Estonian money transfer platform TransferWise has been chosen to feature on the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Technology Pioneers list – a prominent selection of the world’s most innovative companies.
TransferWise was founded in 2011 by Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann who joined forces to revolutionise the international money transfer market by using peer-to-peer technology, thus making sending money abroad up to 10 times cheaper for the user. The company has now grown to serve 360 currency routes and employ over 350 people across its offices in Tallinn, London and New York.
“It’s a great honour to be named as one of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers. We founded TransferWise because we realised that millions of people around the world would benefit from a fairer and transparent way of transferring money. Now our customers are transferring more than £500 million every month with TransferWise – this means they’re saving more than £22m every month,” said Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise.
“We’re glad to see TransferWise make it to the selection,” said Fulvia Montresor, Head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum. “TransferWise is part of a group of entrepreneurs who are more aware of the crucial challenges of the world around them, and who are determined to do their part to solve those challenges with their company.”
The 2015 Technology Pioneers were selected from hundreds of applicants by a committee of 68 academics, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and corporate executives. Members of the committee include Arianna Huffington (founder, Huffington Post) and Henry Blodget (editor-in-chief, Business Insider). The final decisions were based on criteria including innovation, potential global impact, working prototype, viability and leadership.
Past Technology Pioneers recipients include Google (2001), Wikimedia (2007), Mozilla (2007), Kickstarter (2011) and Dropbox (2011).
