Mission Round-up.
In Q4, 5.8 million of you moved £26.4 billion on Wise.
This Mission Update highlights improvements to Wise in Q4 2022. While our average fee for sending money didn’t get closer to zero, we improved the speed of transfers, and introduced new features for the Wise Account and Wise Business.
You can boost your GBP, Euro, or US dollar balances by holding your money in an interest-earning asset, order biodegradable Wise eco cards, and easily view your total balance to spend across all currencies. We also got even better at spotting and preventing fraud.
Wise Business account holders can now earn 1% cashback in the UK, sync bills with Xero, put their logo on Wise Business cards, and more.
Our fees.
Our average fee increased.
Fees moved in the wrong direction. In Q4, the average fee increased to 0.66% from 0.64% the previous quarter.
This is mainly because the fee increases we had to make in Q3 continue to have an impact.
However, we made some progress towards our goal of being eventually free. It’s now cheaper to send money to Brazil and Mexico. We removed same currency payout fees for Euros, Hungarian forint, Singapore dollars or British pounds on the Wise Account.
Our speed.
Over 52% of transfers arrived in less than 20 seconds.
The improvement from 50% instant in Q3 is largely down to two factors. Firstly, we made transfers from Brazil instant when using Pix - which means they’re arriving in less than 20 seconds. Secondly, we got faster at running our security checks and therefore pausing fewer transfers.
In addition, we fixed some issues with our partner in Malaysia to make payments instant again. We sped up transfers to Israel from an average of 48 hours to 6 hours, and to the US from an average of 25 hours to 6 hours. Last but not least, now over 90% of transfers to Mexico arrive in under an hour, and transfers to Poland now take less than 3 minutes, where 65% of these were taking over an hour before.
Convenience.
More of you needed to get in touch with us.
When you need to get in touch with our support team, it shows that Wise isn’t as smooth and straightforward yet as it could be.
Unfortunately the number of customers who had to contact us for support increased to 8.9% compared to 8.8% Q3 2022.
This was caused by issues with our documents verification, delays with payout partners and even a database upgrade. Find out below which contact points we're prioritising to fix next.
Moving money.
What's new?
Send money from Singapore with a QR code, reach more wallets in Indonesia and the Philippines. Transfers to China now open to many more Wise customers.
We’re now compatible with more banks in Canada to connect your bank account to Wise, and we simplified the steps to do this.
New Moving Money features.
1. Send Chinese Yuan (CNY) from more European currencies.
You are now able to use local payment methods like Alipay, Unionpay, Weixin, or bank transfers to send CNY from European Economic Area (EEA) currencies. Read more on which ones are supported here
2. More e-wallet recipients when you send to Indonesia and the Philippines
You can now send Indonesian rupiah to recipients using LinkAja and ShopeePay. And send Philippine peso to recipients using GrabPay, Shopee Pay, Starpay, Bayad Wallet, TayoCash, and JuanCash.
3. Complete your details faster when using PayNow to move Singaporean dollars.
Scan a QR code to pre-fill your details anytime you want to transfer or top-up Singaporean dollars with PayNow.
4. Easily connect your bank account in Canada to Wise
We’re using Plaid to make it easier to connect Wise to your bank accounts in Canada. We’ve increased the number of banks you can connect to, and made it simpler for those of you connecting the banks we already supported
5. Sanctions reviews got faster
We sometimes pause transfers while doing required checks to ensure we don’t provide financial services to the people or companies who have been sanctioned by governments. In Q4 we reviewed and resumed 73% of paused transfers in 24h, an improvement from 63% in Q3.
6. Send USD outside of US without opening a Wise account
You can now send US dollars to a USD bank account outside of the United States using Wise Transfer. A number of customers requested this as previously you had to open a full Wise Account to do so; now you can easily pay invoices or friends in other countries with Wise.
Wise account.
What's new?
You can now earn a return on balances if you're based in the UK, easily see how much you have available on the card across multiple currencies, order our brand new white eco cards, and more.
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New Wise account features
1. UK customers: Hold GBP, EUR and USD balances in an interest-earning asset
Boost your GBP, Euro or US dollars balances by holding your money in an interest-earning asset. Your money is held in assets 100% backed by the government. Today, no UK bank offers a current account that pays central bank interest rates and provides a 100% government guarantee.
2. View your total card balance across all currencies
We have made it easier to know your total by converting each balance to your local currency, adding it all up and showing this amount in the ‘card’ tab.
3. Eco-friendly cards to reduce plastic waste
Order an eco-friendly Wise card if you’re a personal customer in the UK and EU. They’re made of biodegradable material to reduce plastic waste, and use less ink since the card will only have your name printed on it. Just click on the Cards tab in your account to order one.
4. Set a secure communication code for emails
Protect yourself from scam email attempts by setting a personal code to appear in the emails we send to you. Seeing the code will tell if the email is a genuine one from Wise. Set one up by logging in at wise.com, clicking ‘Settings’ and selecting ‘Secure communication code’.
5. We warn you in-app about potential scams
You will now see an in-app warning about potential scams before you send money. If we think you’re sending money to a high-risk recipient, we’ll stop the transfer and manually review it.
6. Faster manual fraud reviews
To keep you safe from fraudsters we stop and check suspicious money movements. We added more people to our team and by the end of Q4 were completing 75% of these checks within 24 hours, an improvement from 52% at the end of Q3.
7. ID verification reminder in-app
We now show you a warning banner in the Wise app if we've been unable to verify your documents. This helps you rectify the problem if you missed an email about it. It's helping over 4,500 of you a month get ID documents verified and accepted faster.
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8. Fewer approvals, just as safe
You'll now only be asked for 2-step verification if we spot behaviour that doesn't seem like you. This is when we send you a push notification or a text message with a code to enter. We added more detail to our text messages including what action triggered it to help you decide to approve or not.
Wise Business.
What's new?
Wise Business customers can now pay multiple bills through Xero, assign custom roles to your team, and add logos to your cards. We were also able to offer Wise Business again to customers in the Netherlands.
New Wise Business features.
1. UK businesses: 1% cashback on card spend
Your Wise business and employee expense cards now earn 1% cashback on eligible purchases.
2. Wise Business accounts available again in the Netherlands
We had to stop offering our Wise Business to new customers in the Netherlands for a period but we relaunched in Q4; now for a 50 Euros fee you can get setup with local account details, a business card, and the ability to send and receive money.
3. Physical cards are available for more US businesses
Sole proprietorship or single-member limited liability company (LLC) businesses can now order a physical card for their business expenses, in addition to digital cards. Businesses with multiple shareholders can't get a card (neither digital or physical) yet, but we’re working on it.
4. Get your logo printed on your business cards
You can now customise your Wise business card with your company logo, with no minimum quantity, in Europe or the UK.
5. Easier to identify different cards in the app
If you have multiple cards, we’ve made it easier for you to identify the purpose of each one. Name all of your physical and digital cards, eg. ‘My Daily Spending Card’, on iOS and Android mobile apps.
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6. Create custom roles to manage your team's permissions
Last quarter, we told you we were testing custom roles and now it’s fully launched. You can create custom roles, picking and choosing the permissions and level of access each user can have to your Wise business account.
7. Your customers can pay your invoices from their Wise balance
Previously, if someone made a payment request to your Wise account, you could only pay for them using the same currency they requested it in. Now you can pay them from any currency you hold a balance in.
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8. Sync your Xero Bills to Wise as you pay them
If you’re a Xero customer, you can now sync any unpaid bills to Wise and pay them. We’ll mark them as paid in Xero to reduce the accounting admin for you.
9. You can fund CNY transfers with your Wise balance now
Previously, when you sent CNY to businesses in China you had to fund these transfers via an external bank account. Now, you can fund these transfers directly from your Wise balance.
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10. Send money to Colombia
You can now send money from your business accounts to personal recipients with a Bancolombia account. We’re working on adding more banks.
11. Download your statements in SWIFT file format MT940
For those who need it, you can now download your statements in SWIFT file format MT940.
12. Less back and forth while creating a Wise Business account
We’ve made it easier for you to provide details like your website and business
Wise Platform.
We started powering international payments for more banks and global businesses in Q4.
Our partnership with AvidXchange lets their customers pay suppliers globally and reconcile seamlessly - all without leaving the platform.
Wise Platform came to new countries, powering international transfers for ZA Bank in Hong Kong and Wio in UAE.
And we expanded our relationship with Deel - helping their 15,000 customers send money in more currencies when paying employees across the world.
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Transparency.
How does your bank hide their fees?
In April 2020, a new European law - the Cross-Border Payments Regulation - forced banks to be more transparent when their customers send money within the EU.
Unfortunately, most banks try to keep the status quo and hide fees in inflated exchange rates. We’ve checked some of the EU’s biggest banks and today, only one big bank is telling customers the truth - ING.
So we need to be even louder to ban hidden fees for all payments. That’s where you come in. Find out how transparent your bank is here and what you can do to help.
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