Company of the Week: Transferwise

What is TransferWise?

Simply put, TransferWise is an online service for sending money across borders. Founded in London, the company’s growth has exploded since launching in 2011; the demand for such cheap, easy international money transfers continues to grow as we become more interconnected and financially interdependent across borders. TransferWise is known for their no-nonsense approach to these international money transfers, which is a big reason why TransferWise customers send well over $1 billion each month using the service.

Their unique innovation is that they’ve got large stores of different currencies scattered all over the world. Rather than actually exchanging your $1,000 USD when you send it to someone in Canada, TransferWise just adds your $1,000 to their USD pot and pays the recipient the equivalent amount of Canadian dollars out of their Canadian dollar pot. This eliminates most of the legwork of the transaction, as well as the costly intermediaries, allowing them to offer a much better exchange rate. In fact, your transfers happen at the bank rate, which is the best possible exchange rate at the time of your transfer.

Why are they this weeks company of the week?

This week they opened up their API for Australian businesses and banks to enable organisations to integrate TransferWise into their workflow. The decision by the tech firm means that banks and businesses are now able to gain access to the same platform as TransferWise’s clients enabling direct low-cost transfers.

On top of this, they disclosed a new $292 million secondary round of funding that sees investors value the company at $3.5 billion. That’s more than double the valuation TransferWise achieved in late 2017 at the time of its $280 million Series E round.

The new valuation now sees Transferwise as the most valuable FinTech Startup in Europe, which is why we think they're a great company of the week!