Founders

Who Founded Remitly Global?

Matthew Oppenheimer, Josh Hug, Shivaas Gulati · Founded 2011 · Seattle, Washington

Quick Answer

Remitly Global was founded by Matthew Oppenheimer, Josh Hug, Shivaas Gulati in 2011 in Seattle, Washington. The company is currently led by Sebastian J. Gunningham.

Founding Story

Remitly began after Matthew Oppenheimer saw how painful cross-border money movement could be while living and working abroad. Josh Hug and Shivaas Gulati joined as co-founders.

Matthew Oppenheimer

Co-founder 2011

Background

Matthew Oppenheimer co-founded Remitly in 2011 with Josh Hug and Shivaas Gulati, after seeing firsthand while running mobile banking for Barclays in Kenya how expensive and painful it was for migrant workers to send money home -- transfer costs of 8-10% through cash-based, brick-and-mortar networks. He built Remitly as a purely digital alternative, launching through the Techstars accelerator in Seattle, where all three co-founders met, and led the company through its 2021 IPO and to its first full year of GAAP profitability in 2025 before transitioning from CEO to chairman in 2026. Oppenheimer's time working in Kenya for Barclays exposed him directly to the high fees and friction migrant workers faced sending money home through traditional channels and money-transfer operators like Western Union and MoneyGram, an experience he has repeatedly cited as the direct inspiration for founding Remitly.

Josh Hug

Co-founder 2011

Background

Josh Hug previously co-founded and served as CEO of Shelfari, a virtual bookshelf and book-recommendation site acquired by Amazon in 2008. With family living abroad, he had experienced firsthand how difficult and expensive international money transfers could be, and after mentoring Matthew Oppenheimer's early idea for Remitly, joined as a co-founder in 2011, serving as Chief Operating Officer. Hug had previously founded Shelfari, a book-lovers' social-networking site acquired by Amazon, and left his role at Amazon to join Remitly as co-founder and chief product officer, bringing consumer-product and engineering experience that shaped the mobile-first app experience differentiating Remitly from incumbents still reliant on physical agent locations.

Shivaas Gulati

Co-founder 2011

Background

Shivaas Gulati holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Wilkes University and a master's in information technology from Carnegie Mellon University. As an immigrant with family in India, he had experienced the challenges of cross-border banking directly, and co-founded Remitly in 2011 alongside Matthew Oppenheimer and Josh Hug, serving as Head of Engineering. Gulati stepped back from the company in 2022, relocating with his family to London. A Carnegie Mellon-trained engineer, Gulati served as Remitly's Head of Engineering, building the technical infrastructure needed to move money reliably across dozens of currencies and regulatory regimes at growing transaction volume.

Remitly Global, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Full timeline →

Sebastian J. Gunningham

Chief Executive Officer

2026 – Present

Gunningham inherited a company that had just turned its first full year of GAAP profit ($67.9 million net income on $1.635 billion revenue in 2025), and his mandate is to scale Remitly's next phase of cross-border financial-services growth, drawing on marketplace and payments experience from Amazon rather than remittances specifically, since this is his first role dedicated to the category. His background running Amazon's third-party marketplace business gave him experience scaling a complex, trust-dependent, two-sided platform, skills the board viewed as transferable to Remitly's own network of sending and receiving corridors that must maintain reliability across dozens of currencies and regulatory regimes. Beyond Amazon, his roles chairing Santander Consumer Finance and serving as Vice Chair and Co-CEO of WeWork gave him additional experience across both traditional financial-services governance and high-growth, operationally complex companies, a combination the Remitly board cited as directly relevant to leading a scaling, internationally regulated fintech.

Vikas Mehta

Chief Financial Officer

2022 – Present

Mehta's tenure has overseen Remitly's transition to sustained GAAP profitability, with 2025 marking the company's first full profitable year, and he continues in the CFO seat through the CEO transition from Oppenheimer to Gunningham, providing financial continuity during the leadership change. He has overseen Remitly's continued path toward sustained profitability following its 2021 IPO, a milestone that took the company several years longer to reach than some investors initially expected given the capital-intensive nature of compliance and licensing across its expanding corridor network.

Matthew Oppenheimer

Co-Founder and Chairman

2011 – Present

Over nearly 15 years as CEO, Oppenheimer took Remitly from a startup idea to $1.635 billion in 2025 revenue and profitability, and remains chairman of the board, providing continuity as Amazon veteran Sebastian Gunningham takes over day-to-day leadership.

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Who Founded Remitly Global? FAQ

Who founded Remitly Global, Inc. and in what year was it established?

Remitly Global, Inc. was founded in 2011 by Matthew Oppenheimer, Josh Hug, Shivaas Gulati in Seattle, Washington.

What was the original founding vision for Remitly Global, Inc.?

The founders established Remitly Global, Inc. with the objective of solving core inefficiencies in Digital cross-border payments and remittances, laying the foundation for its current global scale.

How does Remitly Global, Inc. preserve its founding principles today?

Even as Remitly Global, Inc. scales to $1.2B, the organization maintains the founders' commitment to innovation and customer-centric execution.