TransferWise announces $280M investment
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TransferWise announces $280M investment
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Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#2I 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 and expanded from there.
This problem is a great one to solve because the customers have a real pain and one can be very targeted about capturing high-value corridors.
I wish TW the best. Lower fee, Lower friction, Lesser time == Great for customers!
Anyone looking to build a startup in this domain should start here: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiaspo...
(This data is useful to understand origindestination of remittance flows; Its a greater than $150B market and a lot of untapped/Uncaptured areas; lots still left to do!)
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#3I 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…
> TransferWise captured the UK Poland corridor and expanded from there.
Close! They started with UK Estonia, both co-founders are Estonians. IIRC in the very very early days, the whole settlement was done by users themselves over a Skype group.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#4I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#5I 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…
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.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#6I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.
If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top).
Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#7Transferwise has been a godsend for me the past couple years as I've been moving my life to the UK from the US. XE was bought out awhile ago and hiked their fees up, while banks like HSBC have always had high rates to begin with.
Although I'm wondering if jumping on a bitcoin exchange like GDAX to go from USD -> bitcoin -> GBP would be even cheaper these days?
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#8I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.
If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top). Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)
Unfortunately, from the 18th December, that's stopping: https://monzo.com/blog/2017/10/17/atm-limits-announcement/
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#9I wish they would issue credit cards soon. Every time I pay with credit card while travelling, my bank charges 1.5% for each transaction, in addition to bad conversion rate.
If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top). Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)
From Dec 18 Monzo will start charging fees for cash withdrawals abroad though. Which is relevant for people traveling to cash based countries (many in Asia) where cards only get accepted in high end stores and restaurants.
Re: TransferWise announces $280M investment
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're in the UK, have a look at Monzo. Not a credit card, but very useful to use abroad. They don't charge a transaction fee when abroad, and the currency conversion is tracked to the MasterCard rate (whereas other providers tend to do card issuer + their own cut on top). Result is it's very cheap to use abroad. :)
Unfortunately, from the 18th December, that's stopping: https://monzo.com/blog/2017/10/17/atm-limits-announcement/
It's only for ATM withdrawals. If you are in first world country where card payments are well integrated this is not issue for you. Granted, in many developing countries you need cash so this will be issue.