TransferWise CEO and
Co-Founder Taavet Hinrikus during TechCrunch Disrupt London 2015 at
Copper Box Arena on December 7, 2015 in London, England. (John
Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Alternative, cheaper, and more convenient financial services are booming. So Investors keep pouring money into the fintech revolution (Financial Technology), raising the valuations of startups like TransferWise.
Founded in 2011 by Estonians living in London, TransferWise
is an international money transfer platform based on peer-to-peer
technology. This disrupts the traditional banking system by providing
cheaper international money transfers.
The company has not yet gone public and raised $26 million in its
fourth round of private funding from Scottish asset manager Baillie
Gifford on May 25. According to market estimates, this values the
startup at $1.1 billion.
To date, the company raised $117 million in total from notable
investors like Richard Branson, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and a
Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
“After just five years, we’ve seen how much TransferWise can help
people who need to move money internationally. People are now moving
£500 million ($731 million) every month on TransferWise. That means
they’re saving themselves over £22 million ($32 million). We want to
bring TransferWise to everyone in the world who needs it. It’s great to
have Baillie Gifford on board to help us grow even faster,” said Taavet
Hinrikus, CEO and co-founder of TransferWise in a press release.
How It All Started
The company is headquartered in London but the co-founders Taavet
Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann are originally from Estonia, which is
considered the new Silicon Valley of Europe. It is the birthplace of
many tech companies like TransferWise, Playtech, and GrabCad. Skype’s
software was also created by Estonians a decade ago.
Hinrikus, who was the first ever employee of Skype and the director
of strategy until 2008, used the same peer-to-peer networking principle
in creating TransferWise.
Hinrikus together with his friend Käärmann, former manager at Deloitte, founded TransferWise out of frustration:
Hinrikus was working for Skype and was paid in euros but lived in
London. Whereas, Käärmann was working in London and had a mortgage in
Euros back in Estonia. They devised a simple scheme. Käärmann put pounds
into Hinrikus’ UK bank account, and Hinrikus topped up his friend’s
euro account with euros in Estonia. Both got the currency they needed
and neither paid a cent in (often hidden) bank charges.
0 comments:
Post a Comment