The Estonian-founded and London-based company TransferWise announced on April 15, 2014 that they have transferred £1 billion ($1.67 billion) in cross-border payments.that they have hit the milestone of £1 billion mark in cross-border payments. In addition the company also announced that their Android app is ready so users can send money crossborder on the go. The iPhone app was launched in October 2013.
TransferWise is a peer-to-peer service that steps around bank fees and lets users switch money directly to users in other countries. In May of 2013, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel led a $6 million investment round for TransferWise with Valar Ventures which was followed by an eightfold increase of transfers made with the service. Around this time, TransferWise began to target the B2B market as well. In April 2014 Transferwise gave away $100,000,000 of free international bank transfers to European startups which made it more cost effective to pay employees or suppliers abroad, attend conferences, or set up overseas offices.
They now cover 176 currency routhes and have expanded past European currencies to also cover the Chinese Yuan, Indian Rupee, Turkish Lira, and South African Rand.
Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise commented on the milestone, “hitting £1bn transferred is a huge vote of confidence in what TransferWise is doing. It shows that people won’t put up with opaque fees and poor service from banks any longer, and they’re embracing solutions that technology can offer. This is especially exciting in financial services where there has been so little change for so long”.
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