Q4 2022 Mission Update: Convenience

The key indicator that we’re offering a truly convenient product is your ability to use Wise without any hiccups. That’s why we’re now measuring convenience (or lack of it) by how many customers contact us for support.

Unfortunately in Q4 2022 we didn't make much improvement. We trended up with more contacts from our customers on the first two months from our latest performance from Q3 22 but now back to the same level.

Let’s talk about Q1’22 before we get onto Q4'22..

During this time two main events happened:

1. We made significant improvements in our controls and security checks that keep your money safe. Unfortunately this meant more transfer being subject to checks, delays or other hurdles.

2. The war between Russia and Ukraine has made it more difficult to operate our service in both countries and their currencies. As we tried to navigate these challenges, more customers found themselves needing to reach out to us to resolve issues.

Throughout the year we’ve made a concentrated effort to mitigate majority of the effects of these events on convenience and contact rate.

Ok.. back to Q4'22

1. We experienced an issue with our customer verification service in early October which forced us to stop some transfers until it was fixed.
2. Experienced a problem with one of our partners that resulted in a delay of transfers to Pakistani Rupee (PKR).
3. Encountered some problems when upgrading one of our databases. This forced us to delay a significant number of transfers until fixed.
4. Some of the asian currencies - Indian Rupee, Thailand Baht, Pakistani Rupee, Indonesian Rupiah - have been affected by some recurring liquidity issues which delays our ability to payout in the estimated time to recipients.
5. With the absence of these incidents we observed a normalisation of our contact rate during the last month of the quarter and a return to a similar value as we were back in September 2023.

Not everything is bad news!

We’ve been running a few experiments on the steps you take to order a Wise card. We did this with the hope we could make the process more convenient for you, and the change has reduced the number contacts for help ordering a card by 3.5k per month.

Is that it?

That’s it for Q4 2022! But there’s plenty still happening, we’re looking forward to:

1. We’re making paying Brazilian Real transfers much easier using PIX as a payment method. PIX is an instant payment method widely used in Brazil. Since the money arrives instantly, customers will avoid the confusion of not understanding where is the money in the journey (“is it in my bank? or is with Wise already?”) which is sometimes common with bank transfers.
2. We’re working on making simple changes to your Wise account such as address change and business profile closure so you don’t need to wait for Support. With a few taps you’ll be able to soon do this on your own.
3. We’re improving communication regarding card transactions by providing clear reasoning for decline transactions and clear guidance on when and how to dispute.
4. We’re making it easier to understand how to use account details and where to find them.

We'll report back on this next quarter, so watch this space!