Pockit, a mobile banking app that provides current account functionality and is targeting the U.K.’s “underbanked,” has picked up £2.9 million in further funding and will soon begin rolling out a remittance service to make it easier for its users to send money abroad.
Available as of next week, Pockit’s 150,000 or so users will be able to send money to Poland and to Italy, with all other Eurozone countries added to the system in June. Over the next few months, countries outside Europe will also be added, starting with Philippines, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria.
In a call, Pockit founder Virraj Jatania told me the new remittance service is part of the 2013-founded startup’s mission to bring a range of cost-effective digital banking products to customers currently underserved or financially excluded by traditional banks who don’t see a lot of money to made by serving this segment of the market, despite regulatory pressure to do so. The market size is somewhere between 4 to 8 million in the U.K., and — thought to be around 2 billion or more people worldwide.
Jatania says that Pockit, which counts Monise as perhaps its most direct competitor in the U.K., even though the latter has a greater focus on immigrants, decided to start with providing standard current account features aimed at customers who might otherwise find it hard…