Ismail Ibrahim Ahmed (Somali: Ismaciil Axmed, Arabic: إسماعيل أحمد) is a Somali-British entrepreneur and the founder and chairman of WorldRemit, a money transfer company, and director of the Sahan Foundation International.

[2][3] Before the outbreak of the Somali Civil War, Ahmed was awarded a World Bank scholarship to study economics in the UK at the University of London.

[7][2] While studying in the UK, Ahmed worked in a number of part-time jobs, including strawberry-picking in Kent, and sent money home to family in Somaliland.

However the financial and time costs of conducting transactions to send money home began to get prohibitive, which prompted Ahmed to begin thinking if there was a "better way to do this".

[10] In October 2020, Ahmed was named first in the Powerlist 2020, an annual list of the 100 most powerful people of African heritage in the UK.