Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder and Chairman of TransferWise, speaks at a technology conference in London on Wednesday, June 12, 2019.
Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images
LONDON – Taavet Hinrikus took over the financial services industry with an online platform for international money transfers. His next target is the virus pandemic that has defined the past 12 months.
TransferWise’s co-founder launched a new start-up called Certific on Wednesday. Hinrikus’ new company was founded together with co-entrepreneurs Jack Kreindler and Liis Narusk and aims to improve the experience of testing the coronavirus remotely.
TransferWise “developed a 10 times better product that was cheaper and faster” than those offered by major banks and remittance companies, Hinrikus argued in a CNBC interview on Tuesday.
The founders of TransferWise have freed the company from an upstart paying to a $ 5 billion fintech giant for the past decade. The company is rumored to be preparing to go public this year. TransferWise declined to comment on IPO speculation.
“We looked at the world of medical testing and it was as backward as financial services,” added the Estonian-born entrepreneur.
“When Ceritific comes in there is an opportunity to be tested with confidence, which we think is a 10x better experience, similar to TransferWise,” said Hinrikus.
What is certified
Certific is an app that verifies the identity of users and instructs them on how to carry out Covid-19 tests. Trained doctors are available to review the test result and provide certification. It won’t launch until Wednesday for individuals and businesses in the UK but will roll out in other countries over time.
The tests are not sold by Certific, but by a company called CHHP, which Kreindler co-founded. According to the CHHP, it is accredited by the UK’s national accreditation body UKAS to offer Covid-19 tests.
Certific’s test provider will initially sell polymerase chain reaction or PCR tests for £ 64 ($ 89) a pop. Customers send the test kits to a lab to determine the result, and certification is provided through the app the next day.
Certific will also soon be offering rapid antigen tests in packs of 12 for £ 249. It is said that the latter tests will produce a result in less than 90 minutes. Certific generates income from a fee that customers are charged for their test certificate.
As soon as a user has been tested and the result is logged in the app, they receive a digital certificate and a QR code with information on the test result. The idea is that users can potentially use these certificates for recreation or for travel abroad.
“Since there is the right test that is applicable to the use case, you can use this test when you go to a movie theater, concert or sporting event,” Narusk, CEO of Certific, told CNBC in an interview, adding that their platform is “test independent”.
According to Certific, the service is “affordable” and “democratized”. In the UK, however, Covid tests are already being offered free of charge by the country’s state-funded National Health Service. Most things are centralized in the UK when it comes to health. From ambulance trips to complex operations, everything is paid for in taxes.
Certific said it does not intend to compete with the NHS but “complement its efforts” and provide NHS England with all test data. The company hopes its platform can play a role in the UK test-to-release program for international travel, as well as Test and Trace.
Immunity passports
Last year, Hinrikus first looked at ways to respond to the pandemic with technology. A team of engineers from TransferWise volunteered to develop what are known as immunity passes to get people back to work.
The idea was that someone would do an antibody test to show if they had recently caught the virus and had some level of immunity. However, experts warned that such certificates are unethical, as it is not clear whether antibody tests confer immunity to reinfection, and there are concerns that such virtual IDs could violate people’s privacy.
“It turns out that this was a dead end as we still don’t know that much about immunity,” said Hinrikus.
The next step for Certific would be to add users’ vaccination status to the app after safe and efficient coronavirus vaccines are rolled out worldwide. This could pave the way for vaccination cards to prove people got the vaccine and get them back to work and play.
“Certified testing can play a big role,” said Hinrikus. “Obviously this needs to be built into the vaccine information and can be used in certain use cases like mass gatherings and so on where people who have either been vaccinated or tested can go to these.”
However, Kreindler is not interested in the term “immunity passport” and insists that they be referred to as “vaccination certificates” instead. Regardless of what they’re called, large global companies are scrutinizing vaccination cards to help lift restrictions on public life.
Certific is entirely self-funded, and Hinrikus says he invested most of the money to get the service up and running. When asked if the company would fund venture capital in the future, the TransferWise co-founder said it would only do so if “additional help” was needed to expand its global market.
Regarding Hinrikus’ role at TransferWise, the chief executive said he had “gradually moved away from day-to-day operations” for some time but was still chairman of the company. He says he has also been active in angel investing and other technical initiatives.
