Blog / social media

Well, that time has come around again, and we’re currently celebrating our second birthday here at CurrencyFair! It seems an appropriate time to have a quick word about how we’ve done so far.

Since launching in May 2010 we have seen the equivalent of over €125 million exchanged and transferred via the site, saving our customers around €4 million in the process (compared to typical bank exchange rates and transfer fees)! These days we are seeing averages of around €600,000 exchanged daily, and we’re growing at over 10% every month. This is great news for our customers, since growth means more people exchanging on the site, which in turn means better and better exchange rates and even bigger savings.

Why are we growing so fast? We recently surveyed a few hundred of our...

There is no doubt that social media is changing the way we do business. Frustrated customers, sick of dealing with unresponsive customer service desks, are now able to air their concerns over Twitter, Facebook, even YouTube and the like, potentially reaching thousands or even millions of people, and companies are being forced to take note.

There’s another side to this new power though, and that’s the ability consumers now have to reward the companies they like with a positive review. Whether it’s a Google +1, a Facebook like, a positive tweet, or a forum post, it’s easy now to let people know when you’ve had a good experience or like a product. This is not just a nice way of saying thank you – it can actually make the product cheaper!

I think everyone understands that...

The original idea for CurrencyFair was driven by my own personal frustrations, as an expat, with sending money internationally. The internet had come along and upset middle-men in pretty much every industry I could think of, depressing margins and generally resulting in better value for the consumer all round. Why then, did it cost me at least 3% of my money simply to exchange it into another currency and send it overseas, a process that cost the bank very little? We set up CurrencyFair largely because we knew that the peer-to-peer idea could work in this industry as it had in others. In fact, it seemed inevitable that the ridiculous margins being charged simply couldn’t last.

It’s now just over a year since we went live (Happy Birthday to us!), and we now have a better idea...

The market for foreign exchange and international money transfers is big. Really big. Not only do you have corporations paying overseas invoices or receiving foreign payments, but you also have, for example, expats (both working and retired), people making foreign investments, or buying or selling property overseas, and international students, most of whom have a need at some stage or another to send money to foreign bank accounts.

Until recently, if you were one of these people, you only really had two options: use your bank directly, or use a specialist currency broker, which is not a bank, but a company that focuses solely on foreign exchange and money transfers.

Even though things are gradually changing, the vast majority of people still use their bank. I’m guessing...