Former Robinhood Employees Launch Fixed Fee Transfer Service Atlantic Money

Two former Robinhood employees are aiming to take on Wise, PayPal and other global money transfer services with the launch of Atlantic Money, a fixed fee platform that promises to be a better deal than other foreign exchange (FX) services.

Neeraj Baid and Patrick Kavanagh left Robinhood and Silicon Valley in late 2020 and “hopped on a flight to London to figure out what we’d do next,” according to their Wednesday (March 9) blog post.

It wasn’t long before both realized the difficulties and expenses associated with “financial lives split across continents,” the post stated. They were hit with friction “even when using the fintech ‘challenger’ platforms that we assumed had disrupted the banks’ monopoly on the industry.”

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Baid and Kavanagh have been working on the startup in stealth for 18 months, and its international team includes former employees of Wise, Tinkoff, Monzo, Amazon and Freetrade, according to the post. The fee structure is 3 British pounds (about $4), with 0% FX markup for transfers up to 1 million British pounds (about $1.3 million).

“We have now built, from scratch, a vertically-integrated tech and regulatory stack that links retail customers directly to the global FX markets,” the post stated. “In doing so, we’ve removed layers of cost and margin from sending money internationally.”

The startup has the backing of Amplo VC, Ribbit Capital, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Harry Stebbings, Elefund, Susa Ventures, Day One Capital, and the founders of Robinhood, according to the post.

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“The app is straightforward — no added features irrelevant to the core service, just a dead-simple money transfer solution,” the post stated. “And most importantly, the fees are low — up to 99% cheaper than anyone else in the world.”