“BYE-BYE banks,” taunts the home page of TransferWise, a London-
based startup. “You’ve had your fun.” Taavet Hinrikus, one of
the firm’s co-founders, dubs it “the Skype of money transfers”.
He should know. He was one of Skype’s first employees and is
using the same principle of peer-to-peer networking to slash the
rates that people pay to send money abroad.  At Skype, Mr
Hinrikus was paid in euros but he would spend his earnings in
London where he lived in a rented apartment. A friend, Kristo
Käärmann, was paid in pounds but had a mortgage to settle in
Estonia. The two worked out an arrangement: Mr Käärmann would
cover Mr Hinrikus’s rent and get equivalent euros in return in
his Belgian bank account. Instead of turning to banks, which
charge a hefty commission of 3-6% for such transfers, the soon-
to-be business partners would log on to Reuters and use the mid-
market exchange rates to determine how much money should be
swapped into their bank accounts.  The pair turned this homespun
deal into a proprietary alg