LONDON: As a young management consultant working in London more than a decade ago, Kristo Kaarmann wanted to send £10,000 back to his savings account in his native Estonia. He hoped to take advantage of the attractive interest rates on offer at the time from local currency bonds that had been rising on speculation that the kroon would de-peg from the euro. But when the funds he sent from his HSBC branch in London arrived home, there seemed to be the equivalent of about €500 missing. The money wasn’t missing. He had just been caught by a lousy exchange rate. The idea for Transferwise was born and a decade later the firm, which has just started operating in the UAE, is generating £179 million in revenues and has a team of 2,000 people in 14 global offices. “It was a little bit embarrassing” explains Kaarmann in a Zoom interview from London. “Now I had these euros in Estonia which I needed to keep locked up in a savings account for a year and three months just to earn back what HSBC charged me in interest.” It sparked an interest in how money could be sent overseas more cheaply and soon he and his friends working in different countries were carrying out their own transfers among themselves whenever the need arose, avoiding the sometimes exorbitant fees charged by banks. Now the company which Kaarmann co-founded with fellow Estonian Taavet Hinrikus, has started its first operations in the Gulf with a base in Abu Dhabi. The UAE, with millions of expatriate workers, is a massive market for remittances with an estimated $44 billion in outward transfers being made in 2017 according to World Bank data. Transferwise has already become one of the world’s fastest growing tech firms after raising $689 million in primary and secondary funding from investors such as Sir Richard Branson and Max Levchin. Its local unit called TransferWise Nuqud LTD, is regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Financial Services Regulatory Authority. It claims it can offer rates up to two times cheaper than major banks and other exchange houses by avoiding the chunky commissions sometimes charged by banks and other money transfer outfits. A quarter of its international transfers are delivered in less than 20 seconds, it said. Kaarmann believes the service is attractive to those sending both small and large amounts because it doesn’t discriminate in the exchange rates that are offered. “We don’t have people who send small amounts subsidize others who send big amounts,” he said. “I’m quite proud that we don’t do deals — because the deals are always good for some — but someone else is paying for them.”