From a phone call on a Saturday night, to a global fintech: how a family emergency inspired two brothers to build a better way to send money home.
In 2016, Nuradin Omar was visiting his mother when her phone rang. A family member in Somalia urgently needed money. The local money transfer agents had already closed for the weekend — she would have to wait until Monday to send anything.
For someone facing an emergency thousands of kilometres away, two days is a very long time.
Nuradin left her house that night unable to help, and unable to stop thinking about it. A software engineer by training who was working in project management at the time, he couldn’t shake one question: what if his mum could send money home from her phone, without waiting for an agent to open? What he didn’t yet know was that millions of people around the world faced exactly the same problem.
From Family Problem To Family Business
Nuradin and his brother Hashim came to Australia as children in the early 1990s. Growing up between cultures, they understood first-hand how important it is to be able to support family overseas — even so, the scale of what MasterRemit would become wasn’t clear at the start.
“Back then, I never would have believed that MasterRemit would be where it is today.”
Nuradin convinced Hashim to join him as Co-Founder, and together they launched MasterRemit in January 2019, serving four countries. Since then, the company has grown to support transfers to more than 50 countries, serving over 349,000 customers and processing more than 1.9 million transactions.
More Than Moving Money
At its simplest, MasterRemit lets customers send money overseas through its app and website. But the problem it set out to solve goes deeper than that. In many parts of the world, opening a bank account isn’t straightforward — paperwork, eligibility requirements and other barriers that most Australians never think about stand in the way. In those places, mobile phones and digital wallets have become an alternative to traditional banking, letting people receive money using a mobile number rather than a bank account.
By connecting customers to digital wallets and other ways to receive money, MasterRemit helps bring financial services within reach of people often left out of the formal financial system — what Nuradin calls the “unbanked”.
“Our mission is solving financial inclusion, solving the problems of the unbanked people.”
What One Transfer Can Do
Every transfer has a story behind it. One customer helped his family buy school supplies for his children. Another helped his grandmother pay medical bills. In Kenya, money from family helped pay for farming equipment, seeds and supplies to grow a small farm. In Ghana, support from a father overseas helped his son start a cocoa export business. In one village, a transfer from Australia helped set up a soccer hub, giving local children a place to play, make friends and build confidence.
One story has stayed with Nuradin more than most. A woman contacted him directly, asking whether she could send money to her sister, who was in labour and on her way to hospital.
“She said she’s in a car going to hospital right at that moment,” he recalls. They worked through it together, the money arrived, and a healthy baby was born. “In some countries, if you don’t pay at the hospital, they will literally not put you in line,” he says — a reminder that what looks like a routine transaction on a screen can matter enormously to the person waiting on the other side.
Two Brothers, One Mission
Nuradin Omar and Hashim Omar bring different strengths to the business — Nuradin describes himself as the strategy person, while Hashim leads on operations. Together, they’ve spent years building a company around a problem that started in their own family. And their mother? Fittingly, she’s a MasterRemit customer.
Built on Community Trust
Sending money to family is personal. Customers aren’t just trying out a new app; they’re trusting MasterRemit with money meant for their parents, children, brothers, sisters and friends. That’s why MasterRemit has invested in relationships with migrant communities across Australia.
“We do a lot of community engagement events. We have a strong connection with local communities, whether it’s Filipino, Nepalese or Sri Lankan. We try to build relationships through community engagement rather than just presenting them with a business proposition.”
Still Driven by the Same Purpose
Going from side project to growing fintech has changed Nuradin’s life. The corporate hours are long gone; the laptop stays on and the working week often runs to seven days. Asked if he thinks the pace will slow down, he laughs.
“If you asked me two years ago, I would have said yes. But if you’re asking me now, I would say no,” he says. “I’m passionate about it. I wouldn’t be able to keep going if I didn’t love what I’m doing.”
A lot has changed since that phone call in 2016. But the reason MasterRemit exists hasn’t. Every new customer is another family, another need, and another person who wants to help the people they love — and now, they don’t have to wait until Monday.
We believe everybody should have access to financial inclusion, regardless of where they are in the world.
Nuradin Omar
CURRENT ROLE
Founder & CEO- MasterRemit
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nuradin-omar/
WEBSITE