Help us serve diaspora communities on their most important financial needs: first and foremost, the need to send money to friends and family back home.
We work hard every day to give people something very simple -- a reliable and honest service -- by relentlessly pursuing solutions to lower costs, reduce delays, and increase convenience.
Read more about why we started Taptap Send.
We believe the how is as important as the what, and embed our values in all that we do. Our values are ultimately what differentiate and define us, and are critical to achieving our mission and enjoying the journey. They start with “Impact first” recognizing the centrality of our social mission.
We exclusively pursue products and strategies that are in the interests of our customers and the communities we serve, while recognizing the tradeoffs this implies.
We will not compromise on pursuing social good, even if that means restricting the set of products and business practices that we will pursue (i.e., we will not pursue strategies or practices we believe to be harmful to customers); however, within that constrained set of options, we will optimize for scale, which ultimately translates to outsized social impact and financial returns.
I am because you are. We succeed or fail as a team -- not individuals -- and with our broader community of customers, regulators and investors.
We are all in this together, and recognize that we depend on each other to succeed. In doing so, we show respect to all, regardless of title, stature, wealth or otherwise. We do not pursue individual success at a direct cost to others (i.e., we avoid territoriality, self-promotion, I’m above this and “not my job” attitudes). This doesn’t preclude saying “no” -- rather, it requires that we prioritize effectively as a team to achieve Taptap’s long-term mission.
We recognize challenges, we accept their existence as reality, and we propose solutions.
Walls exist and we cannot change that; we can, however, change our approach to overcoming them. We do not lament, complain, or panic. Instead, we choose to accept them, and focus on proposing solutions -- whether it’s to go over, through, under, around or in a different direction altogether.
We seek out opportunities to unlock value by working harder and going further than others might.
Our work is hard, and doing it well is even harder. While many shy away from the more difficult problems, we lean into them, and even enjoy the opportunity to solve them. In fact, we see these obstacles as opportunities and choose not to take the easy or convenient path to success.
We dare to be honest with ourselves and open to feedback, and are willing to say what we believe.
Effective communication and teamwork relies on having confidence in what others tell you -- which ultimately requires candor. We owe it to each other to instill this confidence, proactively, even though giving and receiving information candidly is unusual in both professional and social life, and can be very uncomfortable.
To make such candor possible, and productive, we each seek continuous improvement in ourselves. Such improvement relies on an accurate awareness of self, and a desire and belief in the potential for growth -- i.e., avoiding the self-armor that shields us from feedback, and ultimately growth. We strive to overcome such tendencies, and help our teammates do the same in the spirit of kindness and generosity.
We value an understanding of specific circumstances and conditions -- of individual stories and lives.
Impact at scale is in our DNA, within the bounds of our social mission. But scale must not be mistaken for “one size fits all”. Our success relies on understanding the particular -- specific countries, specific communities, right down to the level of the individual. We strive to understand these particular conditions, with humility and empathy. As we grow, we must put in place scalable processes -- and how we relate to the particular may change, depending on our stage of growth. But what will not change is that time spent with individuals -- learning -- will always be valued at all levels of the organisation.
allowing us to create a culture of accountability without blame.
By holding ourselves accountable to our goals, and always leading with the question “what could I have done differently,” we build a culture of accountability and improvement without the commonly associated culture of blame. This does not mean that individuals are not evaluated on their performance -- they are -- but it does mean that we always look at ourselves before pointing to others. This requires us to check our egos, avoid defensiveness, and be humble.
We strive to enjoy ourselves at work, and be a source of positive energy for others.
Life is short, and we spend too much of it at work not to enjoy ourselves and our colleagues. Recognizing the reverberating impact our attitude can have on others, we focus on maintaining a positive attitude, enjoying the company of our colleagues, and not taking ourselves too seriously. We even try to create joy and laughter for others as we pursue our mission. We recognize this can be challenging: sometimes we’ve had a bad day, something is bothering us, and we just want to let it out. This value asks that we think about the impact of doing so on the team, and instead try to bring a bit of joy to our teammates and customers in what we do. (Note: this should not preclude candor, and we aspire to achieve both).
While we enjoy spending time together, and have regular retreats (post-COVID), we are a remote-friendly environment. For those that prefer proximity, we have hubs in London, New York and Brussels.
We love exploring and celebrating different cultures; and while not all of our jobs allow this every week, we get to share the experiences as we launch new countries, onboard new team members and chat to customers. Our team is from 25 countries and speaks 30+ languages. So if you’re interested in learning how to make Congolese Chicken Mouambe or listening to Kenya’s Bherhumba band, Taptap Send may be the place for you.
Canaan Ventures and Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) are our lead investors and are complemented by a range of leading emerging market (e.g., Helios, Wamda Capital, Crescent Enterprises) and tech investors (e.g., Breyer Capital, Flourish, Slow Ventures, and Coventures). We’ve been growing quickly, with COVID helping accelerate the shift towards digital payments.
Tech companies can sometimes trick themselves into believing they're single-handedly transforming the world for the better. We genuinely believe we can impact millions of families and even contribute to the growth of emerging markets, but we always act with humility, groundedness, and practicality (i.e., no elevating consciousness around here).
