Money without borders — the international account for people and businesses
HQ: London, United Kingdom | Founded: 2011 | Employees: 5,500+ | Stage: Public (LSE: WISE) | Website: https://wise.com
Wise (formerly TransferWise) was founded in January 2011 in London by Estonians Kristo Käärmann (ex-Deloitte) and Taavet Hinrikus (Skype's first employee) after they realized they were overpaying banks on EUR/GBP transfers by hacking a peer-to-peer workaround. The company uses the real mid-market exchange rate with transparent upfront fees, building direct local account infrastructure in lieu of correspondent banking. Headquartered in London with offices in Tallinn, New York, Singapore, Budapest and Austin, Wise is listed on the London Stock Exchange under ticker WISE and serves 160+ countries with 40+ currencies, holding £13.3B in customer balances and £2.9B in Assets Under Custody.
Wise monetizes through a small transparent percentage fee per transfer plus interchange on its multi-currency card and interest on customer balances (first 1% yield retained as underlying income). The four core products — Wise Account (personal multi-currency holding/spending), Wise Card (debit for 160 countries), Wise Business (SME treasury, batch payouts, expenses), and Wise Platform (B2B infrastructure for banks like Monzo, N26, Bank Mandiri) — drive a 73% underlying gross margin. Backed early by Valar Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, IA Ventures, Seedcamp and later D1 Capital, Lone Pine and Baillie Gifford, Wise has remained consistently profitable since 2017 while reducing prices for customers by £1.88B in FY24 alone.
Wise has built one of the rare profitable fintechs at scale — £1.05B revenue and £481M reported PBT in FY24 — by obsessively lowering its take rate (0.67% average fee) while growing customers 29% to 12.8M and volume to £118.5B. Its direct listing at $11B in July 2021 gave it permanent capital, and its closed-loop local account network (160+ countries, 40+ currencies, 65% instant transfers) plus Wise Platform (banks as customers) creates a hard-to-replicate moat against both banks and remittance incumbents.
Browse: Home | Blog | About | All Startups A-Z | View full profile on StartupWiki