CEO of TransferGo Daumantas Dvilinskas took center stage on day two of Swell 2018. Not only did he share in detail how TransferGo is delivering on its promise of making global real-time settlement a reality, he also announced a new, free global payments service for customers anywhere in the world: TransferGo FREE.
Dvilinskas explained that his company’s mission is to remove friction from global payments and make them instant. When he launched the business six years ago, Dvilinskas described players within the financial services industry as “separate islands,” and growing TransferGo’s global banking partner network meant forging individual partnerships with each.
He remarked, “In effect, we built a glimpse of what the future of cross-border financial services would be: A truly real-time experience where customers can send money to their friends and family regardless of where they are.”
By doing this, he proclaimed, “We have transformed people’s lives.”
First, the company decreased costs by up to 90 percent in some regions. They also dramatically reduced the time of settlement, to under 30 seconds and offered guarantees for these transactions.
Dvilinskas described, “a huge shift in consumer behavior — customers started sending small transactions more, and more frequently.” He says TransferGo has saved $25 million for customers to date, and customers have approximately 20 percent more available income because of these savings.
This has helped to boost the company’s popularity and earn high ratings on consumer reviews. It has also driven rapid growth for the company. Today, TransferGo has 700,000 customers across 47 destinations worldwide and completes 1.5 million transactions per year.
But, it’s still not enough to drive true impact in the cross-border payments industry worldwide, according to Dvilinskas. He has his sights on growing the company’s customer base from one million to one hundred million.
To do this, he points to innovation — blockchain and TransferGo’s partnership with Ripple. He called out the benefits such as standardizing with APIs for building faster connections and real-time messaging for shared responsibility around the risk profile of customers.
Dvilinskas explained, “We just launched our first xCurrent transactions from everywhere in Europe to India through a partnership with Axis Bank. Ripple helped us build and manage this relationship.”
This new corridor from Europe to India offers real-time transactions and relies on a single API. In just one month, TransferGo has seen 315 percent growth. Dvilinskas thinks that volumes across this new corridor will continue to increase over the coming year as more retail customers learn about the service.
Dvilinskas closed his session with an exciting announcement. He pointed out that the cost, or “price,” of cross-border transactions is a huge friction point for most customers. They are not transparent and can be prohibitively expensive.
He questioned, “Can we make cross-border payments completely free? What would it take to offer the mid-market zero fees?”
TransferGo has what it takes. Dvilinskas and TransferGo are now offering TransferGo FREE to customers around the world.