TransferWise, a London, United Kingdom-based crowd-sourcing money transfer service, has raised $1.3m in funding.
Backers include IA Ventures, Index Ventures, Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal), Kima Ventures, Seedcamp and The Accelerator Group and a group of strategic angel investors.
The company intends to use the funds to hire new people (http://www.transferwise.com/jobs), develop their technology platform further and expand into more currencies and markets.
Launched in January 2011 by by two Estonian entrepreneurs Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Kaarmann, TransferWise uses peer-to-peer trading and crowdsourcing to help customers move money from one place to another in a secure and convenient way at a low cost. People who can take advantage of the service include workers employed overseas, international students, pensioners now living abroad and a growing number of small-to medium-sized businesses.
All exchanges on the platform operate at the real mid-market exchange rates that traditional, big banks get on the interbank market: It charges a low flat fee on small transfers (just 1GBP on transfers up to 300GBP).
In conjunction with the funding, Roger Ehrenberg, Managing Partner at IA Ventures, will join the company’s board of directors.
TransferWise is registered as Exchange Solutions Ltd and is licensed by the UK Financial Services Authority as an Authorised Payment Institution.
FinSMEs
18/04/2012