Wise

Wise is a global technology company that builds services for moving money between countries, serving both individuals and businesses. It launched in 2011 under its original name, TransferWise, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker WISE. The company works in cross-border payments, a field long dominated by banks whose foreign exchange markups and correspondent fees are often hard for customers to see, and it positions itself around the mid-market exchange rate with fees shown upfront.

The Wise account lets people and businesses hold 40+ currencies, send money abroad and spend in 160+ countries with a card that carries no foreign transaction fees. Account holders can also get local bank details for more than 10 countries, such as a UK sort code or a Euro IBAN. Security measures include safeguarded customer funds, biometric and two-step authentication, encryption and daily fraud checks.

Beyond the account, Wise also supplies its technology to large companies and banks, describing it as a new cross-border payments network. This business, Wise Platform, offers correspondent services reachable through Swift messaging or an API, direct access to domestic payment systems in 8 markets, and embeddable onboarding and KYC tools for platforms in areas such as travel, education, marketplaces and spend management. For a bank, plugging into an existing network like this can be an alternative to building and maintaining its own international payment rails.

Wise holds 80 licences worldwide, with oversight from regulators such as the Bank of Thailand, and offers customer support in multiple languages. Millions of people, businesses and banks use Wise, and the company describes its mission as making money movement easier and cheaper for its users.