UPDATED 04:48 EDT / JANUARY 26 2015

TransferWise Founders Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Kaarmann NEWS

P2P money startup TransferWise takes $58 million Series C

TransferWise Founders Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Kaarmann

P2P money transfer startup TransferWise Ltd has raised $58 million Series C in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz that included previous investors Sir Richard Branson, Valar Ventures, Index Ventures, IA Ventures, and Seedcamp.

Founded in 2011 by two former Skype employees Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Kaarmann, the company was “born of frustration” with the costs of transferring money from one person to another in different currencies.

TransferWise claims it “removes all the wrongness” of hidden fees, and lets “people send money abroad at the lowest possible true cost.”

Unlike quite a few startups we could name, TransferWise aims to tackle a real world problem. The back story to the startup is that one of its founders worked for Skype in Estonia, was paid in euros, but lived in London. The other founder worked in London, but had a mortgage in euros. They then devised a cunning plan: every month the pair checked the exchange rate and one founder put pounds into the other founder’s U.K. bank account, and the other Euros into an Estonian account. From this arrangement the founders, in their words, pondered “there must be others like us.”

“We are thrilled to be backing Taavet and Kristo,” Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz said in a statement. “They discovered an important secret and are are uniquely prepared to pursue it. Not only is their solution 10 times better than the old way of exchanging foreign currency, but it could not have come at a better time. Since there has been little to no innovation from the traditional banking sector, we see massive opportunity for new financial institutions like TransferWise.”

The company said it planned to use the new funding to expand into the United States, and to add 300 more currency routes in the next year, alongside the existing 292 it already operates.

TransferWise has raised $90.4 million to-date including the new round. Investors not included in today’s round include Lending Club, Kima Ventures and SV Angel.


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