We’re 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 16 January 2024, our customers are trusting us with the equivalent of 12.9 billion GBP in their Wise accounts.
If you keep money with us, we take steps to protect your funds (known as Safeguarding) in accordance with local regulatory requirements. In regions where safeguarding applies, this may involve holding your money in cash, secure liquid assets, or insured by a comparable guarantee, depending on local requirements.
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. Safeguarding means that 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. Learn more about how Wise safeguards:
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 ensure your money is safe and readily available to you. In regions where regulations permit, most of your money is safeguarded 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 predominantly short-term bonds so we are not materially exposed, and therefore more resilient, to increasing interest rates. The average duration of the bonds we hold is currently under 6 months – with the majority of bonds having a remaining term of 3 months or less.
For the money that we put into banks, we hold it with several reputable banks with strong liquidity.