Question 1

How Wise keeps your money safe

Accepted Answer

Wise is licensed to hold your money, and as part of keeping it safe, we follow strict rules set out by the regulators in the countries where we operate.

As of 30 September 2024, our customers are trusting us with the equivalent of 14.7 billion GBP in their Wise accounts.

If you keep money with us, our regulatory obligation is to hold all of it in cash, secure liquid assets, or insured by a comparable guarantee.

How is this different from a bank?

We don’t lend out your money. Banks do. This is why governments require them to insure their deposits by participating in country-specific deposit insurance schemes, like the FSCS in the UK.

Because we’re not lending your money, we handle it differently by safeguarding it.

What is safeguarding?

Safeguarding means we look after your money by keeping it separate from our own money, and making it available to you whenever you need it.

How we hold your money can vary by country, for example:

Learn which Wise group entity provides services to you

Learn more about where we’re regulated

How we keep your money available to you even during market turmoil

We make sure your money is safe and readily available to you. Most of your money is in secure liquid assets — such as EU, UK and US Government bonds, and money market funds as of 1 April 2024.

For a government bond to fail, the government would need to default on their loan payments, which almost never happens with stable governments.

The bonds we hold are mostly short-term bonds, so we’re not materially exposed to increasing interest rates, making us more resilient.

The average duration of the bonds we hold is under 6 months, with the majority of bonds having a remaining term of 3 months or less.

The money that we put into banks, we hold it in several reputable banks with strong liquidity.

Question 2

Which currencies can I add, keep and receive in my Wise account?

Accepted Answer

Adding money

You can add money to your account in these currencies: AUD, BGN, BRL*, CAD, CNY*, CHF, CZK, DKK, EUR, GBP, HKD*, HUF, IDR*, JPY, MYR*, NOK, NZD, PHP*, PLN, RON, SEK, SGD, TRY and USD.

*BRL: you need to be a Brazilian tax resident to add money in BRL

*CNY: only if you're eligible to send money from CNY

*IDR: can be used to top up any balance except IDR

*HKD: limited to non-Hong Kong personal customers, and companies registered in Hong Kong

*MYR: only customers with an address in Malaysia can add MYR directly to their MYR balance

*PHP: only customers with an address in the Philippines can add PHP directly to their PHP balance

Holding money

You can keep 40+ currencies in your account, and convert money between any of them with the mid-market exchange rate.

Receiving money

You can receive money by bank transfer from other people in these currencies using account details.

Currency	Receive locally	Receive with Swift
AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP, HUF, NZD, SGD, USD	Yes	Yes
BGN, CHF, CZK, CNY, ZAR, UGX, AED, ILS, DKK, HKD, JPY, NOK, SEK	No	Yes
PLN, RON	Yes* (restricted)	Yes
MYR	Yes* (restricted)	No
TRY	Yes*	No

Note that some customers can't receive payments in some currencies:

MYR from any bank account in Malaysia (only available if you're a resident in Malaysia and only supported for personal accounts)
PLN from any bank account in Poland (we’ve had to stop users from getting PLN account details for now while we make improvements; if you have them already, you can keep using them as normal)
RON local account details can receive from any bank account in Romania (only available if you’re a resident in the EEA, Switzerland, the US, Canada, Australia, or Japan)
TRY is only available for customers not residing in Türkiye
USD local account details are not available everywhere. Check if you can get USD details

Note: You can receive multiple different currencies to your GBP Swift/global account details: GBP, EUR, USD, AED, AUD, BGN, CAD, CHF, CZK, CNY, DKK, HKD, HUF, ILS, JPY, NOK, NZD, PLN, SEK, RON, SGD, UGX and ZAR.

Check where you can receive from and the latest fees

Learn more about using your GBP account details to receive SWIFT payments

To receive money from other people in these currencies, just open a balance in the currency you’re being paid in and give the account details to your friends, company or customers.

Learn how to receive money from others

Fees for converting money

Convert currencies in your Wise Account

Frequently asked questions

How Wise keeps your money safe

Which currencies can I add, keep and receive in my Wise account?