The Challenge
Rewire, a fintech company in the remittance space, came to us with a concern:
The wire transfer market felt like a race to the bottom — with differentiation hinging entirely on price.
They asked:
Was there another way to better serve migrant workers, their core audience?Where was the real opportunity for growth?
The Approach
We began by digging deeper into the lives of migrant workers using the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework.
The goal:
Identify which aspect of their financial lives was most challenging and underserved.
Not just unmet needs — but which job they were trying to get done, and how poorly current solutions were helping them do it.
Because here’s the thing:
A market usually becomes a race to the bottom when the job is over-served — meaning mature players are all helping customers achieve the same outcome, in more or less the same way, with similar features and pricing.
And that’s exactly what was happening in remittances.
Everyone was optimizing the wire transfer.
No one was asking if that’s what people actually wanted.
The Insight
What we found surprised even the team at Rewire:
Migrant workers didn’t actually want to send wire transfers.
What they really wanted was to support their families in times of need — and do it in a way that felt secure, immediate, and flexible.
Wire transfers were simply the only tool available.
But it wasn’t a good one.It created trade-offs:
• If an emergency happened, the money wasn’t always available instantly.
• Saving money back home exposed them to inflation and reduced control.
• Saving in their own country meant it wasn’t available when their family needed it.
In short, wire transfers weren’t the job.They were a workaround.
The Innovation
So we flipped the script.
We helped Rewire launch the Shared Family Account:
• One family, two countries.
• Migrants could save in USD and issue a debit card to family members back home.
• Loved ones could spend funds when needed — no wire, no waiting, with the best FX rate in real time.
We launched a waitlist of over 1,000 people within weeks and had a live pilot running in just two months — with real families using real cards.
The Outcome
Rewire wasn’t just in the wire transfer business anymore.
They were solving a different, more meaningful problem — and doing it in a completely new way.
Soon after the pilot, Rewire was acquired by Remitly.
One of the key reasons?
Their bold, insight-led approach to service innovation.