#LHV Pank

[kinnisvarakool]

Mainor Ülemiste: 3. kvartali 2022 Mainor Ülemiste AS vahearuanne

Mainor Ülemiste: 3. kvartali 2022 Mainor Ülemiste AS vahearuanne

2022. AASTA 3. KVARTALI PÕHISÜNDMUSED 01. august 2022 Ülemiste Citys käivitus koostöös Tallinna linnaga rattateede pilootprojekt Augustist septembri lõpuni viidi Ülemiste City ja Tallinna linna koostöös läbi rattateede pilootprojekt, mille eesmärk oli anda ratturitele ja kergliikuritele senisest rohkem ruumi ning testida, kas ja kuidas linnaku töötajad oma liikumisharjumusi ümber mõtestavad.…

[kinnisvara]

EfTEN Real Estate Fund III: Tütarettevõtja omandas ABC kontserni Tallinnas asuva autoteeninduskeskuse kinnistud EfTEN Real Estate Fund III AS-i 100%-line tütarettevõtja EfTEN Kolmas OÜ omandas täna ABC Vara aktsiaseltsilt alljärgnevalt nimetatud neli kinnistut, millel paikneb automüügi- ja teeninduskeskus koos parklatega:

[gorky-gorod]

Европейские банки массово прекратили прием SWIFT-платежей из России, сообщают «Известия». Так, S-BANK начал блокировать такие оп��рации с начала СВО, а LHV Pank провел последний платеж из России в конце августа текущего года. Сейчас россияне начали массово жаловаться на невозможность отправить SWIFT-переводы в европейские банки. Средства возвращались банком обратно на счет. При чем это может занимать от двух до 26 дней. Также с клиента вычитали комиссию. По информации издания, иногда деньги просто «исчезали».

[correctsuccess]

LHV Pank and Danske Bank finalised the purchase-sale transaction of Estonian corporate and public sector credit portfolio Tallinn Stock Exchange:LHV1T On three October 2020, AS LHV Pank and Danske Financial institution A/S finalised the transaction, underneath which LHV Pank acquired Danske Financial institution’s credit score portfolio concerned with Estonian company and public sector credit, the included leasing and collateral agreements and different associated agreements within the type of the switch of an unit. The ultimate quantity of t...

[news247worldpressposts]

EBRD joins covered bond issuance of Estonia’s LHV Pank

EBRD joins covered bond issuance of Estonia’s LHV Pank

EBRD invests €37 million in debut covered bonds issued by LHV Pank in Estonia

Second issuance of covered bonds in the Baltic states

Investment complements EBRD’s policy reform engagement

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested €37 million in the first covered bonds issued by LHV Pank, only the second in the Baltic states and the first by a domestically owned bank.

Th…

[tetraeeder]

Aasta kokkuvõte 2018

Teen kiiruga oma aasta kokkuvõtte ka ära. Aasta 2018 säästumääraks sain 34%, säästsin täpselt 9000 eurot, mille enamuses investeerisin. Viimase kuu säästusumma investeerisin aasta alguses. 

Mis see aasta tõi - suure miinuse, sest alustasin üsna tipust kogumist. Aruanded exceli tabelis olid veidi kõikvel, vahe tabeli ja investeeringute summade vahel läks veidi nihkesse. Jõudsin vahe tekkimisel järeldusele, et jaanuaris investeerisin puhvris oleva summa, mille kohta aruandlust eraldi pidanud ei olnud. Sel aastal hoian magusa ja impulssostude pealt kokku. 

Jaanuaris on kombeks aasta kokkuvõtteid teha. Pilt ikka truult Pexelsist

Milliseid tulemusi näen: 

 “Oh! Ma suudan NII palju raha kõrvale panna! Igal aastal on summad jäänud 3000 kanti aastas, mille suvel ära kulutan ja siis uut puhvrit koguma hakkan. Sel aastal sain hakkama lausa 3x3000 euroga.  Kuidas see välja nägi? Kevadest suve lõpuni panin iga lisaks teenitud euro investeerimiskontole, millest kogusin kokku kas 500 eurot või 1000 eurot ja investeerisin Balti börsi. Tegin kõikvõimalikke imetrikke, et raha juurde teenida ja nii ta tuli. Kahju, et töö kõrvalt ei malda enamat veel teha. Ehk järgmisel aastal. Aktsiatega nii hästi sel aastal ei läinud, sest need hakkasid ohtralt liugu laskma, kuid aasta lõpus oli neid hea soodushindadega juurde osta. Kulu ca 400 euro ringis (koos aktsiatele kulunud teenustasudega). 

Astusin esimese ettevaatliku (1000-eurose) sammu investeerimismaailma. Kõige esimeseks soetatud varaks sai LHV aktsia, edaspidi jätkasin samuti dividendiaktsiatesse investeerimist Balti börsil. Miks ma selle valisin - aga Balti börsile investeerides ei küsi LHV pank haldustasusid, maha läheb vaid teenustasu. Hetkeseisuga ei julge veel välismaale astuda, sest sissetulekud ja aktsiate ostusummad ei ole nii kolossaalsed, kuid mine tea - äkki sel aastal tuleb ära!

Panustasin oma osaluse ka Tankeri arendusse, mille vilju võib heade tulemuste korral 2-3-5 aasta pärast näha, kuid hetkel puhkab mu 500-eurone virtuaalkanne Tankeri firma püksitaskus. 

Võtsin juuli lõpus julguse kokku ja hoolimata sellest, et mul oli juba konto olemas, investeerisin Mintose portaali ka õrnad 500 eurot. See kogub vaikselt raha ja on kasvanud juba 16 euro võrra. 

Lisaks olin ammu juba nillinud Crowdestate’i kaudu kinnisvarasse investeerimist ja proovisin ka selle järgi alates juuli lõpust. Panustasin 1400 eurot ja tulu olen intresside näol saanud 19 eurot ja veidi sente. 

Ebaõnnestusin võlakirja ostmisel valides vale valiku rippmenüüst ning järelejäänud raha eest ostsin 2 firma aktsiaid (LHV ja Kaubamaja) juurde. 

Olen märganud ka suvise entusiasmi ja sädeme raugemist, kui ma raha juurde teenisin. Seda alati tuli ka, kui ma soovisin ja see oli tore tunne. Eriti lahe oli igasuguseid võite vastu võtta, parim võit oli 2 Pepsi T-särki, mille saime ainsana suvel joodud 2 pudeli korgi alt. 

Kokkuvõtte tegin tegelikult 5. jaanuaril, sest aastavahetus libises kuidagi käest. Uue aasta plaane, unistusi ja metsikuimaid mõtteid ei ole samuti jõudnud paika panna, kuid terve aasta on ju aega!

Üks eesmärk on mul siiani silme ees - 4. aasta pärast maja oma väiksele perele soetada. Näis, kuidas mul see õnnestub (eesmärk on maksta autoliising kinni ja selle arvelt 200 eurot rohkem koguda, kui hullu soovi aktsiaid osta ei tule). Ehk kogun sissemaksu raha kokku ja siis saan hakata asju ajama. Majade kuulutusi vaatan hoolega ja püüan ajaga kaasas käia. Mul on peas visualiseerunud maja kujund - ühekordne, neljatoaline, ilma saunata maja (mis on müügil kinnisvaraportaalis ka), ka see on edasiminek oma unistuse realiseerimisel. 

Seadusemuudatustega seoses saan sel aastal kõrvale panna 82 eurot rohkem, sest lastetoetus tõuseb 10 euro võrra, palka lubati veits suuremaks teha ja kui veab, siis saab pudinate teiselt poolelt ka veits lisa (viimasele ma ei looda). Seega teen teise eesmärgi puust ja punaseks - sellest aastast panen 100 eurot rohkem kõrvale, kui eelmisel aastal. Summad panen paika järgmise nädalavahetuse jooksul. 

Niisiis.... eesmärkide seadmiseni!

[arhitektuurifoto]

📸 #fotograafmaristomba . #architecture #architecturephotography #architecturelovers #citylife #city #lhv #cityplaza #pank . www.maristomba.com

[kinnisvarakool]

Hepsor ASi laenulepingu muudatused

Hepsor ASi laenulepingu muudatused

Hepsor AS ja LHV Pank AS allkirjastasid 25. juulil 2022 laenulepingu lisa, mille tulemusena suurenes laenusumma 2 miljoni euro võrra ning on nüüd 6 miljonit eurot. Laenulepingu tähtaeg (märts 2024), tagastamise tingimused ja laenu intressimäär laenulepingu lisa sõlmimisega ei muutunud. Suurem laenulepingu maht annab Hepsor ASile rohkem paindlikkust investeeringute tegemiseks arendusprojektidesse…

[lmortgages158]

Moody's assigned LHV <b>mortgage</b> covered bonds a provisional rating of (P)Aa1

Moody's Investors Service has assigned a provisional (P)Aa1 long-term rating to the mortgage covered bonds issued by AS LHV Pank.

[kpmgtoday]

AS LHV Group extended authorisation of the Audit Commitee

Previously she has been the head of financial advisory services at KPMG Baltics AS and worked also at Eesti Pank and CVS Caremark Corporation. Delivered by KPMG Today (@KPMG_TO) Read more here Follow @KPMG_TO on Twitter to get latest updates

[payment-providers]

New Post has been published on Payment-Providers.com

New Post has been published on https://payment-providers.com/swedbank-launches-instant-payments-in-online-bank/

Swedbank launches instant payments in online bank

Swedbank has announced that its private and corporate customers can now transfer money by using instant payments online.

In the first phase, the new form of payment can be used to make in-bank and domestic payments. 

Payments up to EUR 15,000 in instant payments reach the recipient in a few seconds and can be made to all local banks that offer the opportunity of receiving them. Swedbank customers can make instant payments within Swedbank itself, Coop Pank, LHV and SEB. For outgoing instant payments there are no additional fees, the same as for ordinary domestic payments done in euros.

Swedbank customers are already able to receive instant payments from other European banks that have joined SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme. The existence of instant payment opportunity can be checked on the EBA Clearing website. Incoming instant payments, as well as other SEPA payments in euro, are not charged extra.

Source link

[sandlerresearch]

Estonia Cards & Payments: Opportunities and Risks to 2023 published on

http://www.sandlerresearch.org/estonia-cards-payments-opportunities-and-risks-to-2023.html

Estonia Cards & Payments: Opportunities and Risks to 2023

Estonia Cards & Payments: Opportunities and Risks to 2023

Summary

GlobalData’s ‘Estonia Cards & Payments: Opportunities and Risks to 2023’ report provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Estonian cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including credit transfers, cards, and cheques during the review-period (2015-19e).

The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, transaction values and volumes during the review-period and over the forecast-period (2019e-23f). It also offers information on the country’s competitive landscape, including market shares of issuers and schemes.

The report brings together GlobalData’s research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers detailed regulatory policies and recent changes in regulatory structure.

GlobalData’s ‘Estonia Cards & Payments: Opportunities and Risks to 2023’ report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Estonian cards and payments industry, including – – Current and forecast values for each market in the Estonian cards and payments industry, including debit, credit, and charge cards. – Detailed insights into payment instruments including credit transfers, cards, and cheques. It also, includes an overview of the country’s key alternative payment instruments. – E-commerce market analysis. – Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Estonian cards and payments industry. – Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit, and charge cards.

Scope

– To remain on a par with its European peers and to promote electronic payments, Estonia has adopted instant payments. In November 2017, SEPA Instant Credit Transfer – a pan-European instant payment scheme – was implemented across SEPA-compliant regions, including Estonia. The scheme enables fund transfers of up to €15,000 ($17,183.22) in less than 10 seconds across Europe – 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The service was initially introduced in Estonia by SEB; other banks such as Swedbank and LHV Pank started to offer instant payments by the end of 2018. And in November 2018, TARGET Instant Payment Settlement was launched across the EU, including Estonia. It is based on SEPA Instant Credit Transfer and is an extension of TARGET2. Apart from being available at all times, it also supports multi-currency transfers. – Estonian banks are increasingly focusing on security and payment authentication to offer customers a secure payment environment. In March 2017, Swedbank and SEB introduced the Smart ID electronic authentication solution. The app helps bank customers conveniently log into internet or mobile banking and make payments digitally. To use the service, consumers download the app and register. They are then required to set two PIN codes (the first to access internet banking, the second for payment authorization) to access electronic services. The app can be used for e-identification and digital signatures to authenticate payments made using electronic platforms. Other banks such as LHV Pank (May 2017) and Coop Pank (May 2018) have also introduced Smart ID, while Luminor Bank plans to introduce it by the end of 2019. As of September 2019 there are 450,000 Smart ID users in Estonia. – The emergence of contactless technology will further boost card payments in Estonia. Major banks such as SEB, Swedbank, Luminor Bank, and LHV Pank are now offering contactless cards. According to Eesti Pank (the country’s central bank), as of June 2019 61% of cards issued in the country were contactless. On average, 240,000 contactless payments were made per day in Q2 2019. In a bid to drive contactless card use, in October 2017 the limit for contactless payments without the need for a PIN was increased from €10 ($11.46) to €25 ($28.64). Meanwhile, transportation and ticketing companies are introducing payments via contactless cards. Transit ticketing provider Ridango collaborated with Tallinn Transport Board, Nets Estonia, LHV Pank, and Mastercard to enable travelers to pay with their contactless cards on Tallinn trams, buses, and trolleybuses.

Reasons to buy

– Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Estonian cards and payments industry and each market within it. – Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in theEstonian cards and payments industry. – Assess the competitive dynamics in the Estonian cards and payments industry. – Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Estonia. – Gain insights into key regulations governing the Estonian cards and payments industry.

[kompikou-blog]

ÜLEKANNE. Kompik→Fuego EE667700771001605199 LHV Pank

ÜLEKANNE. Kompik→Fuego EE667700771001605199 LHV Pank Ссылка на источник: Читать дальше »

[econobitch]

The concept of transferring money internationally without moving it across borders might seem novel, but in fact, it’s ancient. It’s the basis of hawala, the money transfer system that underpinned international trade throughout the Middle East and South Asia before the advent of modern banking; it is still used today in such places as Somalia and Yemen. Western Union, the money transfer giant founded in 1851, also uses a conceptually similar process for many transactions. But all these systems have a problem: Because people rarely want to move exactly equivalent amounts in opposite directions at exactly the same time, they must finance the transaction out of their own capital or rely on intermediaries to do so. TransferWise is no different. The company says it finds true peer-to-peer matches on at least 60 percent of its transaction volume on 20 “routes” among Europe, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. (A route is one side of a currency exchange—say, dollars to pounds.) Because of TransferWise’s prominence in Britain, almost every transfer into pounds is matched 100 percent peer-to-peer, says Harsh Sinha, a PayPal veteran that TransferWise recruited in 2015 to be its vice president of engineering. The company says it is always improving the software that automates the matching process, including complicated solutions that cover, say, a pound-to-dollar transaction with multiple dollar-to-euro and euro-to-pound swaps. If TransferWise can’t find a match, it becomes a market maker, using its own money to complete the deal in the hope that another customer who wants to send at least as much money the opposite way comes along later. In doing so, it is essentially acting just like a traditional foreign exchange broker. “Giving people access to a better deal is pretty revolutionary” Beyond the peer-to-peer matching software, the company has innovated in other ways, too, Sinha says, some more visible than others. “For the customer, they don’t care whether it is peer-to-peer or not,” he says, before parroting an internal corporate slogan: “What they care about is price, speed, convenience, and coverage.” TransferWise tries to make initiating a transaction as simple as possible, allowing customers to make repeat payments with the press of a button and offering a simple “request money” link that can be included on an invoice to streamline payments through TransferWise’s platform. It has also developed automated fraud and money-laundering detection tools, Sinha says. He has more than doubled the company’s engineering team in the last year, to close to 100 employees. One of their projects is a machine-learning system that could predict when the company will have to buy foreign currency on its own dime to meet unmatched transactions. Right now, much of that work is done by human foreign exchange analysts that the company employs. Originally targeted at consumers, TransferWise has started marketing to small- and medium-sized businesses that need to pay for items in foreign currency or send money abroad to pay international staff. The company has also teamed with an Estonian bank, LHV Pank, and Germany’s first mobile-only bank, Number 26, to power their international money transfer services, and has begun scouting for similar partnership in the U.S. The moves suggest that the company’s future may lie less in being a stand-alone, consumer-facing business than in being a service for existing banks. “They will either have to build something similar themselves, partner with us, or get out of the international money transfer business,” Hinrikus says. HinrikusPhotographer: Tom Stockill/The Sunday​Times/Redux Western Union made about $5.5 billion in revenue in 2015. Hinrikus says the company charges 10 times more than TransferWise, on average, and predicts that within a decade Western Union’s sales will fall by 80 percent, to just more than $1 billion, as it loses customers and cuts fees to compete. “How will a public company survive that?” he says. “The answer is, they won’t, and the same applies to the banks.” Western Union spokesman Daniel Diaz says that because its services cover many different transaction sizes and different payment methods, “it is hard to generalize about price.” He adds that “trust, reliability, reach and diversity of pay-in and pay-out options” are also valuable. Despite Hinrikus’s talk of putting banks out of business, TransferWise couldn’t function without them. It needs a bank account in every market it operates in, and it relies on the existing international bank transfer system to move money among its own operations around the globe. In April, after New Hampshire’s banking department cited TransferWise for operating in the state for a year without meeting money-transmitter regulations, the company agreed to pay a penalty equivalent to the fees it had earned during that time. (The startup has since begun offering its services in the U.S. through a partnership with a fully licensed bank, New York-based Community Federal Savings Bank, and has obtained its own money-transmitter licenses in many states.) Separately, in May, the British advertising regulator ruled that TransferWise had improperly said its customers saved 90 percent on transfers without explaining its calculations. The company no longer makes the blanket claim in its marketing—saying instead that its service is “up to 8x cheaper”; on its website, customers can see how it calculates the savings for each currency route. TransferWise isn’t profitable—it lost £11.5 million in the 12 months through March 2015, the latest period for which figures are available. But the same is true for many fast-growing startups, and sniping over perceived inventiveness could say more about jealous rivals and today’s tightening venture capital environment than anything else. Is TransferWise overhyped? In a sense, its founding ingenuity could be summarized as: Let’s not screw our customers. Banks have been gouging people on international money transfers for so long that this may be innovative enough.

[jeremyau]

London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

by

Jeremy Kahn

June 13, 2016, 9:00 AM EDT

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A Billion-Dollar Startup With an Ancient Business Model

The Key to Trumponomics? 'Jawboning'

A Billion-Dollar Startup With an Ancient Business Model

When Taavet Hinrikus moved in 2007 from Estonia to London as an employee of Skype, his paychecks didn’t come with him: He still got paid in euros, via an Estonian bank account. Every month, Hinrikus had to wire money to himself in Britain, and each time he felt ripped off—by expensive and arbitrary fees and by an infuriating exchange rate. He could go to his computer and look up the current price at which euros could become pounds, and that wouldn’t be the rate financial firms quoted him. On a typical transfer of €1,000, which should have been worth £685 at the time, Hinrikus would end up with something like £620 in his British account. The bank would pocket the rest. “It was always a horrible experience,” Hinrikus says.

Another Estonian working in London, Kristo Käärmann, had the same problem in reverse: He was paid in pounds and often sent money back to Estonia. While chatting one day, the two discovered that they were each about to send equivalent amounts in opposite directions. It occurred to them that, rather than make two international transfers and lose all that money on bad rates and fees, Käärmann should simply move pounds from his British bank account to Hinrikus’s British bank account, while Hinrikus moved euros from his Estonian bank to Käärmann’s. “Local transfers are free and fast, and we saved a bunch of money on the exchange rate,” Hinrikus says. “It was cool.” Soon, the two started “the money chat,” a Skype forum for other London-based Estonians, where members could arrange similar matching transactions.

Kaarmann and Hinrikus​.

Photographer: Anna Ambrosi/LUZ/Redux

In 2010, Hinrikus and Käärmann created a company around the idea, and named it TransferWise. Customers who want to send money across borders are promised the “mid-market rate,” or what banks themselves pay when trading a given pair of currencies. When possible, TransferWise’s software pairs customers who are making equal and opposite transactions, a so-called peer to peer match. It’s like Hinrikus and Käärmann’s original swap, but it's invisible and at bigger scale.

TransferWise wasn’t the first foreign-exchange startup, but its marketing has made the company nearly synonymous with the currency-converting trials of London expatriates. In the city center, where nearly four in 10 people are foreign-born, TransferWise bought ads in transit stations that showed actors depicting bank customers at the moment they learn how much bad rates have cost them: crying, choking on coffee, spilling their soup. Another campaign had TransferWise employees stripping to their underwear in front of London and New York landmarks to promote the idea of transparency.

The publicity has worked. In the U.K., TransferWise is responsible for 5 percent of all outbound international money transfers, according to October 2015 figures. The company operates in more than 60 countries, handling £500 million in transactions each month. It has landed on a series of “most innovative” rankings, including one compiled by Apple, and the World Economic Forum named it a tech pioneer. Early last year, after an investment by the U.S. venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, the company was widely credited with becoming one of London’s first startup unicorns by crossing the $1 billion valuation threshold. While such reports turned out to be premature, the company did little to dispel the perception; TransferWise didn’t earn its horn until May 2016. (Bloomberg LP is an investor in Andreesen Horowitz.) 

TransferWise staged​ a 2015 protest in London calling on consumers ​to 'wake up' to hidden foreign exchange fees.

Photographer: ED/JL/TransferWise/Camera​Press/Redux

That prominence has come with some backlash. Recently, figures in the London startup scene have been asking just how innovative TransferWise really is. In January, Nick England, chief executive officer of VFX, another London payments platform, accused TransferWise of being “vaporware.” He said the company matches customers with other customers only a fraction of the time and, in most transactions, behaves far more like a conventional currency converter than it lets on. Mark Tluszcz, CEO of Mangrove Capital, a Luxembourg-based venture firm, has emerged as an outspoken detractor of the current crop of “fintech” startups, of which TransferWise is the most prominent, saying their supposed breakthroughs are overhyped. “Money transfer?” Tluszcz says. “For God’s sake, Western Union has been around for 100 years.”

TransferWise’s perceived worth and inventiveness is not just a question of pride. London is arguably the most competitive financial technology hub in the world today, with $962 million invested in the sector in 2015. The British government is easing regulatory hurdles for innovative young companies. London is also where many of the world’s largest banks, such as HSBC and Barclays, have chosen to locate their own fintech incubators. Relative changes as to whose tech is best has effects on hiring and venture capital.

Hinrikus says TransferWise is plenty innovative. “The idea that you don’t have to be a big bank to offer these services is pretty revolutionary,” he says in liltingly accented English as he sits in a coffee shop-chic conference room in the company’s London headquarters. “Giving people access to a better deal is pretty revolutionary.”

The concept of transferring money internationally without moving it across borders might seem novel, but in fact, it’s ancient. It’s the basis of hawala, the money transfer system that underpinned international trade throughout the Middle East and South Asia before the advent of modern banking; it is still used today in such places as Somalia and Yemen. Western Union, the money transfer giant founded in 1851, also uses a conceptually similar process for many transactions. But all these systems have a problem: Because people rarely want to move exactly equivalent amounts in opposite directions at exactly the same time, they must finance the transaction out of their own capital or rely on intermediaries to do so.

TransferWise is no different. The company says it finds true peer-to-peer matches on at least 60 percent of its transaction volume on 20 “routes” among Europe, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. (A route is one side of a currency exchange—say, dollars to pounds.) Because of TransferWise’s prominence in Britain, almost every transfer into pounds is matched 100 percent peer-to-peer, says Harsh Sinha, a PayPal veteran that TransferWise recruited in 2015 to be its vice president of engineering. The company says it is always improving the software that automates the matching process, including complicated solutions that cover, say, a pound-to-dollar transaction with multiple dollar-to-euro and euro-to-pound swaps. If TransferWise can’t find a match, it becomes a market maker, using its own money to complete the deal in the hope that another customer who wants to send at least as much money the opposite way comes along later. In doing so, it is essentially acting just like a traditional foreign exchange broker.

“Giving people access to a better deal is pretty revolutionary”

Beyond the peer-to-peer matching software, the company has innovated in other ways, too, Sinha says, some more visible than others. “For the customer, they don’t care whether it is peer-to-peer or not,” he says, before parroting an internal corporate slogan: “What they care about is price, speed, convenience, and coverage.” TransferWise tries to make initiating a transaction as simple as possible, allowing customers to make repeat payments with the press of a button and offering a simple “request money” link that can be included on an invoice to streamline payments through TransferWise’s platform. It has also developed automated fraud and money-laundering detection tools, Sinha says. He has more than doubled the company’s engineering team in the last year, to close to 100 employees. One of their projects is a machine-learning system that could predict when the company will have to buy foreign currency on its own dime to meet unmatched transactions. Right now, much of that work is done by human foreign exchange analysts that the company employs.

Originally targeted at consumers, TransferWise has started marketing to small- and medium-sized businesses that need to pay for items in foreign currency or send money abroad to pay international staff. The company has also teamed with an Estonian bank, LHV Pank, and Germany’s first mobile-only bank, Number 26, to power their international money transfer services, and has begun scouting for similar partnership in the U.S. The moves suggest that the company’s future may lie less in being a stand-alone, consumer-facing business than in being a service for existing banks. “They will either have to build something similar themselves, partner with us, or get out of the international money transfer business,” Hinrikus says.

Hinrikus

Photographer: Tom Stockill/The Sunday​Times/Redux

Western Union made about $5.5 billion in revenue in 2015. Hinrikus says the company charges 10 times more than TransferWise, on average, and predicts that within a decade Western Union’s sales will fall by 80 percent, to just more than $1 billion, as it loses customers and cuts fees to compete. “How will a public company survive that?” he says. “The answer is, they won’t, and the same applies to the banks.”

Western Union spokesman Daniel Diaz says that because its services cover many different transaction sizes and different payment methods, “it is hard to generalize about price.” He adds that “trust, reliability, reach and diversity of pay-in and pay-out options” are also valuable.

Despite Hinrikus’s talk of putting banks out of business, TransferWise couldn’t function without them. It needs a bank account in every market it operates in, and it relies on the existing international bank transfer system to move money among its own operations around the globe. In April, after New Hampshire’s banking department cited TransferWise for operating in the state for a year without meeting money-transmitter regulations, the company agreed to pay a penalty equivalent to the fees it had earned during that time. (The startup has since begun offering its services in the U.S. through a partnership with a fully licensed bank, New York-based Community Federal Savings Bank, and has obtained its own money-transmitter licenses in many states.)

Separately, in May, the British advertising regulator ruled that TransferWise had improperly said its customers saved 90 percent on transfers without explaining its calculations. The company no longer makes the blanket claim in its marketing—saying instead that its service is “up to 8x cheaper”; on its website, customers can see how it calculates the savings for each currency route.

TransferWise isn’t profitable—it lost £11.5 million in the 12 months through March 2015, the latest period for which figures are available. But the same is true for many fast-growing startups, and sniping over perceived inventiveness could say more about jealous rivals and today’s tightening venture capital environment than anything else. Is TransferWise overhyped? In a sense, its founding ingenuity could be summarized as: Let’s not screw our customers. Banks have been gouging people on international money transfers for so long that this may be innovative enough.