It was another busy quarter for Wise Platform; from exciting partnership announcements, to podcast deep dives and a whole European tour of conferences, including Wise Platform’s first ever in-person conference in London: Wise Connect. Before we get stuck in, here’s a quick reminder of who we are at Wise Platform.

Over the last decade, Wise has built an entirely new cross-border payments network that makes money move internationally faster and cheaper than traditional providers. Thanks to Wise Platform, large companies and banks can leverage Wise’s global payments technology and embed the best way to send, receive, and manage money internationally into their existing infrastructure.

Our mission at Wise has always been the same; to make international payments instant, transparent, convenient, and eventually free. The thing is, we know that not everyone is going to download our app. Wise Platform helps us achieve our mission faster by bringing Wise to more customers, rather than waiting for them to come to us.

Read on to find out what we’ve been up to in Q2.

Meet our new partners

This quarter, we launched with 7 new partners from all over the world, from the US to Australia.

Interactive Brokers (IBKR)

In April, we announced our collaboration with an iconic name in financial services, global electronic broker Interactive Brokers (IBKR). Interactive Brokers is leveraging Wise Platform’s easy-to-use APIs to allow clients a simple and seamless experience when making deposits in their trading accounts across a number of different currencies.

Read more about it in Tearsheet,PYMNTS, The Paypers, and Fintech News Signapore.

moomoo SG

Speaking of investment platforms, this quarter also saw us partner with investment platform moomoo Singapore. Thanks to our integration, Singapore users can now choose to deposit through Wise which enables them to convert their local currency to Singapore Dollars at the real mid-market exchange rate, enabling them to save more money on transfer fees.

Read more in Fintech News Singapore, Tech Coffee House and Asia One.

Bluevine

Our partnership with Bluevine,a leading provider of small business banking solutions, will make international payments cheaper, faster and more transparent for Bluevine’s customers from the convenience of its all-in-one digital banking account.

Recent research found that 75% of SMBs are dissatisfied with cross-border payment solutions because fees are normally high and unpredictable. Through this partnership, Bluevine customers can now send in eight currencies across 26 countries with highly competitive exchange rates and a transparent, low fee rate.

Read more in American Banker, PYMNTS, Crowdfund Insider, and Finextra.

GMO

We’re very excited to have launched our first Wise Platform bank partnership in Japan with GMO Aozora Net Bank, Ltd. With our combined expertise in moving money globally and banking services, we’re bringing fast, convenient and low-cost international transfer services to more than 80,000 corporate customers.

GMO Aozora Net Bank is Wise Platform’s fifth banking partner in Asia alongside Hong Kong's ZA Bank, Indonesia's Bank Mandiri, Singapore's Aspire and South Korea's Shinhan Bank.

Read more in Finance Feeds, The Industry Spread, Finextra and FF News.

IndusInd

And in another first for Wise Platform this quarter, we also launched our first partnership in India with IndusInd Bank. Our partnership will give non-resident Indians (NRI) living abroad faster, cheaper and more convenient international transfers to India, available directly in the Indus Fast Remit platform.

Read more in The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Free Press Journal and FStech.

Wise launches two new partnerships in Australia

Finally, in Australia we launched a new and bespoke way to help enterprises and their customers with their cross-border money management needs.

Rolling out first with two partners, ProSpend and Parpera will use Wise’s infrastructure to issue multi-currency accounts and digital debit cards via their own interface, directly to their customers, to spend and manage money internationally with ease.

Finally, in Australia we launched with Parpera and Prospend in a joint release. Coverage landed in Australian Financial Review, and and you can check out Parpera’s video to celebrate the launch of our partnership here.

And hear from our existing partners…

Our partnership with Swiss neobank neon was recently covered by Fintech News Switzerland, who took a look at our partnership three years on.

Julius Kirscheneder, CEO and Co-Founder of neon, said:
“Our partnership with Wise is a unique feature in the Swiss market, and brings additional value to customers that other providers can’t offer, and we already see several attractive opportunities to expand our partnership.

“Many of our customers are requesting to see some more of the features and products that are available on the Wise app directly through Neon, and delivering them is on our roadmap in 2023.”

Check out our case study with neon here.

Events

This quarter, conference season was truly in full swing, with our Wise Platform team attending and speaking at five conferences across three cities in three months. Our highlights are below:

Wise Connect

Back in May we launched the first ever Wise Connect conference - a day that brought together 150+ global payments leaders and groundbreaking product teams for a range of lively, quick-fire sessions covering the rapidly changing world of cross-border payments.

We heard from SWIFT, Monzo, EQ Bank, McKinsey, UniCredit, EY + more with fantastic insights on topics ranging from banking 2.0 to sanctions and the power of partnerships to deliver fast, convenient and transparent international payments.

We also heard keynotes from Wise CEO Kristo Käärmann on the ‘Billion Dollar Demo app’ and our CTO Harsh Sinha, who looked at CBDCs, crypto and what cross-border payments will look like in 2030.

Money 20/20 Europe

Still buzzing from the inaugural Wise Connect, the Platform team took to Amsterdam for three action-packed days at Money 20/20 Europe. As always, Money 20/20 was a unique opportunity to be surrounded by a thriving community of industry leaders and innovators, all working to bring customers the best possible financial solutions that suit their lives.

We engaged in insightful discussions with a range of individuals and companies about the ever-evolving landscape of fintech. This included a live discussion for the 11:FS podcast between Abid Mumtaz, Commercial Lead for Wise Platform, Ben Morfoot, Director of Product at GoCardless, David Singleton, CTO at Stripe, and David Brear, CEO at 11:FS, which covered the tricky question “How do we make back office payments processes sexy?”

Steve Naudé, Head of Wise Platform, also spoke to Financial IT Magazine (page 14-16) while Abid Mumtaz had a chat on camera with their editor. Julie Arnoux, Commercial Lead for Europe, spoke to Open Banking Excellence while Roisin Levine, Commercial Lead for UK/IE sat down with FF News at their FF Salon to chat all-things partnership.

You can read more about our reflections on Money 20/20 on our blog, here.

London Tech Week

London Tech Week brings together experts and innovators from around the world to discuss the latest trends across a range of sectors. Folley Ogundele, VP Commercial for Wise Platform, sat on a panel about ‘Banking without Borders’ to discuss how globalisation, digital transformation and modern business needs have increased the need for faster, cheaper and more convenient cross-border payments.

You can read more about Folley’s panel in this deep dive article from Disruption Banking: “Why Money has no Borders with Wise.”

Future of Fintech conference

While London Tech Week took place down the street, Roisin Levine, Commercial Lead for UK/IE headed to London Bridge for the annual Future of Fintech conference, run by FStech. Roisin had a keynote address on “Powering global payments through partnerships”, where she explained why we built Wise Platform, what it’s enabling for our 60+ partners and their customers, and where we’re heading next.

EBAday Madrid

And for our final event of Q2, the Wise Platform team headed to Madrid for EBAday, a conference bringing together executives from the banking industry across Europe and beyond. We kicked off the week by hosting a breakfast roundtable, where we were joined by representatives from over 20 of the world’s largest banks. Topics included Instant Payments, the future of correspondent banking, and improving customer experience while bringing down cost.

Later the same day, Steve Naudé, the Head of Wise Platform, sat on a panel to discuss ‘The status of immediate cross-border payments’ with an impressive lineup of companies, including JP Morgan, EBA Clearing and Ceca Bank. The discussion centred around whether instant cross-border payments are possible or even necessary, and what the benefits would be to customers. But as Steve explained, instant cross-border payments are actually already here. 55% of payments made via Wise arrive instantly (in under 20 seconds) to the beneficiary's account, and 93% arrive in under an hour.

You can read more about our reflections on EBAday on our blog, here.

Wise Platform in the Media

Why banks are chasing fintech partnerships - Raconteur
Wise adds partners as fintechs battle for cross-border payments - American Banker.
Steve Naudé sits down with FF News TV for ‘The Paytech Show’ to talk all-things cross-border payments.
Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise, sat down with Miguel Armaza on the Fintech Leaders podcast to talk about Wise’s journey so far, from founding to global expansion and customer-driven innovation.
How Wise Platform is changing Global Money Movement - Disruption Banking
La France doit légiférer en faveur d’une complète transparence bancaire (France must legislate in favor of complete banking transparency) - La Tribune
La conformité sera un facteur déterminant dans l'avenir des partenariats entre les banques et les fintechs (Compliance will be a determining factor in the future of partnerships between banks and fintechs) - JDN
In Conversation: G-P and Wise on Empowering Global Workforce through Ethical Payments - The Fintech Times