They’re both from Estonia. Taavet, who was the first employee at Skype, lived in London but got paid in euros. Kristo worked for Deloitte, also lived in London, and got paid in pounds. But he had a mortgage in euros back in Estonia.

They both moved their money with their banks — which had expensive fees and bad exchange rates. They knew there had to be a better way. So they put their heads together and invented a beautifully simple workaround.

Each month, they looked up the real exchange rate on Reuters. Taavet put his euros into Kristo’s Estonian bank account, and Kristo topped up Taavet’s UK account with his pounds. Both got the currency they needed almost instantly, and neither paid an extra cent on bad exchange rates or unreasonable charges.

There was no waiting, no stress, and no extra cost. ‘There must be others like us…’ they thought. So they started a company, called it TransferWise, and hired a team to build the best way to send money between countries.

As we grew, we realised that people needed more than just money transfers. So we added a multi-currency account, a debit card, and a business account, and changed our name to Wise.

Sign up with Wise to start sending, spending, and receiving money internationally