are probably pot-committed at this point and are hoping to catch a miracle card on the river to cash out.
This service sucks. So the list of countries you can send money for instant pickup is very limited. The website has several inconsistencies not least of which is the list of supported countries.
I wanted to test send some money to China, which the website claims they have a partnership agreement with Bank Of China for instant pick up at 11,000 locations (under the help-section of the website).
I sign up for an account, select send and only have the option of sending to Hong Kong, which, by the way they then say the person picking up the cash will also have to pay a fee of 25 hong kong dollars !
There was no option for China or sending for instant pickup. How can these clowns get $20m in VC money !
How is this different from remit2india.com? Remit2india does not charge any fees..
I’ve used Xoom earlier and it’s excellent. There are some coupon codes too, which can be used to bring down the fees.
@Saj
Remit2india sucks. It’s interface is neither attractive nor professional
Looks like an interesting service. I guess where PayPal leaves gaps, companies like Xomm fill the market need. Good luck to them !