Fintech/News/ Meet the ex-Robinhood employees who are now taking on Wise Atlantic Money is hoping to steal market share from Revolut, Wise and PayPal with fixed £3 fees By Amy O'Brien 9 March 2022 Neeraj and Patrick, Atlantic Money's cofounders Neeraj and Patrick, Atlantic Money's cofounders \Fintech German digital bank Nuri files for insolvency By Amy O'Brien 9 August 2022 Fintech/News/ Meet the ex-Robinhood employees who are now taking on Wise Atlantic Money is hoping to steal market share from Revolut, Wise and PayPal with fixed £3 fees By Amy O'Brien 9 March 2022 Remember the last time you needed to send £1m abroad? Me neither, but you’d be surprised how many tech workers in Europe do this regularly. At least that’s according to Neeraj Baid and Patrick Kavanagh, two of US stock trading app Robinhood’s earliest employees. Today they’re launching their own money transfer service called Atlantic Money to solve this enormous headache. They’re billing Atlantic as the world’s first fixed-fee money transfer service, and it comes out of stealth today. It’s a pitch that’s won backing from a glitzy set of investors. The startup’s $4.5m seed round has been led by Amplo and Ribbit Capital, with Harry Stebbings’ 20VC and Index Ventures also participating alongside Kleiner Perkins, Elefund, Day One Ventures and Susa Ventures Seth Berman. Atlantic promises to save people up to 99% compared with incumbents like Wise and Western Union. But how does it plan to get consumers to bite? Cheaper transfers Baid and Kavanagh moved to the UK back in 2020 after working on Robinhood’s European launch. (Yes, the one that never happened.) Both began sending money back home regularly, but they were pretty surprised at the fees on offer by the big money transfer providers in the UK. Instead, they worked out the real rate before they sent transfers, and then they let their UK expat friends in on the trick. “They were willing to jump through crazy hoops to avoid all the bigger fees on offer” “They all jumped on the idea — they were willing to jump through crazy hoops to avoid all the bigger fees on offer from the incumbents,” Kavanagh says. “That’s when we knew we were onto something.” How does it work? To begin with, Atlantic Money is enabling users to transfer money abroad from the UK, in GBP to nine currencies — EUR, USD, AUD, CAD, SEK, NOK, DKK, PLN and CZK. Atlantic Money charges a flat fixed fee of £3, regardless of the size of the transfer, coupled with 0% FX Commission. This is new. While Wise’s bread and butter is charging customers 0% FX Commission, it charges a variable fee per transaction, depending on the size. This means those nicely salaried tech workers we were talking about earlier can be charged up to £2,000 on a transfer of £1m. XE and Western Union, meanwhile, rely on variable FX Commission multiples to charge customers for transfers — which in Western Union’s case, can set them back £14k on a £1m transfer. Then there’s the likes of PayPal’s Xoom and Monese, which spread their charges across a combination of both — meaning, on a £1m transfer with Xoom those poor tech workers will be charged a cool £15k. The only thing is, these are pretty big brands to take on. After a shining London stock market debut last year, Wise now boasts 12m customers and processes more than £6bn in transfers a month. 18m people use Revolut for its transfer and exchange services across over 35 countries. Western Union is a true veteran when it comes to money transfers, and Monese is a unicorn. But that doesn’t seem to faze Atlantic. ‘People are surprisingly not loyal’ “People are surprisingly not loyal to any of the existing services,” says Baid. “They might have a default like Wise because at least it’s trusted. But mostly they exhibit this shopping behaviour where they don’t immediately trust the rate on the page, so they Google it to make sure it’s the right rate, and go and check others. “That’s why Wise now has that huge comparison page on their website where they try to convince people.” Source: Atlantic Money Keeping it simple That doesn’t necessarily mean Atlantic could make less money, say the founders. They think the secret to success lies in a leaner business model and a smaller, more targeted customer base. They’re also not planning on following in the incumbents’ footsteps and launching any other products and services (like Wise’s retail investing feature or Monese’s banking-as-a-service platform). “We’re not subsidising costs associated with loads of other products and services that our customers have little interest in,” says Kavanagh. Atlantic says it is targeting a smaller, more targeted customer base of people sending more substantial sums of money abroad regularly — for whom doing so is a “big part of their lives”. “By doing so, our operational costs drop substantially compared to anyone else in the market,” says Baid. “We’re not subsidising costs associated with loads of other products and services” “That’s why we’re able to charge much lower fees, and that’s why none of the incumbents can copy our fee structure. Their operational costs and compliance costs are too enormous for targeting that amount of people.” Atlantic is launching in the UK — although the cofounders hint at imminent European expansion. “We had a great time working with the [UK’s] FCA, and, you know, we can just hop on a train to mainland Europe to get another licence there if we need,” says Kavanagh. Amy O’Brien is a reporter at Sifted. She tweets from @Amy_EOBrien Related Articles Member “I think we’ll see a Monzo IPO”: Execs discuss the future of Monzo By Isabel Woodford Click here to read more Inside the open banking hype bubble By Isabel Woodford Click here to read more Fintech sector grapples with Wirecard fallout By Isabel Woodford Click here to read more The best of Sifted: Fintech By Marie Mawad in Paris Click here to read more Most Read 1 \Fintech What goes up must come down: A journey through Klarna’s valuation history 2 Member \Venture Capital Are we in a downturn? What the data tells us about European tech in 2022 3 \Public & Academic Europe’s top 10 ‘unicorn universities’ 2022 4 Member \Venture Capital Web3 investors: the most active seed-stage VCs in Europe 5 \Startup Life Should startup employees set their own salaries? 4 Join the conversation Subscribe newest oldest Notify of new follow-up comments new replies to my comments Shah“…meaning, on a £1m transfer with Xoom those poor tech workers will be charged a cool £15k.” If these guys are poor for you, which is your poverty line? If they don’t pay up for these services, who will? We are going towars a more selfish world. Wise and others give jobs to people, who depend on those fees from guys who can afford. By doing something like this, we are moving toward a mor unsustainable world, where fe guys want the majority share. That’s been happening sine long though, now on a different scale. TomBarnardAre they going to use mid Bank rate? Hidden fees? The problem is most retail investor’s lose money with Robin Hood. I will stick with Wise they never let me down. Loyal customer their rates are so close to spot I don’t see how you can best them. FranWell… They better hope people don’t start using crypto. L FWell that sounds nice, but there’s no need to wait for Atlantic Money to be -maybe- fully operational with currencies all over the world when an account at Zen Bank does that for 5€ a month.
Member “I think we’ll see a Monzo IPO”: Execs discuss the future of Monzo By Isabel Woodford Click here to read more