TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus is launching the Covid testing service

LONDON – Taavet Hinrikus has taken over the financial services industry with an online platform for international money transfers. Its next target is the viral pandemic that has defined the last 12 months.

TransferWise co-founder launched a new start-up called Certific on Wednesday. Founded with fellow entrepreneurs Jack Kreindler and Liis Narusk, Hinrikus’ new company aims to improve the coronavirus testing experience from a distance from home.

TransferWise “came up with a 10 times better product that was cheaper and faster” than those offered by big banks and remittance firms, Hinrikus argued in a CNBC interview on Tuesday.

Over the past decade, the founders of TransferWise have taken over the company from a payment advance to a $ 5 billion fintech giant. It is rumored that the company is preparing an initial public offering for this year. TransferWise declined to comment on IPO speculation.

“We were looking at the world of medical tests and it was about the opposite of financial services,” added the Estonian-born entrepreneur.

“Where Ceritific comes in is a way to be tested in a reliable way, which we believe is a 10 times better experience, similar to TransferWise,” Hinrikus said.

Certific is an application that verifies the identity of users and instructs them on how to take Covid-19 tests, with trained doctors ready to verify the test result and provide certification. It launches only for individuals and companies in the UK on Wednesday, but will be launched in other countries in time.

The tests are not sold by Certific, but by a company called CHHP, which was co-founded by Kreindler. CHHP states that it is accredited by the UKAS national accreditation body UKAS to provide Covid-19 tests.

The certificate test provider will initially sell polymerase chain reaction or PCR tests at GBP 64 ($ 89) per pop. Customers send the test kits to a lab to determine the result, and certification is made available through the app the next day.

The certificate will soon offer rapid antigen testing in packs of 12 which will cost GBP 249. It is said that the last tests will produce a result in less than 90 minutes. Certificate makes revenue from a fee charged to customers for the test certificate.

Once a user is tested and records the result in the application, they will be given a digital certificate as well as a QR code that contains information about the test result. The idea is that users will eventually be able to use these certificates for recreation or for travel abroad.

“Because there’s the right test that’s applicable to the use case, you can use this while going to the movies, a concert, or a sporting event,” Certusk CEO Narusk told CNBC in a statement. an interview, adding that his platform is an “agnostic test”.

Certific says his service is “accessible” and “democratized.” However, Covid tests are already offered free of charge in the UK through the state-funded National Health Service. Most things are centralized in the UK when it comes to health, from ambulance rides to complex surgery, all of which are paid for by taxes.

Certific said it did not want to compete with the NHS, but “complete their efforts” and will provide all the test data to NHS England. The company hopes that its platform can play a role in the testing scheme of the UK launch for international travel, as well as Test and Trace.

Hinrikus set out for the first time to address ways to respond to the technology pandemic last year. A team of engineers from TransferWise worked pro bono to develop so-called immunity passports to help people get back to work.

The idea was for someone to do an antibody test to see if they had recently contracted the virus and had a certain level of immunity. But experts have warned that such certificates are unethical because it is unclear whether antibody tests confer immunity to reinfection, and there are fears that such virtual passes could harm people’s privacy.

“It seems to have been a bit bottomless, in the sense that we still don’t know that much about immunity,” Hinrikus said.

The next step for the certificate would be to add the vaccination status of users to the application, now that safe and effective coronavirus vaccines are being launched worldwide. This could pave the way for vaccine passports to prove that people have had the vaccine and bring them back to work and play.

“Certified testing is something that can play an important role,” Hinrikus said. Obviously, this will need to be integrated with vaccine information and can be used in certain use cases, such as mass gatherings and others, where people who have either been vaccinated or tested can go to them.

But Kreindler is not interested in the term “immunity passport”, insisting that they should be called “vaccination certificates”. Whatever it is called, major companies around the world are looking for inoculation books to help lift restrictions on public life.

The certificate is entirely self-financed, and Hinrikus says he has invested most of the money to run the service. Asked if the company would take venture capital funding in the future, co-founder TransferWise said it would only do so if it needed “extra help” to expand globally.

Regarding Hinrikus’ role at TransferWise, the executive said he had “gradually moved away” from day-to-day operations for some time, but remains the company’s chairman. He says he has also been involved in angel investment and other technology initiatives.