What does Wise do
Wise is a financial technology company that lets people and businesses send, receive, hold and spend money internationally, using the mid-market exchange rate with an upfront fee.
Wise was founded in 2011. It describes three main products: the Wise Account, Wise Business and Wise Platform.
- International transfers: Wise sends money to bank accounts in other countries. It converts at the mid-market rate, the same rate shown on Google, and shows its fee before you pay rather than adding a hidden markup to the rate.
- Multi-currency account: A Wise Account can hold more than 40 currencies, and you can convert between them at the mid-market rate.
- Local account details: Wise gives users account details for major currencies such as USD, EUR and GBP, including account numbers or IBANs, so they can receive payments the way a local resident would.
- Wise card: The Wise debit card lets you spend in many countries and converts your balance into the local currency when you pay.
- Wise Business: Companies use it to pay contractors abroad, collect payments from overseas customers and manage cash across several currencies.
- Wise Platform: Wise offers its cross-border payments infrastructure to banks, financial institutions and large enterprises so they can provide international transfers to their own customers.
Wise is not a bank. It says it does not lend out customer money, and it operates as a regulated money services business. In the US, for example, Wise is registered with FinCEN.
A Wise overview for a specific use case should start with the country you are sending from or to and the feature you plan to use, such as a transfer or a multi-currency account. It is worth checking the fee and the arrival estimate that Wise displays for each transfer before confirming it.