Wise in Brazil: faster, cheaper and more convenient in 2018

Hello Brazil!

The year is about to end, everyone is jolly and celebrating, but it’s also time for retrospectives, so let's talk about what happened to our product in Brazil and toast to what’s to come in the new year.

In 2018 we released a bunch of product enhancements, big and small, that improved the experience of sending money from Brazil, significantly we should say.

Transfers from Brazil being completed 1.8x faster

At the beginning of the year, a transfer would take on average more than 2 days to be completed, with only 8% of all transfers completed within 24h. Now transfers are completed in 30 hours on average with 10% completed within 1h. Great, isn’t it?

Scrapped the BRL 9.000 limit for good

Before, customers could only send BRL 9.000 per month, not a cent more. Today customers with an address in Brazil can send up to BRL 30.000 per transfer if paying with a bank transfer, there is no more monthly maximum and their yearly limits are defined by how much they earn and the assets they have accumulated over the years rather than a flat standard limit for everyone. Hooray!

Prices dropped even lower

This year we became even cheaper in Brazil dropping our prices by 25% on average. Unfortunately the IOF (tax on financial operations) increased for some transfers but our price reduction helped contain the impact on total transfer costs.

A few other things we did for our customers this year

• Faster review and approval of documents. Sometimes we have to ask for additional documentation and in busy times it could take up to 8 days for us to review and authorise the payments, now this process usually doesn’t take more than a day.
• Pay with a bank transfer. Some of our customers find it convenient paying with a boleto, others had been asking for an alternative for quite some time, so we made it happen.

What’s to come in 2019

• Even more convenient payment methods, like paying with a card.
• Fewer documents requested, there are cleverer ways of confirming customers’ details.
• Small businesses also need us and we are doing our best to start offering them a solution as soon as possible.
• Looking forward to our multi-currency Borderless account? We can’t promise this will come in 2019 but we’re working hard to make it happen.
• More price drops. Yes you read it right, our goal is to be offering way lower fees by the end of the year.

Stay with us and let’s make international transfers better together.

We wish you a 2019 without borders.

With love,

Latin America Team