TransferWise Teams Up With Groupe BPCE To Offer In-App Transfers

With a partnership between TransferWise and Groupe BPCE, customers of the European banking group will be able to use TransferWise’s international money transfer service directly through the company’s app. In addition, TransferWise will have access to the banking group’s 15 million retail clients, Reuters reported.

“TransferWise has a mission to make money move around the world as fast and as cheaply as email,” TransferWise co-founder and chief executive Kristo Käärmann said in a statement. “This partnership is a momentous step on that journey.”

The pairing marks the first time that a large banking group in Europe will offer TransferWise’s service directly through its own app. TransferWise, which seeks to provide banks with a less expensive and easier alternative to money transfers, said it transfers a little more than $2 billion each month for more than three million users. In recent times, TransferWise — like other FinTech companies — has sought to work with banks in order to reach customers quicker.

The news comes a little more than a year after TransferWise brought a new service to market that allowed its customers to use Facebook to send money around the world via its chat application. The London-based payments company also announced that it has developed a chatbot that can help users both communicate with businesses and complete transactions with them.

TransferWise’s chatbot is able to send money to and from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and Europe from Facebook Messenger. It can also be used to set up exchange rate alerts. Domestic money transfers were already possible on Facebook via Messenger, but TransferWise claimed that its service would be the first to enable global money transfers.

TransferWise is one of Europe’s better-known FinTech and payment firms, and has been on the scene since 2011. Founders Taavet Hinrikus and Käärmann founded the firm after dealing with a series of expensive hassles trying to send money to their native country, Estonia. In 2017, TransferWise was valued at around $1 billion, with backing from some very big names in tech and investing.