TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus launches the Covid testing service

LONDON – Taavet Hinrikus took on the financial services industry with an online platform for international money transfers. His next target is the viral pandemic that has occurred in the past 12 months.

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

TransferWise “came up with a 10x better product that was cheaper and faster” than the one offered by major banks and remittance companies, Hinrikus said in a CNBC interview Tuesday.

The founders of TransferWise have taken the company from a newcomer in payments to a $ 5 billion fintech giant over the past decade. Rumor has it that the company is preparing an IPO this year. TransferWise declined to comment on IPO speculation.

“We looked at the world of medical testing and it was a bit backwards as a financial service provider,” added the Estonian-born entrepreneur.

“Where Ceritific comes in is there is a way to be reliably tested that we think is a 10X better experience, comparable to TransferWise,” said Hinrikus.

Certificates is an app that verifies users’ identities and instructs them on how to take Covid-19 tests, with trained doctors on hand to verify the test result and provide certification. It will only launch for individuals and businesses in the UK on Wednesday, but will roll out to other countries over time.

The tests are not sold by Certific, but by a company called CHHP, which was co-founded by Kreindler. CHHP says it has been accredited by the UK national accreditation body UKAS to offer Covid-19 testing.

The Certificates 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 the certification is made available via the app the next day.

Certificates will also soon offer rapid antigen testing in packs of 12 that cost £ 249. It says the latest tests will yield a result in less than 90 minutes. Certificates earn income from a fee charged to customers for their test certificate.

As soon as a user has been tested and logs the result in the app, he will receive a digital certificate and a QR code with information about the test result. The idea is that users can eventually use these certificates for recreation or travel abroad.

“Given that there is the appropriate test that applies to the use case, you can use it while going to the cinema, to a concert, or to a sporting event,” Narusk, CEO of Certificates told CNBC in an interview. adding that its platform is “test agnostic.”

Certific says its service is “affordable” and “democratized”. However, Covid tests are already offered for free in the UK through the state-funded National Health Service. Most things are centralized in Britain when it comes to health, with everything from ambulance trips to complex operations all paid for through taxes.

Certific said it does not want to compete with the NHS, but rather “complements their efforts” and will provide all of its testing data to NHS England. The company hopes its platform can play a role in the UK’s Test to Release international travel program, as well as Test and Trace.

Hinrikus first started looking for ways to respond to the pandemic with technology last year. A team of TransferWise engineers worked pro bono to develop so-called immunity passports to get people back to work.

The idea was that someone would take an antibody test to show if they had recently contracted the virus and had some degree of immunity. But experts warned that such certificates were unethical, as it is unclear whether antibody tests confer immunity to reinfection, and there are concerns that such virtual passes could invade people’s privacy.

“It turns out to be a bit of a dead end, because we still don’t know that much about immunity,” Hinrikus said.

The next step for Certific would be to add users’ vaccination status to the app as safe and efficient coronavirus vaccines are rolled out around the world. This could pave the way for vaccine passports to prove people have had the vaccine and get them back to work and play.

“Certified testing is something that can play a big role,” said Hinrikus. “It will need to be clearly integrated with vaccine information and can be used in certain use cases, such as mass gatherings and the like, where people who have been vaccinated or tested can go there.”

But Kreindler is not keen on the term “ immunity passport, ” insisting they should be called “ vaccination certificates ” instead. Regardless of what they are called, major global companies are researching vaccination passes to help overcome restrictions on public life.

Certificates are fully self-funded, and Hinrikus says he invested most of the money to get the service going. When asked if the company would take venture capital funding in the future, TransferWise’s co-founder said it would only do so if it needed “extra help” to expand globally.

As for Hinrikus’s role at TransferWise, the executive said he has been “gradually moving away” from day-to-day operations for some time, but remains the chairman of the company. He says he has also been active in angel investments and other technology initiatives.