Like many good stories, this one starts with two friends. They’re both from Estonia. Taavet, who was the first employee at Skype, lived in London but got paid in euros. Kristo worked for Deloitte, also lived in London, and got paid in pounds. But he had a mortgage in euros back in Estonia.

They both moved their money with their banks — which had expensive fees and bad exchange rates. They knew there had to be a better way. So they put their heads together and invented a beautifully simple workaround.

Each month, they looked up the real exchange rate on Reuters. Taavet put his euros into Kristo’s Estonian bank account, and Kristo topped up Taavet’s UK account with his pounds. Both got the currency they needed almost instantly, and neither paid an extra cent on bad exchange rates or unreasonable charges.

There was no waiting, no stress, and no extra cost. ‘There must be others like us…’ they thought. So they started a company, called it TransferWise, and hired a team to build the best way to send money between countries.

As we grew, we realised that people needed more than just money transfers. So we added a multi-currency account, a debit card, and a business account, and changed our name to Wise.

Our name may have changed, but the heart of what we do is always the same: helping people manage their money internationally more cheaply, quickly, and transparently.

Over 10 million people now trust us to move more than £5 billion every month, which saves them £3 million in bank fees every day. With the Wise account, they hold balances in over 55 currencies, and use our debit card to shop and spend while abroad.

We’ve partnered with banks and companies like Monzo, Bolt, and GoCardless, to bring their customers better international banking. And people like Richard Branson, and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, among others, have invested in our vision.

Like our customers, we’ve become a bit more global — we’ve opened 14 offices, with over 2,400 employees. Just what you need when your mission is building money without borders.