Wise: Revolutionizing the way money is sent around the world

What makes the experience at Wise different from other providers? What features do you offer to your customers?

At Wise, we’re laser-focused on building the best way to move money around the world - instant, convenient, transparent and eventually free.

Banks and other service providers typically charge between 3-5% for an international transfer. They charge an upfront fee and an additional fee that’s hidden in a bad exchange rate, and it can take up to a few days until the money reaches the recipient. At Wise, we’re charging 0.6% on average with no hidden fees, always giving our customers the real exchange rate they can find on Google. With 45% of all transfers being delivered instantly in less than 20 seconds, we’re also getting increasingly faster.

At the heart of our product offering is the Wise account, the world’s most international account and the first of its kind for people and businesses. The account allows you to send money and hold money in over 50 currencies.

The most exciting functionality of the Wise account is instant access to local bank details in multiple countries - IBANs, account numbers, wiring numbers. People and businesses can use their bank details in place of an overseas bank account, which means they can get paid and spend in local currencies with zero currency conversion cost or receiving fees.

Freelancers and small businesses can attract customers worldwide, expats, second homeowners and global nomads can move between countries with financial ease.

Today, more than 12 million people and businesses use Wise and we’re moving more than £6 billion in cross-border transactions every month on their behalf. However, the number we’re most passionate about is the £1 billion in fees that they’re saving themselves a year compared to using their bank.

In which countries do you operate and what is Wise's business model?

People and businesses using Wise can send money to their families or pay suppliers and employees located in over 80 countries, and can receive money from over 40 countries. And with our Wise debit card they can spend money in any currency at the real exchange rate.

We charge a small upfront service charge on each transaction, always keeping our fees as low as we can. This is possible thanks to the infrastructure we’ve built over the past decade. By plugging into local banking networks all over the world, we’re able to bypass the inefficient correspondent banking network. By cutting out the middle-men, we’re able to bring down our costs for customers. Whenever we do drop our prices, we do so in a sustainable way. Since 2017, we’re a profitable company.

How do you see the money transfer market in the world?

Based on data including World Bank and national trade reports, we estimate between $5-10 trillion of international money transfers are made globally each year. With banks and traditional providers still having a hold on the industry, the world pays £150billion in hidden fees each year.

Despite improvements over the last decade, consumers are mostly in the dark about how much it costs to send money abroad. That’s because providers can claim ‘zero fees’, ‘0% commission’ or ‘best rates’, when the reality is often very different.

Focusing on remittances, so people supporting family and friends back home, the global average cost of a $200 transfer remains painfully high at 6.38%, despite United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10c of lowering remittance prices to below 3% by 2030. Only transparency can bring these prices down, by allowing consumers to understand the true cost of sending money abroad and to shop around, as they can accurately compare prices.

How would you describe the existing banking offer to SMEs? Does it meet the needs of SMEs?

Big banks are getting in the way of small businesses’ international ambitions - and it’s having a real impact. The services offered by big banks to small businesses are broken. They’re slow and a nightmare for businesses that operate on tight margins and can’t afford to wait on payments.

Just like for consumers, they’re equally expensive, charging hidden, high fees that drain businesses’ profits. To operate abroad, businesses need to set up local accounts, and banks can make this process cumbersome and full of bureaucracy. Sometimes banks even require the directors of the business to visit a branch in person, which is painful and sometimes impossible, for example when business directors are living in a different continent. In today’s interconnected world, this is unnecessary and brings a mountain of paperwork.

And these blockers can have a huge impact on businesses: A recent YouGov global research commissioned by Wise Business shows that international banking is the most significant barrier to SMEs expanding overseas, even ahead of tariffs, taxes and regulation. For SMEs, every penny counts, and the cost of an international transfer can be the difference between being able to offer a product or service in a market to it being too expensive to be worthwhile.

What is Wise’s core value proposition for SMEs?

We launched Wise Business a few years ago, because we saw businesses using our consumer product. That’s how bad the services offered by banks and traditional providers are.

Since then, we’ve grown a business product that really caters to the needs of SMEs. As you’d expect from Wise, our business customers are charged just a small upfront fee with no hidden costs, and transfers are made at the mid-market rate. Beyond that, they can pay up to 1,000 people in one click, create accounts in multiple currencies - being then able to receive money from clients or set up direct debits like a local in over 10 currencies, create different user roles for employees and issue their employees with expense cards.

And that’s just the start. There’s a lot of work to do and we’re committed to building a new standard for SME banking, so they can focus on growing their business.

Being a company without branches, customers only interact with you digitally. How do you ensure an excellent customer service experience with interactions being 100% digital? And how are you acquiring customers?

At Wise, we believe our Customer Support team is key to achieving our mission by understanding our customers’ needs and helping them whenever they need it. We offer support via phone, live chat or email in various languages, as well as a comprehensive help section on our website.

As much as possible, we want our customers to have a convenient and delightful product experience. That’s why all our colleagues, including our CEO Kristo, do regular side-by-sides with our Customer Support team to help answer questions. Hearing first-hand what we can improve is key to building a first-in-class service.

Thanks to this customer-first approach, we take pride in our net promoter score of 76, a number unheard of in the financial industry. 67% of customers join us via word-of-mouth, when a friend or family member recommends our service to them.

What do you think Wise will look like in 5 years?

At Wise, we are always guided by our customers. Many people and businesses still have to use opaque services for moving money internationally. We ask our customers which routes they want us to launch next. When we see enough demand, we’ll add it to our Mission roadmap.

Beyond that we want to make sure that wherever we operate, we offer the full range of products. Since last year, people in India can finally send money internationally with Wise, and launched our card for people and businesses in Canada.

At the same time, we continue to invest in our infrastructure. No one’s ever built a single global network which hooks into all the different local payment systems around the world. So, we’re building it. Over the last ten years, and we believe, over the next few decades, every country's local payment system is going to get faster, cheaper and more efficient. By connecting directly to these local payment systems, we get access to that speed, low cost and efficiency.

We were the first non-bank to become a direct participant in the UK’s Faster Payments System. Our other mature markets such as Europe, Australia, Singapore and other Asian markets are quickly catching up.

We’re also seeing more and more banks starting to use our infrastructure and integrating it into their own products and expect this number to grow over the next few years. Today, 21 banks in 11 countries across 4 continents and 11 enterprises such as Google Pay use our rails.

But our focus on international money doesn't mean we only solve money transfers. If we encounter other issues we believe we can solve for our customers, we'll do it too.