Remi is Building Real-Time Infrastructure for Cross-Border Payments

Money, when it crosses borders, rarely travels as fast as the individuals who send it require it to. The entire operation typically relies on the cumbersome system of pre-funded accounts, batch processing, and a labyrinth of middlemen, rendering the experience both slow and prohibitively expensive for the end user. In this latest instalment of Next Gen - the StartupScene series dedicated to spotlighting the most promising emerging ventures across the region - we sit down with one of the founders of Remi, an Egyptian fintech startup radically rethinking the mechanics of how capital actually moves when it departs one jurisdiction and arrives in another.

Founded in 2025 by A. Tony Amer and Mohamed Abdou, Remi is a specialist cross-border payments infrastructure company whose core mission is to bridge the gap between financial institutions and local payout rails within destination markets - enabling the real-time settlement of international transfers without the traditional, antiquated reliance on batch-based processing. What we see across the contemporary system today is not merely a single point of failure, but a structural deficit: in Egypt, cross-border payments remain stubbornly slow and costly, heavily shaped by legacy systems that tie up essential capital and unnecessarily delay settlement. These systemic issues - ranging from settlement lags, high transaction fees, compliance gaps, and a distinct lack of bank-grade infrastructure - all germinate from the archaic way in which cross-border money movement is currently structured.

Remi’s strategic approach is to rebuild that very structure from the ground up. The company is developing a sophisticated liquidity infrastructure layer designed to connect financial institutions directly to local payout networks, facilitating instantaneous cross-border settlement without the typical friction of multi-day delays. Instead of requiring institutions to pre-fund accounts or wait for specific batch cycles, transactions are intelligently routed and settled in real time, with foreign exchange (FX) exposure managed as an integral part of the live transaction flow rather than being treated as an after-the-fact reconciliation.

Naturally, building a system of this magnitude is rarely a straightforward endeavour. The world of cross-border payments is beholden to fragmented liquidity and regulatory environments that fluctuate significantly from one territory to another. Synthesising these disparate elements into a single real-time network demands constant, meticulous coordination to ensure every moving part remains aligned and fully functional. “The primary challenge lies in the complex coordination of liquidity, compliance, and various counterparties across multiple corridors all whilst scaling into a fully regulated infrastructure network,” explains A. Tony Amer, co-founder and CEO. “In five years’ time, our vision is for Remi to be an Egypt-grown unicorn operating on a truly global scale.”

The roadmap for the future is remarkably ambitious. By 2031, Remi aims to have established itself as a fully regulated global infrastructure layer for international payments, with a target valuation exceeding $1 billion, an envisioned $1 trillion in transaction volume, and the prestige of being an Egypt-grown fintech unicorn positioned to redefine the financial plumbing of the region.