3 years old, £1bn sent - happy birthday TransferWise

TransferWise is 3 years young today and has just hit some exciting milestones. Here’s a word from founders Taavet and Kristo about our news and what it all means:

To our revolutionaries, TransferWise was launched three years ago as a response to a problem that the two of us experienced as expats in London. We first came up with the idea for the business after being ripped off by our banks charging us hidden charges to send our money abroad.

We discovered that to get rid of these charges we simply needed to skip the banks altogether and exchange money between the two of us at a fair rate - the mid-market rate. So the answer to our problem, it turned out, was all about connecting people. And this is still what we do every day, to save everyone some time and money.

The old system is still expensive and still lacks transparency. When we started, all we knew was that financial services could be provided so much better than they were by the banks. With this belief, we’ve been able to grow our service to reach more and more users. Quite simply, we get a real kick out of giving people a deal that’s transparent and fair.

Today, we’re so proud of what we’ve achieved and it’s amazing to say that we’ve transferred £1bn. There’s no way we could have done any of this without all your trust and feedback. From TransferWise being just the two of us and a computer to today’s crack-team of 76 brilliant staff sending money across 176 currency routes, we’ve always felt quite humbled by the support we’ve received.

And we’re just getting started - there’s roughly £5-£10 trillion of money transfers out there, and so many more people will need to find a fair way to move their money around the world as time goes on. So, it’s been a great three years - long may it continue! We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next and we hope you’ll follow us along the way to find out.

Taavet and Kristo