...Okay. All right, next up, we've got Matt Oppenheimer, CEO and co-founder of Remitly. Matt, co-founded or founded the company in 2011, so 13 years now at the helm. Matt, thanks for being here. Really excited.
Thanks for having me.
So all right, so Remitly, you know, is one of the most mission-driven companies in the fintech space. I think that's always been clear since the IPO. The company's grown a ton since the IPO, mostly by sticking to your knitting. Where is Remitly on the journey, and how might the company evolve from here?
Yeah, I think that we're very much in the early innings of the journey. I think that, if you start with our vision of transform lives with trusted financial services that transcend borders, and you look at the core of our business, which is obviously remittances, we're 2.5% of a $1.8 trillion market, that is, you know, shifting digital. I think as a digital player with scale, we're in a unique position to continue to capture more share as that shift occurs. And then we're excited about with that relationship, being able to add other complementary products over time, and so early in the journey, really excited about where we're headed.
Yeah, that's great. So before we get into further into discussion, I just wanted to ask about some of the more recent trends. The market has been reacquainting itself with the seasonality trends in the business over the last few quarters. You shared, I think, more color on the past earnings call than you have historically about Q3 , the second half. So just to run through it, I think it's stronger revenue growth in the back half, take rate relatively flattish, you know, and talked about Q3 being seasonally softer and Q4 seasonally stronger in terms of customer acquisition. Correct me if I missed anything there. But it's a lot more detail. Is there anything to call out about activity levels or incremental thoughts about how the business is performing more recently?
Yeah, a lot to that question. I'd say, first off, we're excited about the second half of the year, and as you alluded to, I think that, you know, we've guided to numbers that we're excited about. And if you look at Q3 performance to date, it continues that trend of growth that we're excited about. On the seasonality point, I think that that's one that, you know, we want to make sure that we're explaining accurately. And the biggest element there is that, you know, different customers send money at different times of the year, but the biggest impact is in Q1. After a lot of customers send over the holidays, Q1 tends to be seasonally lower, and so that's something that's important to understand about the business.
But aside from that asterisk, if you look at the durability, the predictability, we look a lot from a cohort view. That's one of the things that I really appreciate about the business, having run it for, you know, now thirteen years, is that, you know, you kinda add these cohorts and, and layer cake on, and you continue to see strong retention with, you know, increasing differentiation and reliability of our product. You layer on new customers, that's, you know, gives us the ability to then very kind of accurately predict out future quarter growth. And it's rooted in the fact that our service is a, is a vital service, that, you know, people are sending money home for paying for groceries, for rent, for- to their, you know, relatives.
That's what it's rooted in, but then you overlap the way that we offer a differentiated and reliable service. And it's. There's a lot of predictability to it.
Yeah, that's great. And great to hear Q3 is off to a decent start. I guess we're more towards the end of the quarter now. So maybe switching gears to the user base. The user base has grown significantly over the past couple of years, reaching over six million active customers in Q2. How do you measure your progress on the user growth journey, and how do you frame what the long-term opportunity is?
Yeah, I'd say that, I mean, one thing just anecdotally, that is, that is really special for me as co-founder and CEO, more and more, you may not really... I mean, if you, if you send money to the Philippines and you're in the audience or you're listening to this, you send money to India, you send money to Mexico, you send money to Kenya, you send money to one of the now hundred and fifty receive markets that we serve, then you may have heard of Remitly's brand. But if you look at, you know, the 6 million quarterly active users, there's this nice kind of inflection point that we're at, where I think we're unique in that we have a certain amount of, as I mentioned, scale as a digital-first provider.
But what we're seeing more and more is that, you know, if you look at our brand awareness, in the markets that we serve, more and more customers not only know us, but they trust us to give them a reliable and fast and fairly priced service, and so the thing that I was saying that's special for me is when I'm out and about now, you know, asking customers when I interact with them, whether it's an Uber ride or I went on my first cruise this summer with my extended family and a lot of cruise ship workers, Remitly is becoming more and more well-known.
That word of mouth is exciting for us because if you think about the trust that is required to deliver our service, when we deliver that service, you know, whether it's 90% of transactions being delivered in less than an hour, 95% not requiring any sort of customer support, there's this multiplier effect. Because as folks look to a digital provider to for a remittance service, more and more, they know Remitly, and they know it as the trusted brand to be able to get money back home.
Great. Wanted to ask about transaction losses. You've made significant longer-term progress in reducing transaction losses, while also improving the customer experience. How do you effectively balance the customer experience and the transaction loss part of the equation?
Yeah, great question, so I'll start with, I like that you use transaction loss, because I think that is important to recognize. It includes fraud and non-fraud losses, but that is what we disclose. That's the number and kind of term that we talk about. We talk a lot about digital first at scale, but it's a great example within transaction losses, because what is incumbent upon us is to make sure that on the one hand, we have a really reliable and fast experience for good customers, and then, on the other hand, keeping our fraud loss rates within ranges that we deem acceptable, and we use really sophisticated machine learning. AI, in this context, I know it's trendy thing, so it's probably a little bit of a stretch, but it's in that same realm.
Right.
The data and analytics that we're putting into our machine learning models are coming up with more and more precise risk scores for every single customer. And as we're doing that, we want to make sure that we leverage that competitive advantage, not only to drive down fraud loss rate, but also to be able to maintain a really seamless, reliable, trusted experience that manifests itself in LTV, manifests itself in retention, manifests itself in some of that brand and word-of-mouth that I talked about. So as we look into Q3, and as we've looked at our modeling, we see there being opportunities on that LTV retention and continued improvement of the customer experience, especially given that and when you look at our transaction loss rate, it's already what we believe is at an industry-leading level.
As we go into Q3, I would expect our transaction loss rate to remain stable or similar to Q2, with continued confidence around driving that retention, driving LTV, driving word-of-mouth. I think it's a big competitive advantage for us when you look at the strength of our machine learning models and the sophistication by which we both drive down sideline rate and manage fraud loss rate.
Yeah. And can you maybe expand a little bit on just what you saw? What was it that kind of led you to make that kind of balancing act?
Yeah, I think that, you know, every quarter, there's gonna be a little bit of fluctuation within the transaction loss number and on the sideline rate number. But if you look at the longer arc and you look at where our transaction loss rate is, what's exciting is it's already at industry-leading levels, and we're continuing to drive down sideline rate. And you see that in things like our customer support expense, right? Because when you have a sideline, customer has to call, or we have to reach out to a customer, we have to collect additional information. And part of how we're driving down things like our customer support costs are, and materially, right? If you look at the end of 2030 , it was at about 10%. Last quarter, it was at 6.4% of revenue.
And those we're seeing enormous leverage, not only on the LTV and retention side, but also on other elements like customer support, as we manage that sideline rate. And so we want to make sure that we're balancing that with the transaction loss rate, and we're really excited about what we're seeing.
Great. You recently hired a new CFO, Vikas, who's in the audience today, and I know he's doing meetings with you over the course of the day. Could you talk about what you were looking for in a new CFO partner to run the business? And what attracted you to Vikas, and, you know, how you're thinking about, you know, priorities now?
Yeah. Yeah, I think you mentioned, kind of, kicked things off with us being a mission-driven business. And from the first time I met Vikas, I mean, he's a Remitly customer. He knows our business at a very personal level. He's passionate about serving our customers. And then you look at his deep experience, you know, at name brands and large organizations like Microsoft, where he was in investor relations, to more recent experience, where he was CFO of Anaplan and has been in the seat as a public company CFO. Really, really unique fit. And then the only thing I'd add to that is, you know, the cultural fit in terms of our partnership and the amount that I already see the value he's adding to my leadership team and my directs, incredibly exciting.
So really, really excited Vikas is here, and I'm excited for a lot of you to be able to meet and interact with him, because especially on the IR front, he's ramping up, listening, learning, and I think there's a lot we can do on that front.
Great. You know, on the topic of predictability, I think one of the challenges in the fintech industry, more broadly, you know, is just the cyclicality of a lot of the revenue streams. A lot of them are more financial services-oriented in nature. I think one of the things that you've highlighted over the years is the predictability of the model, the consistency of the unit economics, the recurring nature of the transactions. So, you know, when you look out, what kind of does and doesn't have the potential to surprise you from quarter to quarter?
Yeah, I think that it goes back to the reliability and predictability point, and I think that there's. When you look at the fundamentals of the business and the cohort view, what you see is that different customers send different quarters at times. Some customers send every paycheck, some customers send every month, some customers just send for Eid or Christmas. And so, when you look at it on that annual cohort basis level, what I like is there's not a lot of surprises. The only things to understand at a more marginal level about the business, one is Q1, as I mentioned, and especially the transition from Q4, which tends to be a seasonally high month, people sending, as I mentioned, for Eid, for Christmas, et cetera, to Q1, which is the seasonally lowest quarter. Q4, seasonally highest quarter, Q1, the seasonally lowest quarter.
Yep.
And so that's one. And then the second, although it's less pronounced in our business, is understanding a bit about foreign exchange and how that can pull forward demand on the margin, from quarter to quarter, because customers can get more Mexican pesos per dollar, as one example, although we're in 5,000 corridors now. And it's important to understand that's on the margin compared to other, especially banks or, you know, disruptors serving folks like banks, because our customer segment, I mean, there's a wide range, but the core of our segment doesn't have the luxury of waiting until rates are good. Some do, and that's why there's a little bit of elasticity around foreign exchange. But overall, the punchline is: there's a lot of predictability. There's not a lot of surprises.
Important to understand the quarterly component, important to understand on the margin, the foreign exchange component. But I rest easy looking at an annual view and looking at a cohort view because I have a lot of visibility, even going into 2025, what the shape of our cohorts and revenue looks like.
Okay. You know, one topic that's come up with investors has just been policy risk around the election, the potential for the U.S. to adopt a more stringent border security or immigration policy. Can you help frame the impact that immigration, both documented and undocumented, has had on the business? And then just how you think about kind of the range of outcomes and how it would flow through to Remitly.
Yeah. Yeah, so there are 250 million, I think it's closer to 300 million folks that live and work outside the country they're born. So that's point number one. And structurally, despite political kind of, you know, focus or fluctuations, the trend of migration globally has continued to increase. And so that market or amount of customers that we can serve continues to grow, and again, we're 2.5% of the market. We obviously are watchful of, you know, any sort of political changes, policy. We have a good government affairs team now.
But the reality is, because we're only 2.5% of the, call it, 300 million folks that live and work outside of the country they're born, there's an enormous amount of room to continue to grow within that customer base, especially as there's this macro shift from physical cash locations to a digital provider. And so what it actually means is, despite some of the rhetoric and things, and even if you had the flow of new immigrants or migrants moving to a new country slow down, the base of customers that we can serve is already so large, and we're in 30 origination countries now across U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, UAE.
And that broader trend of migration is very much a structural tailwind makes it sound temporary, a structural benefit for us as a business, and so lots of customers to serve. And the last thing I'd add is, broader than the political element, remittances, you look at World Bank reports, you look at World Bank data, remittances have been historically resilient despite economic fluctuations. Because if you think about why customers send money home, it's sending money, as I mentioned, for, you know, our customers' families, their moms, groceries, for rent, for emergency medical expenses, for tuition. So it's very high on the list of expenses, so to speak, very non-discretionary, and because of that, highly resilient.
Yeah, makes sense. You know, as I mentioned earlier, the company has stayed very focused on kind of executing on, you know, the large opportunity within remittances. What's the vision for non-remittance products? And, you know, investors have been asking about Remitly Circles. Maybe you can talk about what that product is and, you know, what the potential is.
Yeah. Yeah. So going back to the vision, the second half of that was financial services that transcend borders. And if you think about that, the core of the financial services pain points that our customers face is remittances. But we have built, and especially over the last couple of years, we've built what we call our North Star architecture. So we're decoupling our platform to be able to, one, more efficiently and effectively deliver our remittance business, because that's what most engineers at Remitly and product managers at Remitly are working on. And by having it decoupled, it makes it a lot more efficient and effective to be able to deliver that service. But two, it makes it more modular.
So if I'm trying to do a new authentication system, if I'm trying to leverage those risk systems that I mentioned for a different kind of product or service, it can be much more easily added, and we can iterate much more quickly when it comes to new products and complementary products and services. We're on that note, being disciplined about that, right-
Right.
in terms of how much we're investing in, into complementary products, but we can be disciplined because of the North Star architecture that we've built, and when you look at the pain points beyond remittances that a lot of our customers face, you think about, you know, there, there's. I won't go into specific examples now. You can see Circles out there, the product speaks for itself, but I think there's a lot of pain points beyond payments in terms of storing value, in terms of broadening that relationship, and that's why we call it complementary products, not new products. Because the success of those is to deepen that relationships, not for the next one, two, three years. We're talking for the next five or ten years.
I think that there really aren't any companies that I can think of that specifically serve and have solved the financial services that transcend border question. Our assets, our expertise, our relationship with our customers, gives us the unique ability to do that. Circles is one, and there are others that I'm looking forward to talking about more in the quarters to come.
Cool. I'm looking forward to that, too. I wanted to talk through competitive dynamics. You know, some of your direct competitors recently have made, you know, pretty positive comments about some of the competitive dynamics in the industry. Curious to get your perspective on that. How do you think competitive dynamics and remittances kind of differ from how it's discussed in the broader investor community?
Yeah. Yeah, I think that the difference, having built this business for the last 12 years, is that as a few companies start to achieve scale, and it's a very few, us, I think, being the largest digital-first player at scale, serving the money transmission market, we have the ability to offer a much better customer experience, meaning faster. I already mentioned the 90%+ transactions that are less than an hour, more reliable, more trusted, and more cost-efficient, because our variable costs come down, service. I think what you're seeing, both because of the scale and because of that shift to digital, you're seeing subscale players, and you're seeing legacy players or the legacy business of. By legacy, I mean, cash-based business of businesses that have been around longer.
It's just a harder business to grow in, because secularly, it is shifting away from going to a physical cash agent to going to a digital device. And when folks go to a digital device, I think increasingly, and this was very different than five or 10 years ago, where I could have given you five to 10 medium to subscale money transmitters, of which we were one. Now, we're becoming more and more, I think, the default to for customers that are sending money online in the corridors that we serve, and we have lots of room to continue to grow.
Okay. So you mentioned already being in five thousand send and receive corridors. You know, as the company's gotten bigger, what are some of the ways that you've been able to scale your operations, realize efficiencies in terms of launching new corridors?
Yeah, I think that each incremental corridor has gotten more efficient and to some extent, maybe a little bit too much detail, but I'll break it out from send and receive, so I mentioned 30 origination corridors, 150 receive corridors, and we've grown from just over 1,000 corridors to over, when we went public about three years ago to almost exactly three years ago, actually, to over 5,000 corridors now, and the great thing is there's also a combinatorial effect to that, right, and so when I talk about a send corridor, like the UAE as an example, there tends to be a little bit more work for that. You've got to get a license, which has a longer lead time. You've got to optimize the compliance experience. You've got to optimize the payment acceptance.
But there are only so many different ways to do KYC on the compliance side or to do payment acceptance. So each incremental new origination corridor has gotten faster, but it takes a little more planning to get the licensing and other things in place. On the receive side, once you launch one new origination corridor, now we automatically get 150 corridors because of the network on the receive side. And on that side, we've got 4 billion bank accounts, 1 billion mobile wallet - over 4 billion, over 1 billion mobile wallets, and over 400,000 cash pickup locations. And that is also much - that one is actually even easier to add new corridors.
But I'd say the focus there, given that we're already in 150 receive, is to go deeper to drive lower costs, faster transactions that have fewer kind of errors or sideline rates. And so, the punchline is more efficient, easier to launch new corridors, even easier on the disbursement side. And if I kind of take it to one higher level, I would say that when you look at the growth opportunities, it's not just adding new corridors, because I think folks kind of say, "Okay, do you need to add a bunch of new corridors to continue to grow?" And the reality is, the bread and butter is growing in the corridors we're already in. As I mentioned, we've added so many in the last three years.
Second, we are gonna continue to add new corridors because that will drive not necessarily growth in the next few quarters, but the next few years. And then the third that I'll mention in terms of growth vectors is, specifically adding new segments. And so if you think about, segments, I mean, we talked about in our last call, segments like seafarers.
Yeah.
But I think there are other segments that we're really excited about serving in 2025, that we're already laying the foundation to serve, that I think can also drive future growth.
Yeah, that makes sense. So maybe on that note, I mean, you've always had a strong presence in sort of the big three corridors, India, Philippines, Mexico. And you spent a lot of time only servicing those corridors, perfecting the model before expanding significantly into new corridors. Now, you know, five thousand, you just went through. As you've added some of the smaller corridors, have you been able to maintain the marketing efficiency that you have seen in some of these larger corridors? Basically, how portable is the marketing strategy to, you know, some of the smaller corridors?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So most of the marketing, when you think about corridors, is on the sender of the remittance, right?
Mm-hmm.
And so, the playbook for how we roll out marketing to a new origination corridor, as we call it, has scaled really nicely. And you can see that in our numbers, how fast we're growing, and, you know, it's in the mid-twenties for U.S. and Canada. We're growing, I think, 47% when you look at rest of world. So you're seeing when we say rest of world, that's all of the 28 other origination corridors. And it kind of makes sense because we're rolling out the same playbook in terms of everything from our digital channels to our marketing technology platform and optimizing promotions on a de-averaged basis for new customers, to leveraging the word-of-mouth and trusted brand.
Like, I think about, like, the UAE, while we are marketing to the sender, the UAE has a large, you know, percentage of, Filipinos that we can serve. And, that's an opportunity for us to leverage the trusted brand, the localized product, and all of that, to be able to ramp even faster in new markets that serve, even though we're marketing to the senders, that serve the same receive corridor that we're already large in, in other regions.
Yeah. So maybe let's stick with the topic of customer acquisition and marketing. You know, we hear the same thing in terms of feedback that Remitly is doing something really special on the marketing side and customer acquisition front. You've talked about payback periods, less than twelve months, healthy rate of customer additions, you know, and I know there's a secret sauce that you're not gonna give away today, but what do you think you've gotten right about marketing?
Yeah, I think that, what I'd say first on the foundation side, 'cause when we talk about brand and word of mouth, our CMO would be the first to tell me that that is not a marketing metric, that is a product metric. And if you deliver a great product, then you have the ripple effects that I talked about, which is somebody using our product, having a magical experience, having no delays, having it magically fast, having it be fairly priced. And what happens then is our customers tell their loved ones, their families, their friends, the communities they live in. So I can't underestimate that. That is a big part of why I think we've gotten outsized growth. And then you layer on, now to our marketing strategy, the ability to have a much more data-driven, and unit economics focused approach.
You know, we've talked about 6x LTV to CAC ratios. We've talked about less than twelve-month payback. I think unfortunately, there are some companies out there that kind of throw out terms like that. We have so much rigor under those numbers on a de-averaged and geographically, both geographically and corridor-specific de-averaged basis, that I think part of our secret sauce has been not just deploying marketing dollars, but doing it very scientifically, and even looking at the marginal amount, not the average amount, so when our marketing team is thinking, "Hey, do we increase or decrease some of our, you know, call it paid search or digital channel investments?" They're not looking at the average customer acquisition cost.
They're looking at the marginal, meaning that next dollar spent, either higher or lower, and seeing what the return on that marketing dollar is. And so I think that's a big part of our secret sauce. And our marketing team, I think, is top-notch, both in terms of the science and the sophistication, the marketing technology platform, and I would also add, the creative. I think the creative that we deliver is also really compelling and memorable.
Yeah. I guess maybe the follow-up on the, on the topic of marketing, and a lot of the questions we get are around just the scalability of marketing and how to think about sort of the push-pull between margins and growth, you know, when the growth, you know, inevitably does slow at some point, you know, in the future. So how do you kind of think about that and around just the scalability of marketing?
Yeah, you know, it's what I can say is that as we test the efficiency side of that elasticity, we're seeing favorable results in the sense that word-of-mouth, I think, is helping continue to sustain our growth. That being said, we also have a big vision. Marketing shouldn't be contained just to one quarter, and the payback and LTV to CAC numbers that we're seeing are very favorable. And so I think there is that balance, especially as a public company, where we want to continue to show leverage.
When you look at the IRR, the NPV, the LTV to CAC, the payback, however we want to look at it from a return on investment standpoint and our ability to measure it, we want to spend what is very high return capital to continue to not only accomplish our vision, but ultimately deliver more gross profit, which is the input into LTV, and then have that LTV flow into cash flows for the business over time, which is what ultimately creates long-term shareholder value.
Yeah. And then, I guess, you know, the one element sort of outside your control is sort of just the overall ad spend environment and kind of like the efficiency of the ad spend and just broader pricing trends. You know, how do you think about the risk to the upside or the downside, and is there any way to kind of frame where we're at today in terms of the ad spend environment?
Yeah, I think, you know, we've been through a lot of cycles, both in terms of ad spend as well as, like, the overall, like, market changing in terms of our... Like, what channels and tools we can use. And what I mean by that is, like, I think we were one of the earlier adopters, at least in our space, of Google channels like UAC, which is now a good channel for us, but we were an early adopter there. I would say. And I give you that broader context because, again, now, having done this for a dozen years, we've seen a lot of cycles. We've seen, and so I, I'd say that there isn't anything material right now in terms of the competitive ad spend environment.
There would have been material points, whether it was changes in channels, you know, privacy changes that made it harder for a period of time. This is years ago. Crypto, I would have mentioned, you know-
Yeah
... when money was cheap/free, and there were a lot of irrational, to some extent, crypto advertising out there. None of that exists right now, and so, you know, we feel well-positioned.
Yeah. One of the trends that, you know, has been accelerated by the pandemic is just the digitization of remittances as more customers switch from cash to digital channels.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think you've mentioned the Philippines in the past, the increased usage of digital wallets there.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe you could just talk about that shift. How do you kind of see it occurring over time? And then how do we kind of translate that to kind of customer experience, lifetime value, and all, you know, all the things that you guys look at for the business?
Yeah. We're incredibly excited about the shift to digitization, because what happens when customers receive funds via bank deposit and mobile wallet, is how I'd define digitization as opposed to cash pickup. What happens is the variable costs for customers come down, and we can help lead and drive some of the variable costs coming down, given our scale. And when variable costs come down, that gives us the option to either pass along more savings to customers or continue to have you know leverage when it comes to revenue, less transaction gross profit. And so I think that there's big opportunities for us there, and we're excited about leading the way with that change.
We do want to make sure we are passing along some of those savings to customers, but overall, the shift to digitization is something that has been occurring and is something that we're excited about continuing to lead the way on.
Yeah. I know you can't, you can't push that on the customers, but you can kind of prepare for it. You know, one of the questions we get is just what is sort of the status of Remitly's sort of digital payouts network?
Mm-hmm.
How deep are the integrations in the market? How much more work is there to do-
Mm-hmm
... to kind of either improve or build out more connectivity? Is there anything you can share on that front?
Yeah, I would say that, fundamentally, what we're good at doing is getting customers the funds they want to receive them, and it could be cash pickup, it could be mobile wallet, it could be bank deposit, it could be, even door-to-door delivery in markets like the Dominican Republic, which is how customers like to receive funds there. A courier will come to your door and deliver funds. So we've proven that we can do it in that wide range, and how we do it in each market will really vary, because in some markets, there's going to be a local network. Like, take Brazil and Pix, which is a local payments network, that has really transformed e-commerce, or not e-commerce, but commerce broadly in Brazil.
Where we see examples like that, with our scale and compliance track record, and other things, we're gonna get direct access to those rails. Where there isn't that, because not all countries have been as sophisticated as, you know, Brazil or India with UPI, we're gonna do, you know, a wide range of integrations to get access to the way that customers want to receive funds. And I think that we have a proven playbook for how we do that, and our Global Money ovement team, is what we call it internally, is constantly thinking through both what are the long-term trends, and then prioritizing how to get funds the way that customers want to receive them, in, you know, the quarters and years to come.
Yeah, makes sense. It's a good segue into transaction margins. You know, you made some healthy progress expanding transaction margins over the years. You know, I know that can be lumpy from quarter to quarter in terms of transaction losses. You know, where do you see the biggest levers to improve transaction costs over time and ultimately drive margins higher?
Yeah. I think that there's, you know, I think that if you look at our existing revenue less transaction expense/margin, I would say that it's in a healthy spot. I'd expect the improvement to moderate in terms of the historical you know, pretty large jumps that we saw on transaction margin, on revenue less transaction expense.
Yep.
And so I'd expect moderation going forward with, you know, us being in a position of strength, given how high that number already is.
Got it. No, that makes sense. And then just maybe taking it one step down the income statement. Wanted to ask about margins, 'cause, you know, you have done a really good job on the customer acquisition, the customer support side, and generating operating leverage. I think there's also an AI story there on the customer support side. So more operationally, where do you expect to get leverage out of the business in the years to come?
Yeah. So if you do go below that, I'll start with the CS side, because that is, I use AI when I mean AI, and that is an area where we saw, as I mentioned, 10% down to 6.4% from end of 2023 to last quarter, and that is continuing to scale in terms of number of dollars as our revenue continues to grow. But we have just, in some ways, started. We started in Q2, and that's why we talked about it, but there's a lot of opportunity on the AI side. And what we're seeing is leveraging this AI chatbot that we have, that completely resolves customer issues without having to have any sort of manual or, you know, manual person interaction. And so lots of opportunities there, both with AI and with our scale.
Go back to that disbursement network point, Cat, and the way we collect funds, as well as our risk systems. The most common reason somebody calls our customer support is saying, "Where's my money?" Because of one of those three issues. We're getting better on all three of those, in addition to the AI front. So that's a lot of leverage opportunity there. And then, as a technology company, I think that, you know, we're investing in the future, but, as we look at the past of what we've already invested in and, the assets that we've built on the technology side, that's what's great about technology businesses, is that investment has been made. And so I would expect our overall headcount costs to continue to moderate. And then we've already talked about marketing, so I won't repeat that.
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And then, you know, as we continue to think about just the business evolving over time, you know, one key question in investors' minds is kind of seeing the scalability of the overall margin footprint over time to more terminal levels. You know, how confident are you in terms of the ability to scale towards, you know, a more mature profit margin profile over time?
Yeah, I mean, I think it very squarely connects with the prior question that you asked. I think understanding the opportunity of leverage, especially below that the revenue less transaction expense line, you start to see a margin profile that, that is, that is attractive. We haven't released exactly what percentage that'll be. We may, we may in the future, but you already see that happening with the trend line of our Adjusted EBITDA in terms of what that is as, as a percentage of revenue, and I think there's continued growth there to be seen.
Yeah. So I think, you know, we've hit on a lot of topics today, you know, is there anything you'd like to kind of leave us with in terms of either your priorities, what you're most focused on or just the state of things broadly?
Yeah, I mean, I think the only other thing I'd do is, like, I'd bring it back to our customers. And I think that the... You know, I mentioned that I went on a cruise this summer, but there was one specific customer who is from outside of Manila. She's been a cruise ship worker for, like, 25 years. She ran the center where we were dropping off our kids during the day for, you know, to help take care of kids on the cruise ship. And to see her experience, she used to, during her, like, relatively few breaks, because I don't know if folks have been on cruises, but cruise ship workers work incredibly hard.
And during her relatively few breaks, what she used to do is get off the ship, go to one of the physical locations, and to hear the impact that Remitly had made on her life. And at first, I told her I was an employee of Remitly, then I told her I was the CEO. When I told her I was the CEO, she kind of blew her mind.
When I heard her story of how it changed her life from going to that physical location, to then being able to download the app during her break, be able to do it from the cruise ship, to be able to link her payroll card that she got from the cruise ship, to be able to send money back to her family in Cavite, which is right outside of Manila, to have it happen instantly, to have her feel the peace of mind that she can trust us with her hard-earned money, a big percentage of her income, especially for a cruise ship worker, like, most of her income is going back. It's not like a marginal coffee that she's buying. That is what we're all about. The great thing is that there's a lot more customer examples like that, that are using Remitly.
A lot of them are telling their friends in their communities, in terms of how great of an experience they've had, and there's a lot of room to grow and to go before we really accomplish our vision, not only within remittances, but then broad financial services, and we're just getting started there.
Great. Ending where we started on the mission-driven side of the company. So, Matt, thanks for being here today. Really enjoyed the conversation.
Thanks, Will.