↗️ Wise’s Trillion-Pound Trajectory
From simple transfers to powering global payments, Wise is quietly building the financial infrastructure to move trillions. Here's a deep dive into product, platform, and long-term vision.
Wise didn’t set out to disrupt global finance. It started with one clear job: make international transfers faster, cheaper, and more transparent.
That focus hasn’t changed. But the scale has.
Today, Wise moves over £100 billion a year, serves 10 million customers, and runs a platform used by banks, fintechs, and businesses around the world. Behind the scenes, it’s quietly building the rails for how money moves globally.
This week, we look at how Wise is evolving from consumer app to global infrastructure – and what its disciplined, product-led approach can teach the rest of fintech.
The AI Moment for Fintech? Dubai Thinks So.
At this year’s Dubai AI Festival (23–24 April), the spotlight isn’t just on models and algorithms - it’s on what AI means for economies.
In a region pushing hard on economic diversification, fintech is front and centre. Expect sharp insights from:
DIFC leaders on how AI is being deployed to reshape financial infrastructure and reduce dependency on oil
Fintech CEOs building AI-native products across payments, lending, and wealth
Venture capitalists betting on the next wave of AI start-ups solving real-world inefficiencies
This is where finance meets frontier tech - and where policy, capital, and product collide.
If you're tracking the future of fintech in emerging markets, Dubai is worth your attention.
We’ll be there. Stay tuned.
↗️ Wise’s Trillion-Pound Trajectory
Not every fintech grabs headlines. Some just quietly scale, stack profit, and chip away at the banks until one day they’re everywhere.
Wise is one of those.
Founded in 2011 to solve one problem - overpriced, opaque international transfers - Wise has spent the last 14 years doing just that. But its ambitions now stretch far beyond consumer remittances.
Under the hood, Wise has been building infrastructure. Not just for itself, but for others. It's no longer just a fintech product. It’s a platform.
📈 Wise by the Numbers
Let’s start with the scale. Wise isn’t just growing fast - it’s growing profitably.
Revenue: £1.2 billion in FY24, up 24%
Profit: £194 million after tax, up 92%
Active customers: 10 million+, up 29% YoY
Transfers: £118 billion moved globally last year
15.5M active customers
£21B customer holdings
Operating margin: 22.6%
For context, that’s a better margin than many listed banks - and without lending, credit risk, or a heavy cost base.
This is not a growth-at-all-costs story. Wise is a cash-generating infrastructure business hiding in plain sight.
A journey to trillions
Wise sees a £32 trillion opportunity in global money movement - made up of £3T moved annually by individuals, £14T by small and medium businesses, and £15T by large enterprises.
To go after it, they’ve mapped a clear trajectory:
Near term: Deliver the best cross-border experience on the market
Medium term: Become the go-to international account for both people and businesses
Long term: Build the world’s leading correspondent infrastructure – quietly moving trillions behind the scenes
It’s an ambitious path, but it’s grounded in what Wise already does best: solving for speed, cost, and trust at global scale.
Wise’s growth algorithm ⚙
A great customer experience isn’t magic. It’s the result of multiple systems working in sync. You can’t design your way out of poor infrastructure, and you can’t scale without product-market fit. Sustainable growth comes when all the gears - product, tech, design, operations - move together.
Wise is a textbook example.
High Speed: 95% of payments complete within 24 hours, with 65% arriving instantly
Low cost: Average transaction fee of just 56bps
Resilient: Handles 2.5m transactions a day
Scalable: 99.9%+ uptime with 24/7 support
Network: 46% transactions run through direct payment connections
💳 A Fintech That’s Actually Product-Led
Wise didn’t get here by selling hype. It built a product that solves a very specific job - and solves it exceptionally well.
✅ Real mid-market FX rates
✅ Low, transparent fees
✅ Speed and clarity baked into the UX
✅ A multi-currency account that just works
It’s also avoided the distractions many others couldn’t resist. No crypto detours. No super app bloating. No buy now, regret later.
Instead, they focused on being useful. Most customers discover Wise through search or word of mouth. And they stick around because the product keeps delivering.
62+ NPS | 70%+ Word-of-mouth | 5x return LTV/CAC
What’s impressive about Wise’s product story is how deliberately it’s unfolded. No shortcuts, no pivots for the sake of growth. Just a steady, mission-led expansion that built on real user needs.
They started with transfers. Then came the Wise account to hold balances. From there, they added local account details. And once the infrastructure was in place, they introduced multi-currency cards for spending. Each step made the next one possible.
It’s a rare example of product discipline in fintech - evolving naturally, without losing sight of the original mission.
Wise business growth
Build the only account you need to scale your business globally
Wise also has a business proposition available in 79 countries, with over 600k active customers. Today it represent 23% of Wise’s total revenue.
It started as an alternate FX account for business but quickly became a primary account for small businesses pay, get paid, manage accounts payable and receivables, earn an interest and simplify accounting.
The business offering has grown significantly with advanced features such as multi-entity management and access, multi-currency invoices, payment approvals, api payments, batch payments, employee cards and 15+ accounting integrations.
What’s Cooking at Wise 👀
Despite the simplicity of its mission, Wise is not standing still. A few of the most interesting recent developments:
Wise Checkout: A new B2B product allowing merchants to accept payments directly from customers’ bank accounts in local currencies. Think Stripe Checkout, but optimised for cross-border. Aimed at reducing card fees and FX friction for global e-commerce.
Assets expansion: Wise lets customers earn interest on their balances through government-backed money market funds. That’s now expanding beyond GBP, USD, and EUR into other currencies - and a business version is on the way.
Treasury tools: Targeting larger businesses and platforms, Wise is building treasury features for holding, moving, and managing funds across currencies with automation and yield.
Infrastructure enhancements: Faster payments, deeper API capabilities, and improvements across its own network to support platform partners with more speed and control.
All of it aligns with the same core mission: move money across borders, cheaply, transparently, and instantly.
🔌 Plug In and Go: Wise as a Service
The most important - and underappreciated - part of the business? Wise Platform.
This is Wise’s B2B infrastructure layer. It lets banks, fintechs, payroll platforms, accounting software, and marketplaces plug Wise’s cross-border payments directly into their own products.
Partners like Monzo, N26, Xero, Google Pay, and Deel already use it. So do traditional banks like Crédit Agricole in France. Wise handles the compliance, the FX, the speed - and the partner gets a better customer experience without building it all themselves.
Wise Platform processed £124 billion last year - that’s more than a third of Wise’s total volume.
It’s also high-margin, low-acquisition-cost growth. Wise doesn’t need to fight for every end user when it can power the products people already use.
This is how Wise scales without bloat. Smart.
🧠 What Other Fintechs Can Learn
Wise didn’t grow by chasing trends. It grew by making one job effortless: moving money globally.
Here’s what stands out:
Transparency is a feature and a moat
Wise doesn’t hide fees in FX spreads. That builds trust - and forces banks to play catch-up.Infrastructure wins
Owning your stack (or enough of it) lets you control costs, deliver speed, and differentiate.Platform > Product
The biggest fintechs aren’t just apps - they’re infrastructure providers. Think Stripe, Adyen, and now Wise.Boring is underrated
Wise doesn’t need to be flashy. It just needs to work. In fintech, that’s rare - and valuable.
🤝 Not a Threat to Banks. A Platform for Them
While early headlines framed Wise as a bank killer, the reality is different.
Wise doesn’t want to replace banks. It wants to work with them.
That’s why they built Wise Platform - to let banks plug into Wise’s infrastructure and give their customers better FX and cross-border payments.
CEO Kristo Käärmann was clear: “We built Wise Platform so our product could be used by banks.” They’re not trying to steal customers. They’re trying to power the ecosystem.
For many banks, it’s cheaper and faster to partner with Wise than to rebuild their own global payments stack. That’s the genius of it.
About Dom Monhardt, founder of one-fs.com
I am a French technologist and product leader living in Dubai, with 15+ years of experience in building cutting-edge and innovative digital experiences.
I am interested in the intersection of business, design, and technology and am deeply passionate about the fintech and digital banking world.