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Wise is a money-transfer company that lets people and businesses send cash abroad cheaply and hold multiple currencies.
Wise is a money-transfer company. If you live in London and need to send money to a family member in Poland, or you run a small business paying a supplier in China, Wise moves that money across borders for a small, upfront fee instead of the fat hidden markup that banks have long buried in their exchange rates. It also gives people and businesses a multi-currency account, so you can hold dollars, euros, pounds and other currencies in one place and spend them with a card, a bit like having a local bank account in several countries at once.
Here is the simple problem it solves. When you send money abroad through a traditional bank, the bank often advertises a "free" or low-cost transfer but quietly gives you a bad exchange rate, pocketing the difference. Wise's pitch is honesty: it uses the real mid-market exchange rate — the rate you'd see on Google — and charges one clear fee on top. That transparency is the main reason customers pick it over a bank. Its closest competitors are other fintechs like Revolut and Remitly, plus the banks themselves, and Wise competes by being cheap, fast, and easy to use through its app. The money comes from those transfer fees and from a small charge on the balances people hold in their accounts. Wise makes its margin on volume — millions of customers each sending modest amounts — rather than getting rich off any single transaction. It is headquartered in London and listed on the London Stock Exchange. It became profitable and self-funding fairly early, which is unusual for a fast-growing fintech, and it has kept expanding into new countries and features like business accounts and a debit card. The company's big bet is that moving money around the world should be as cheap and instant as sending a text. That bet has paid off in scale: Wise now serves a large and growing base of both individuals and businesses, and business accounts have become an important growth area. The main risks are regulatory — as a licensed financial firm it must satisfy watchdogs in many countries — and competition from deep-pocketed banks and rivals trying to copy its low-cost model. Still, its brand for straight talk on pricing is hard to fake, and that reputation is much of what keeps customers coming back.
Saved answer · last researched 20 Oct 2026
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