Summary of fee changes: Major routes got cheaper but some fees are up

We have been changing our fees on Wise over the last months. Some of you benefited as a lot of routes got cheaper, but you would have seen an increase in some fees. Overall the fees are now better for everyone - let me explain below.

Our mission is to lower the cost of moving money across borders. We’ve made progress over the last 13 years, bringing the average fee on Wise to 0.67% globally. As we develop our infrastructure, improve connections to payment systems and more people and businesses adopt Wise, we are able to optimise the costs of moving and managing your money. As our costs come down, we pass these savings on to you in lower fees.

We have made three waves of fee adjustments between April and June and now is a good time to summarise the effect to you. First, we passed on new efficiencies on some routes, by lowering fees in April for Swiss, Danish, Swedish, Kiwi customers and a good list of destinations. We then made a bigger structural change in May, which started to make larger transfers cheaper and made sure we don’t need to cross-subsidise costlier payment methods and smaller transfers. Finally as we confirmed the expected impact of the May changes, we were able to pass on more efficiencies across most of the routes in June. We don't stop here, we should be able to pass on a few more fee reductions in the coming months as a final wave of these adjustments.

Our fees are now more accurately reflecting the costs, it means it will be easier for our team to work on the things that will make Wise cheaper for everyone in the future.

Here is a summary of changes since April:

Transfers on major currencies got cheaper

People and businesses who move money between major currencies such as the Euro, the US dollar, the Great British pound, the Australian dollar and others will now pay less.

For example, sending GBP to EUR used to cost £0.21 + 0.43% in March. This is now £0.59 + 0.33%. An even bigger impact when sending SGD to AUD used to cost S$0.49 + 0.44%, which is now S$1.37 + 0.25%. This means the fee for a SGD 10,000 transfer is now 41% cheaper than before.

This is a great outcome for the biggest users of Wise, especially those who already get their salary directly into the Wise account or use Wise Business to invoice international clients.

Here's a convenient calculator to see how much each of the routes benefited from this change.

Using your Wise card got cheaper too

These changes mean that using your Wise card across major currencies got cheaper. In some cases, smaller currencies got the benefit too. For example, if you live in the UK, and are going on a trip to Turkey, it will now be 59% cheaper to pay in Lira, dropping from 0.80% to 0.33%.

Some currencies are getting more expensive

For example, sending GBP to MXN used to cost £0.31 + 0.55%. This is now £0.68 + 0.60%. This means the fee for a GBP 5000 transfer to Mexico is now 10% more expensive than before, but still cheaper and faster than most providers.

Same-currency payments in some countries cost more

This affects people and businesses who use their Wise account to make payments locally in the same currency. For example, paying locally from your AUD balance increased from A$0.57 to A$1.23. Local payments within the US went up from $0.39 to $1.13.

Local payments in the UK, Eurozone, Singapore and Hungary remain free.

Some payment methods got more expensive

Fees for loading your Wise account or funding transfers from some bank-issued cards and direct debit (ACH) in the US and Canada got more expensive.

For example, funding your GBP balance from a Mastercard debit card is now 0.62% compared to 0.45% previously. But the good news here is that if you use bank transfers or the convenient open banking in the UK, funding your GBP balance costs nothing. In addition, using Visa debit cards in Europe and the UK is now cheaper in some cases too.

If you’re using Wise in Europe, you can easily fund your account using bank transfers, and in the US, wires provide a cost-effective 一 if less convenient 一 way to fund larger transfers.

Finally, if you’re receiving your salary or invoices directly into your Wise account, you won’t incur any of these additional charges that come with moving money from your other bank to Wise. You’re also likely to get a better return on your own money if you opt into ‘Interest’ Assets in the UK, Singapore or Europe, or ‘USD Interest’ in the US.

Most conversions on your Wise account got cheaper

Along with international transfers, most conversion on your Wise account are now cheaper. Here are some examples of major currencies. This is just a selection of routes, check the calculator for your route.

Check on your bank

One thing to keep in mind is that most banks would never tell you about increasing their fees on international transfers. They would just crank up the markup on their exchange rate and unless you check every time against the mid-market exchange rate - you would never find out. To make it easier for you, we’ve set up a comparison table that covers a few banks and other cross borders specialists.

Onwards,
Kristo