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Zepz has denied reports that its initial public offering has been delayed due to “accounting and management” issues, calling the report “speculative and factually inaccurate.”
Zepz is a leading technology startup, run by Somali tycoon Ismail Ahmed.
The news comes less than 24 hours after a Bloomberg report revealed that the company has delayed its planned IPO on the New York Stock Exchange due to internal issues such as account verification, turnover, and other accounting and management fillings required for the listing.
According to Bloomberg, sources familiar with the planned $6-billion IPO claimed that the UK-based tech startup was having difficulty checking and verifying accounts in a “timely manner.”
The sources alleged that the startup also had a complex management structure and a high turnover rate among its senior leadership, with four executives holding the CEO title and three different executives serving as the chief marketing officer in the span of a year.
Meanwhile, Zepz, the parent company of WorldRemit, the cross-border digital payments firm founded by Ahmed in 2010, disclosed that it has yet to formally announce an IPO timeline.
Under the leadership of Ahmed, Zepz operates two market-leading brands — WorldRemit and Sendwave, another cross-border payment platform authorized to send money in the United States, Canada, the UK, and the EU.
Sendwave was acquired in 2021 to expand its reach as a leading payments platform. By the end of the same year, Zepz had secured $292 million in new primary funding, giving it a $5-billion valuation as it works to disrupt the $1-trillion peer-to-peer cross-border payments market.
The recent report on the firm’s IPO comes amid operating issues in the fintech industry, which has led some firms to cut jobs to reduce costs while optimizing earnings in the face of rising operating costs.
Former Zepz CEO Breon Corcoran embarked on a cost-cutting strategy in February, announcing plans to reduce the firm’s workforce by five percent while downsizing its London office, freezing pay, and reducing the marketing budget by $40 million.
