Speaking from his own experience as a traveller in the UK, Crisman Wise understood the struggle to find an international remittance platform that is simple to use and inexpensive. With the initial goal of helping a friend, in July 2018, Wise built a solution to ease the process of international remittance in other currencies without the need for an extra cost.

The solution was later called Transfree (an acronym of transfer free). In the next two years, after a long and winding road to secure a remittance license from Bank Indonesia, the service finally managed to secure the license from the central bank in July 2020.

“We see international remittance as a major issue that many people are facing. With the initial goal of helping a friend, we found that this is something that could develop into something else. That was how we came up with Transfree,” said Wise, who is the Founder & CEO of the company.

Wise acknowledged that as a traveller, he had to deal with an international cash transfer to and from Indonesia which can be quite costly when done on leading remittance platforms.

In terms of business model, the service that Transfree offers does not differ significantly from competitors such as Transfez, Zendmoney, or Transferwise. They enable customers to transfer money to a bank account abroad in different currencies. The difference is that Transfree does not charge customers for this service; the startup monetises through the exchange rate gap.

Also Read: BRI, Visa join remittance firm Nium’s Series C round to facilitate tuck-in acquisitions

2021 targets

At the beginning, Transfree was meant to help international students in the UK in sending and receiving money from back home. But as time goes by, the team realised that there is a greater potential in the migrant workers’ segment, who might be burdened by the high cost of sending money back home.

According to data by Bank Indonesia, throughout 2018, Indonesian migrant workers abroad sent up to IDR153 trillion (US$10.9 billion) home, providing a massive business opportunity.

In just two years, the startup managed to serve transaction between Indonesia, Europe, and Australia. Most of the leads that Transfree received came from close relations and recommendations. This number was later used by the startup to validate demands.

Transfree is set to launch its service in Indonesia in Q2 2021. Other targets for the quarter is related to their fundraising effort as the company is currently run through bootstrapping. The Transfree team aims to realise its vision of making international remittance as easy as a local remittance.

“We are focussing on our launch in Q2 this year. The focus of our service will be Southeast Asia. We are still unable to disclose transaction volume targets, but we can say that the traction has been really good. We are trying our best to seize momentum,” Wise closed.

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The article Dapat Lisensi BI, Startup Remitansi Transfree Segera Resmikan Kehadiran di Q2 2021 was first published in Bahasa Indonesia by Kristin Siagian for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

Image Credit: Crisman Wise

The post Having secured central bank license, Transfree confirms Q2 2021 launch of remittance platform in Indonesia appeared first on e27.