Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Wise plc
Интервью с Kristo Kaarmann на конференции SLUSH
Взяли интервью у Kristo Kaarmann на конференции SLUSH. Kristo Kaarmann основатель компании TransferWise. Они помогаю людям переводить деньги по всему миру. За год они переводят около 300 миллиардов долларов.
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About Kristo Kaarmann
In a 2018 interview, Kristo Kaarmann, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise (now Wise), stated that banks "haven't really treated their users transparently" regarding international payments. He described his personal experience of losing approximately 500 euros on a transfer through HSBC, which he attributed to banks using an exchange rate that adds about 5% on top of the real rate. Kaarmann expressed a desire for more competition in the cross-border payments market, saying he would "recommend them wholeheartedly" if another company could perform some routes better than TransferWise, as he believes "users deserve to have the best option available." Kaarmann also outlined the company's "mission zero," which he defined as the goal of moving money "nearly at zero cost between any two countries and currencies and nearly instantly." He noted that TransferWise does not take positions in foreign exchange or support currency speculation, and that the company remains focused on cross-border transfers rather than domestic services.
Transcript (11 segments)
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Interviewer0:01
Hi everybody, you're watching Blog. We continue take interviews from Slash in Helsinki. And now we find Kristo Kaarmann. Hi hey man, please introduce yourself to our viewers who don't know about you and TransferWise.
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Kristo Kaarmann0:18
Thanks for having me. I started a company called TransferWise about 5 years ago. The idea was that the banks take quite a lot of money for us to change currency and to move money from Russia to Europe, to Estonia, or from Estonia to Russia. They do it in a very secret way; they take a margin on the exchange rate and they don't even tell you what they did. They might tell you it cost you 50 rubles but actually you find that it costs like 500 or 5,000 rubles, and it's hidden in the exchange rate. So we found a solution for that problem by exchanging money with each other, and we created a platform called TransferWise. We're now moving $700 million every month all around the world. We're in 52 countries, soon in Russia as well.
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Interviewer1:16
In Russia now it's not very popular, but how do you think to make it more popular in Russia? Maybe it's your plans, because in Russia now many people use money transfers, but TransferWise is different and it's...
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Kristo Kaarmann1:37
It's not just that it's cool. I mean, we don't do things because they're cool; we do things because we believe they are better, and better is measured by cost. Compared to banks in Western Europe, we are eight times cheaper than a bank. We do it because of speed: we can move money between countries in 17 seconds, when with a bank it usually takes three to five working days and you don't know when it's going to get there. And because of convenience: use TransferWise on an app, you type in the account number and you're done, whereas doing an international payment in a bank is usually quite complex with correspondent banks, and you don't know what's happening.
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Interviewer2:22
I think you use some sort of technology not usually for many years. What technical stuff do you use?
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Kristo Kaarmann2:36
We are based on Java and there's another thing called Grails and Groovy. We actually have a lot of engineers joining us from Russia, from St. Petersburg, from Moscow. It's very cool; we have a lot of Java experience from Russia who are joining us in Tallinn in our engineering team. It's a modern technology, and it's way faster and easier to build than the banks. That's why we can build a better product. So for most people, it's easy to use TransferWise. It's nothing complicated; just register and get going.
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Interviewer3:25
Okay, cool. And so, running out of time? Minutes, yes. Okay. And can you say how difficult actually was to build this company? What was difficult on your way?
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Kristo Kaarmann3:40
It's less about building the company but more about solving the problem. Of course, it's a big problem; it's like $300 billion a year are being spent on these bank fees, so it's a big problem. And I think it takes focus, a lot of focus and determination, but it's not impossible. So it's one of those things that is hard to do but it's doable. So what I would say to young entrepreneurs is: if you see the problem and you believe that you have a solution, just get on with it. And so, banks not angry? But now it's cheaper to use and they lost money. Yes, of course they lose money. But I don't think it's still one of the biggest problems they have. They have other problems with 2008 and all of the loans that went past.
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Interviewer4:39
Yeah, thank you. And last question: maybe you suggest something to our viewers, young startupers, a few words. What do you think were most important for startups?
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Kristo Kaarmann4:52
I think for startups, especially in this region, it's important to think of the global market from the outset. So Russia is maybe slightly better because it's already quite a big market on its own, so you have giants like Yandex who have emerged. But for everyone in a kind of a smaller group, don't build an app for your city; build something that works globally.
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Interviewer5:14
Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hey, right.