TransferWise
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| Available in | Multilingual |
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| Headquarters | London, England |
| Area served | Global: Europe, US, Canada, Asia-Pacific |
| CEO | Taavet Hinrikus |
| Key people | Kristo Käärmann (Founder, Executive chairman) Taavet Hinrikus (Founder, CEO) |
| Services | International money transfer |
| Employees | 600 (2016) |
| Slogan(s) | Money without borders |
| Website | transferwise.com |
| Alexa rank | 5,717 |
| Registration | Yes |
| Launched | 2011 |
| Current status | Active |
TransferWise is a peer-to-peer money transfer service launched in January 2011 by two Estonians Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus. It is headquartered in London and has eight offices around the world, including New York, Sydney, Singapore and Tallinn, Estonia. TransferWise has over 1 million customers, sending more than £500m using the platform every month. Today TransferWise supports more than 645 currency "routes" across the world.
In April 2017, it announced its decision to move its headquarters from London to the continent due to the Brexit.
TransferWise was inspired by the personal experiences of Taavet Hinrikus, Skype's first employee, and financial consultant Kristo Käärmann. As Estonians working between their native country and the UK, they had personal experience of the "pain of international money transfer" due to bank charges on the amounts they needed to convert from euros to pounds and vice versa. In the words of Hinrikus, "I was losing five per cent of the money each time I moved it. At the same time my co-founder Kristo Käärmann (also from Estonia) was starting to get paid in the UK and was losing a lot of money transferring cash back home to pay for a mortgage there".
It inspired them to make a private arrangement, with Hinrikus – who was paid in euros – putting this currency directly into Käärmann's Estonian account so he could pay his mortgage without having to convert pounds to euros, while Käärmann returned the favour by putting pounds into Hinrkus' UK account. This arrangement led them to start developing a crowdsourced currency exchange service to offer a cheaper alternative to established institutions.
In February 2012, their approval with the UK financial regulator was finalised. In April 2013, they stopped letting users purchase Bitcoins, blaming pressure from other market players. In its first year, transactions through TransferWise amounted to 10 million EUR. In September 2016,the company announced its customers were sending over £800m per month using the service, saving over £1m a day compared to if they had done the same transaction with their bank.
In May 2016, TransferWise's claim "you save up to 90% against banks" has been considered as misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority (United Kingdom). According to independent comparison site Monito.com, Transferwise was actually on average 83% cheaper than the big four UK banks on major currency "routes", but could be up to 90% cheaper in some occasions.
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Wikipedia