As time progresses, more and more changes have taken place in the financial world. With the addition of the cryptocurrency industry and the way it has grown over the last decade, several organizations have grown by leaps and bounds.
One such company has been Transferwise, which began life as a cross-border payment solution but did not diversify into providing investment services. The United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority has been granted permission to deal with the investment wing. This will allow Transferwise to allow users to invest passively in third party funds.
Sources close to the company have revealed that the latest move was a bid for users to make a return on their investment. Transferwise CEO Kristo Kaarmann claimed that the main inspiration for the investment arm came back sometime when the company saw massive international trades. Kaarmann said that businesses had a lot of international payments coming from multiple regions, and it seemed to be a good thing to tap into.
Transferwise stated that they did not want to act as stockbrokers, but rather wanted to provide their users with a level playing field. Rivals such as Robinhood and Revolut have already ventured into the stockbroker field, but this has not dissuaded Trasnferwise from its aims. Sources indicate that Trasnferwise plans to launch its native investment feature in the next 12 months with an initial United Kingdom roll-out. Once the model is tested in the United Kingdom(UK), there are plans to expand it rapidly across the globe.
Speaking at a recent forum, Kaarmann said:
“We’ve been very humbled in some ways and proud that customers are funding our mission. They keep TransferWise running through the fees that they’re paying; they pay our salaries, they let us hire more people and grow the product. It’s not like if you put money into a savings account in a bank, money magically grows there. It’s still going to be invested in something.”
Trasnferwise already has a reliable customer base and anew investment feature will only do well to boost it. Officials of the company were confident that 2021 will see a massive demand surge in investment ideas and believed in staying ahead of the curve. The latest development is also set to increase the massive amount of capital deposited into the company, which currently clocked in at $2.5 billion.