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TransferWise announces $280M investment

techcrunch.com

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Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#121

Post by tryingagainbro »

mseebach wrote: post #66
lmm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the question is if the margins are so low that they need a billion dollars to make a profit, what kind of scale do they need to be worth a billion dollars. Well, if we're assuming P/E=20 then they need to be heading for 50 million dollars in profit. Let's guess their "gross margin" from their spread is 2%, so they're currently at top-line revenue of 2 million dollars (and the same in costs). So if their costs we…

I would assume that they will be able to get significant revenue from building higher-value-added services on top of their infrastructure. The "Borderless account" is a potential step in that direction: https://transferwise.com/borderless

Plus they'll be able to increase the fees by x% little by little...judging competition

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#122

Post by cprecioso »

laurentb wrote: post #107
cprecioso wrote: post #51

For everyone that's interested in TransferWise, I'd recommend Revolut ( https://www.revolut.com/ ) instead. They have no fees for transactions or currency changes (up to a quite high limit), as well with a lot more features (international prepaid MasterCard that charges no fees ever being my favourite one, and you can go to ATMs for free as well). I've been a happy customer of them for quite some time and I have abso…

just FYI, Revolut uses TransferWise underneath on a few of their currencies, so you're effectively using them both ;) happy customer of both to be honest and would recommend both happily

Oh I didn't know! I've only ever used it to exchange between USD, EUR and GBP. Do they pass the TransferWise fee on to you, or is it free as well?

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#124

Post by d--b »

These guys are the best!

I've used transferwise to move dollars into euros the day before Brexit. They could not ship the money in time because of the overall transaction volume, and so they offered me the best of the rate I had locked in and the market rate after Brexit!

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#125

Post by JoshTriplett »

ddorian43 wrote: post #81
2K17 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish someone would challenge other dinosaurs like PayPal. Say what you want about Amazon's monopoly but at least they have actual customer support.

Paypal also has support (call,email) used them for refunds and changes on account.

Having had a recent experience with that, their "support" is utterly incompetent. Made a donation to a charitable organization (same one I've made in a previous year), PayPal reversed it without giving any reason, I contacted their support trying to find out why, and several hours later they could tell me nothing more than what the website said: that it was rejected and no reason was given, and I should try using some other method to make the transaction. (They also referred me to an email address for another department, who had no phone number, and that email produced no answer for a week, after which they gave the same non-answer.)

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#126

Post by JoshTriplett »

a_d wrote: post #2

I used to study remittance flows for a living. This was a problem that was (is?) begging to be solved. Incumbents like Western Union have always been very expensive and borderline evil. There are well known “corridors” of remittance flows that are still yet to be captured - like Kerala (India) Saudi Arabia (Middle-east more generally); Mexico US; US LatAm etc. My guess is TransferWise captured the UK Poland corridor…

> Incumbents like Western Union have always been very expensive and borderline evil.

I'd be interested in more information on this; what kinds of things have they done?

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#127

Post by narak »

vilmosi wrote: post #96
ForHackernews wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CapitalOne doesn't charge any foreign transaction fees on their credit cards.

Yeah but they charge on atm withdrawals and the exchange rate could be the banks rate depending on the card.

CapitalOne for credit cards, Schwab Bank for ATMs

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#128

Post by mottomotto »

cprecioso wrote: post #51

For everyone that's interested in TransferWise, I'd recommend Revolut ( https://www.revolut.com/ ) instead. They have no fees for transactions or currency changes (up to a quite high limit), as well with a lot more features (international prepaid MasterCard that charges no fees ever being my favourite one, and you can go to ATMs for free as well). I've been a happy customer of them for quite some time and I have abso…

Does Revolut offer recurring payments for the business accounts? I'd ask them but looks like I'd have to call and talk to them as a non-customer. I see they are also building an API so maybe that is expected to be done via the API.

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#129

Post by mandeepj »

dgaaaaaaaaaa wrote: post #116
mandeepj wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Transferwise is still very expensive. I use ICICI bank to send money to India and it goes straight to recipient bank account in less than 2 hours along with market rate (xe.com)

Doesn't ICICI quote at least 2 rupees higher than the market rate? I have only sent money from INR to $

It is still very cheaper than rest of the herd

Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment

#130

Post by killedbydeath »

ido wrote: post #110
kreetx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, but the Poland corridor was probably the key to proving the model though.

Why would either be lucrative? AFAIK within the EU bank transfers are free of fees.

Poland has 30x the population and likely 30x the number of immigrants to the UK.
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