The idea for TranSwap first came to Benjamin, our CEO and Co-Founder during the Asian Financial Crisis back in 1997 when he had a US$ currency exposure and he wanted to hedge it with a FX forward contract. However, the premium quoted to him was too expensive and the spread for the spot rate was too huge.Fortunately, Benjamin was able to find a friend overseas who has US$ and requires his S$. They then agreed to swap their respective currencies at an agreed Mid-Market rate.
Fortunately, Benjamin was able to find a friend overseas who has US$ and requires his S$. They then agreed to swap their respective currencies at an agreed Mid-Market rate.
This simple FX swapping exercise gave birth to the idea of cross-border foreign-exchange swapping. However as the internet, technologies and regulations were not suitable for fintech innovation back then, Benjamin decided not to develop the FX swapping idea into a permanent arrangement.
In recent years as FinTech became a reality and received wide acceptance by the regulatory authorities, this reignited Benjamin’s passion to solve the foreign-exchange problems that he, like many other Small Medium Enterprises, faced, such as high costs and lack of transparency in the transaction.
Benjamin decided to leave his corporate job to start TranSwap. He brought on-board Kien Leong, a lawyer, to launch the cross-border FX payment platform.TranSwap has since rapidly grown under their leadership, with three offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia and multiple valuable partnerships to allow our customers to make payments to more than 160 countries in the world. TranSwap is still continuing to expand our currency borders and will also be launching our new Wallets solution in May 2020.