In a major boost to the outsourcing industry, fintech firm TransferWise has decided to enter into an alliance with Groupe BPCE, one of the largest financial institutions in France, to offer low-cost money transfer services to the latter’s customers. Both the firms announced that the financial service will be integrated through banking apps of Groupe next year.
The UK headquartered money transfer service firm offers cross-currency money transfers at a lower cost as compared to other financial institutions. Apparently, the process of money transfer across the world through a bank is often costly as it charges higher fees, while offering relatively lower exchange rates. In contrast, TransferWise helps the end-users to transfer the currency with a charge of nearly 0.5% at the mid-market exchange rate.
TransferWise has nearly three million customers that transfer EUR 2 billion every month. Since its inception in 2011, the firm had been focusing on promoting its cost-effective services to customers as a suitable alternative to traditional banks. But, in recent times, the firm has changed its focus and is now concentrating on collaborating with banks for registering a strong market growth.
Group BPCE is the first major bank to collaborate with TransferWise. Earlier in 2016, N26, a digital bank based in Germany, and LHV, an Estonian banking & financial service firm, had formed a collaboration with TransferWise to avail its money transfer services.
Kristo Kaarman, CEO of TransferWise, has welcomed the firm’s association with Group BPCE as a major initiative towards making the money transfer service as cost-effective and speedy as an email service. He is also of the view that the banking sector has come to embrace the services that challengers can offer, and TransferWise is eager to conduct business with more such financial institutions as Group BPCE.
TransferWise declared that its revenues were more than doubled during the year ending March 2017. Though the firm has not revealed its financial results this year, CFO Matt Briers has announced that the firm is likely to accrue substantially profitable gains.