Saving while sending: The site demystifying global transfers
A CMU master’s student in electrical and computer engineering has launched a company helping people understand how much of their money may be disappearing when they send funds abroad.
When Omar Ghabayen started at Carnegie Mellon University, his parents would send him money each month from Jordan. After a while, Ghabayen noticed that not all the money his parents sent was coming through.
“I realized there was always a missing $20 in exchange fees and another $20 as a wire transfer fee from the bank itself,” he said. That missing $40 wasn’t the end of the world for Ghabayen, but having grown up in Jordan, he knew that kind of difference could be felt differently in developing countries—especially if people didn’t understand all their options.
Source: Omar Ghabayen
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Now a master’s student in electrical and computer engineering, Ghabayen has developed a website, Remit-Scout, where expats like him can compare the rates transfer services charge for sending remittances. As he puts it, “think Expedia for international money transfers.”
One way Remit-Scout differentiates itself is by allowing users to see what will actually arrive. Users have access to information from over 30 providers across more than 200 international corridors, such as between the U.S. and Mexico. Users can then compare providers’ fees, payout methods, delivery speeds, and, of course, how much the person on the other end will actually get.
Remit-Scout started as a course project under Jeffrey Eppinger, a recently retired software and societal systems professor. “It took me a bit of time to find my balance between building the app and having time to do homework and go to class,” Ghabayen said. However, he believes CMU’s high expectations set him up to persevere as the sole founder, developer, and marketer of Remit-Scout.
“Carnegie Mellon prepares you for life,” he said. “It prepares you to figure things out, how to survive. I think it becomes very crucial when it comes to entrepreneurship,” he said, when “everybody wants a piece of the pie.
Carnegie Mellon prepares you for life.
Omar Ghabayen, Founder, Remit-Scout
He also credited recent advances in AI in helping him jumpstart some of the work developing Remit-Scout. He said CMU provided him with the skills to build useful autonomous agents.
As of the beginning of the year, Remit-Scout has provided more than 80,000 comparisons, with users collectively saving an estimated $2.5 million. Ghabayen was proud of that figure, saying, “This number proves that the proof of concept exists, that the friction point a lot of people suffer from exists. It also proves that it couldn’t have been possible for somebody to understand this dilemma” without a website like Remit-Scout.
Source: Omar Ghabayen
Omar Ghabayen poses after Commencement.
Ghabayen said one goal for the company will be to expand the number of languages the website is available in. He would also like to expand Remit-Scout to the business-to-business market, where money transfer providers could compare their rates against competitors to better understand where to price their services.
Ghabayen said this experience opened his eyes to the realities of entrepreneurship, from investing in the right facets of the business to turning the page on generating revenue. “It puts you in the shoes of a hyperrealistic person,” he said.
He also said this experience taught him the perspectives of multiple types of people within an organization. “I will understand what other people in a company want in terms of relationships or goals. You become more of the mediator between every single intersection of the company when you start to understand why others want what they want.”