TransferWise says it is on track to do £100 million in revenue this year and is profitable

LONDON – Online money transfer business TransferWise says it is on track for revenues of £100 million ($128.97 million) this year and is profitable on an operational basis.

In a business update on Wednesday, the closely-watched startup said it is currently doing £8 million a month in revenue and should hit £100 million in total this year.

Revenues grew by 150% last year, the company said. That would suggest revenues of close to £69 million in the year to March 2017, as TransferWise had a turnover of £27.8 million in the year to March 2016.

Founded in 2011, London-headquartered TransferWise lets people send money overseas online. It has built its brand around being cheap and easy, leaving banks playing catch up.

The company moves over £1 billion across its platform each month and has over 1 million customers. TransferWise says it expects to add another 1 million customers this year.

CEO and cofounder Taavet Hinrikus says in an emailed statement:

"We're building one of the few new global financial services brands that are coming out now. It's hard to build a 10x better product, go to market and build your own brand; that's why you see a lot of co-operation between banks and fintechs.

"To have hit break-even just six years on from launch shows how strong the foundations of our business are. This is just the starting point. With the unique platform we've built, we're looking forward to creating a new kind of financial services for the future."

TransferWise is one of London's few "unicorns" - private tech companies worth over $1 billion. The business was reportedly valued at $1.1 billion in a $26 million funding round last May.

TransferWise currently employs 700 people in 9 offices around the world, recently launching an Asian hub in Singapore. The company says it has a 10% share of the international money transfer market in the UK and lets customers send money on over 750 routes.

The business update comes amid increasing competition in the online money transfer market. London foreign exchange startup Revolut recently announced it would offer free international transfers of up to £5,000 a month, saying in a press release that the offer is "to challenge TransferWise." (The move raised eyebrows in the tech community given that both companies share an investor - Index Ventures.)