• TransferWise sees $1m in transactions, opens up to businesses

    Steve O'Hear

    Steve O’Hear is probably best known as a technology journalist, currently at TechCrunch where he focuses mainly on European startups, companies and products. He was previously co-founder and CEO of expertise platform Beepl where he helped the company navigate its first VC round, along with seeing the product through development, private alpha and a high profile public launch. In November... → Learn More

    Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

    TransferWise, the peer-to-peer online currency exchange that aims to give banks a run for their money with its flat-fee exchange rate, has announced that it’s seen $1m worth of transactions in three months since launch.

    These have come from consumers-only since until now TransferWise wasn’t available to business customers. Today that changes after the company responds to the fact that business-to-business currency transfers were by far the most requested feature to-date.

    Interestingly, of that $1m that has passed through TransferWise’s system, 70% were repeat customers, while transactions took place across almost all Eurozone countries in addition to the UK, Poland and Latvia.

    As we’ve noted before, TransferWise is co-founded by Skype employee number one Taavet Hinrikus who unsurprisingly says he’s on a mission to “do to currency exchange what Skype did to telecommunications”. In other words, introduce some serious disruption.

    Traditionally, consumers pay between 3-6% for foreign currency payments through their bank but aside from TransferWise’s flat fee, the aim is to give customers access to the same mid-market exchange rates that banks get on the interbank market. TransferWise currently offers currency transfers between British Pound and Euro, with plans to offer a wider range of currencies in the future.