F¥€K, TransferWise Doubled in Size


    Around four months ago, Peter Thiel invested €4.6 million into TransferWise, a company started by Skype’s first employee – Taavet Hinrikus. Since then, the company has been advertising aggressively. 


    Personally I have been under attack on Youtube, Google Search, AdSense, banner ads and outdoor ads. To be honest, it worked, as I used the company to Transfer some of my hard earned cash to the USA and it worked without a hitch. Unfortunately, though, I can’t get the money back easily as you can’t use Transferwise to make the transfers from the US yet.

    Speaking about the ads, not only was the advertisement campaign rather massive, it was also very open. This is especially true of the physical advertising campaign around London, pointing out that, well, F¥€K, your bank is overcharging you on money transfers. As Transferwise noted in their own blog – Tfl tried to ban it and banks are going to hate it.

    Whatever it is that they are doing, it certainly seems to be working. The company reported that in four months they have doubled the volume transferred from £125 million to £250 million with more than £1 million being transferred daily. At the moment the company is growing 20-30% month-to-month.

    Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder and CEO said that the growth can be attributed to the fact that “…more and more people and small businesses are realising that they no longer have to put up with opaque fees and poor service from the banks when they’re sending money abroad.”

    Another interesting addition is the ability to receive money with Transferwise, which promises to be the lowest cost compared to Paypal and Banks as they only charge 0.5% fee for payments over £200 and £1 flat fee for those under.

    They have also recently introduced a lot more currencies and a peer-to-peer money transfer app that enables to send money to email and paylinks. Just in case, our e-mail is [email protected] and now you can send us both money and story tips. 

    We’re probably unfairly bullish about Transferwise here at ArcticStartup, but it’s one of the few that we’ve covered that has actually saved us a decent amount of money.