Finance

One chart shows why TransferWise is a $1 billion company

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Goldman Sachs put out an epic "year in review" style note of its 100 favourite charts that sum up the year this week and one that stands out relates to TransferWise, one of the few British tech unicorns (private companies worth over $1 billion).

TransferWise uses a peer-to-peer matching service to bring down the cost of sending money internationally online.

transferwise
Goldman Sachs

How much does it bring down costs? An order of magnitude as the chart from Goldman below shows:

TransferWise's fees when sending money from the UK to Germany are sub-1%, compared to over 3% at a Western Union and over 4% for High Street banks.

Of course, that's just one currency route and the figures do all come from TransferWise. But it goes some way to explaining why investors value the business so highly.

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Oscar is a senior reporter in London. He writes about finance and markets, with a particular focus on fintech.His work on "pump and dump" scams in cryptocurrency markets was shortlisted for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in 2018 in the beat reporting category and the same reporting has also been cited by the US Securities and Exchange Committee.Prior to Business Insider, he was the stock market reporter for the London Evening Standard and Independent newspapers.