Wise Customer Agreement
Hong Kong - Wise Payments Limited
Last updated: 15 August 2023
This Agreement contains 21 sections. You may go directly to any section by selecting the appropriate link below. The headings are for reference only. Some capitalised terms have specific definitions in section 21. Underlined words in this Agreement contain hyperlinks to further information.
1. Scope of this agreement and why you should read it
Please read this Agreement carefully before you start to use our Services. This Agreement (always together with the documents referred to in it) tell you who we are, how we will provide the Services to you, how this Agreement may be changed or ended, what to do if there is a problem and other important information.
By using our Services, you confirm that you accept and agree to follow this Agreement. If you do not agree, you must not use our Services.
We recommend that you print a copy of this Agreement for future reference. You can always view the most current version on our Website.
This Agreement refers to the following additional documents, which also apply to your use of our Services:
- Our Privacy Policy, which sets out the terms on which we process any personal data we collect about you, or that you provide to us. By using our Services, you consent to such collection, use, disclosure, and processing, and you warrant that all data provided by you is accurate.
- Our Cookie Policy, which sets out information about the "cookies" on our Website.
- Our Acceptable Use Policy, which sets out the permitted uses and prohibited uses of our Services.
- Our Frequently Asked Questions, which provides answers to common customer questions.
- Depending on the Services you choose to use with us, additional terms and conditions may apply, as communicated to you at the appropriate time.
Wise App
We license the use of the App to you on the basis of this Agreement and subject to any rules and policies applied by any appstore provider or operator whose sites are located at App Store and Google Play (“Appstore Rules”). We do not sell the App to you. We remain the owners of the App at all times.
From time to time updates to the App may be issued through the Appstore. Depending on the update, you may not be able to use our Services via the App until you have downloaded the latest version of the App and accepted any new terms.
In consideration of you agreeing to abide by the terms of this Agreement, we grant you a non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use the App on your device subject to this Agreement and the Appstore Rules. We reserve all other rights.
2. About Wise
Wise Payments Limited is a company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales with company number 07209813 (“Wise”, “we”, “us”, or “our” as applicable).
Our registered office is at 6th Floor, The Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JJ.
We are an Electronic Money Institution authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 for the issuing of electronic money and providing payment services. Our FCA reference number is 900507.
In Hong Kong, we are licensed as a Money Service Operator by the Customs and Excise Department, licence number: 15-01-01584.
Please note that when paying for a “Money Transfer” transaction in a currency other than the Hong Kong dollar, you are doing business with a different Wise entity on these same terms as listed here. In those cases, your money will be held in accordance with the regulations and licenses applicable to such entity, as described here.
3. Eligibility
If you are an individual, you must be 18 years or older to use our Services, and by opening a Wise Account you declare that you are 18 years or older. We may require at any time that you provide evidence of your age.
If you are not a consumer, you confirm that you have authority to bind any business or corporation on whose behalf you use our Website or Services, and that business or corporation accepts these terms.
You may only open a Wise Account if it is legal to do so in your country of residence. By opening a Wise Account you commit to us that your opening of and maintaining a Wise Account does not violate any applicable laws or regulations. You take responsibility for any consequences of your breach of this section.
4. Opening your Wise Account
In order to use our Services, you must first open a Wise Account by registering your details. As part of the signup process you will need to accept this Agreement.
For legal reasons, all information you provide during the signup process or any time thereafter must be complete, accurate and truthful. You must update this information whenever it changes. We may refuse to provide, or discontinue, the Services to any person or entity at any time for any reason.
We treat all activities under a Wise Account to be those of the registered user. You must only use the Services to transact on your own account and not on behalf of any other person or entity.
You may only open one Wise Account unless we explicitly approve the opening of additional accounts. Wise may refuse the creation of duplicate accounts for the same user. Where duplicate accounts are detected, Wise may close or merge these duplicate accounts without notification to you.
5. Verification
You acknowledge that we are required by law to carry out all necessary security and customer due diligence checks on you in order to provide the Services to you. You may need to provide additional information (in a format acceptable to us) so we can verify your identity as a condition of processing your payment order, opening your Wise Account, or otherwise providing our Services to you. We may make, directly or through any third party, any inquiries we consider necessary to validate information that you provide to us, including checking commercial databases or credit reports. You authorise us to obtain one or more of your credit reports, from time to time, to establish, update, or renew your Wise Account with us, or in the event of a dispute relating to this Agreement and/or activity under your Wise Account.
6. Managing Your Account
You must ensure that the information recorded on your Wise Account is always accurate and up to date, and we shall not be liable for any loss arising out of your failure to do so. We may ask you at any time to confirm the accuracy of your information or to provide documents or other evidence.
We may contact you by email or in other ways described in section 17 with information or notices regarding your Wise Account. If you don't maintain or check your email and other methods of communications, you may miss emails and/or other communications about your transactions and our Services. We shall not be liable for any consequence or loss arising from this.
7. Keeping your account safe
Additional Wise products or services you use may have additional security requirements and you must familiarise yourself with those as notified to you.Never disclose your Wise Account password or your customer reference number (which starts with the letter 'P', followed by a series of numbers) to any third party. Keep them safe. Change your password regularly. We will never ask you to provide your password to us or to a third party. Tell us if anyone asks for your password and contact Customer Support if you are not sure. Follow recommended practices on passwords, for example: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32040. You must never let anyone access your Wise Account or watch you access it.
You must make sure that your e-mail account(s) are secure and only accessed by you, as your e-mail address may be used to reset passwords or to communicate with you about the security of your Wise Account. Let Customer Support know immediately if your email address becomes compromised.
Never use any functionality that allows login details or passwords to be stored by the computer or browser you are using or to be cached or otherwise recorded.
Additional Wise products or services you use may have additional security requirements and you must familiarise yourself with those as notified to you.
If you suspect your Wise Account, login details, password or other security feature is stolen, lost, used without authorisation or otherwise compromised, you are advised to change your password. We rely on you to regularly check the transactions history of your Wise Account. Contact Customer Support immediately in case of any unauthorised, incorrect, or misdirected transaction, or if you suspect that your Wise Account has been compromised. Any undue delay in notifying us may not only affect the security of your Wise Account but may result in you being responsible for financial losses.
We may suspend your Wise Account or otherwise restrict its functionality if we have concerns about:
- the security of the Wise Account or any of its security features; or
- unauthorised or fraudulent use of your Wise Account or any of its security features.
We will notify you of any suspension or restriction of your Wise Account and of the reasons for such suspension or restriction as soon as we can, unless notifying you would be unlawful or compromise our reasonable security interests. We will lift the suspension and/or restriction as soon as practicable after the reasons for the suspension and/or restriction have ceased to exist.
You are responsible for all losses relating to an unauthorised transaction from your Wise Account if you have acted fraudulently or failed, either intentionally or through gross negligence, to use your Wise Account in accordance with the terms of this Agreement.
8. Your transactions
Your payment order
You must submit payment orders online via your Wise Account. Your order may either be:
- a "Fixed Source Order" which means a payment order where you order to convert a fixed amount of Source Currency to your recipient whom will receive the converted amount in the Target Currency; or
- a "Fixed Target Order" which means a payment order where you order to transfer a fixed amount of Target Currency to your recipient from the Source Currency you provide to us.
You can only set up a Fixed Target Order for certain Source Currencies, you can find a list of these Source Currencies on our Frequently Asked Questions
To set up a payment order via your Wise Account, you need to provide certain information to us including
- the full name of your recipient;
- your recipient's bank account details;
- amount to be transferred; and
- details of the payment method to fund your payment order.
Your payment order must not exceed GBP 1,000,000 or other currency equivalent. We may vary this limit from time to time by notification to you on our Website.
Once we have received your payment order, we will send you a confirmation by email that we have received it. Each payment order is given a unique transaction ID and is shown in the transaction history on your Wise Account. You should quote this transaction ID when communicating with us about a particular payment order.
If your payment order is received by us after 5pm on a Business Day or not on a Business Day, your payment order will be deemed received on the following Business Day.
Execution of your payment order
We will only process your payment order once we have received the relevant funds and fees from you. It is your responsibility to fund your payment order in a timely manner. We can not be responsible for the time it takes for the money to be sent to us by your bank or payment service provider.
We carry out verification checks as described above, and these checks may increase the time it takes to process your payment order. We cannot be responsible for any delays as a result of carrying out those checks.
The estimated completion time of your payment order is notified to you when you complete your payment order. You may also find further information regarding the completion time in the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of our Website, please refer to the applicable currency of your payment order.
We will use reasonable efforts to ensure that the Funds arrive at the recipient's bank account or payment account within the timelines notified to you or otherwise specified in our "Frequently Asked Questions" section. We do not have any control over the time it may take for the recipient's bank or payment provider to credit and make available funds to the recipient.
Refusal of your payment order
If we are unable to complete your payment order, we will let you know and, if possible, inform you of the reasons for such refusal and explain how to correct any factual errors. However, we are not required to notify you if such notification would be unlawful.
Cancellation of your payment order
You may cancel your payment order by following the instructions set out in our "Frequently Asked Questions" section. You cannot cancel your payment order once the Funds have been converted into the Target Currency you requested.
Errors in your payment order
You must make sure that the information you provide when setting up a payment order is accurate. If we have processed an order in accordance with the information you have provided to us it will be considered correctly completed even if you have made a mistake.
If you provide incorrect information with your payment order, we will use reasonable efforts to recover the funds for you, and may need to charge you a fee for that.
Payment methods
You can fund your payment order using the payment method(s) indicated to you when you place the payment order with us. There may be financial limits for particular payment methods or currencies, please visit the "Frequently Asked Questions" section for more information.
You may only use a payment instrument (such as bank accounts, credit cards or debit cards) to fund your payment order if it is in your name. To keep all our customers safe, we take any violation of this requirement very seriously and will treat any attempt to add a payment instrument of which you are not the named holder as a fraudulent act.
9. Exchange Rates
9.1 The applicable exchange rate. We will let you know the exchange rate:
- when you place your payment order, if it is a guaranteed rate payment order; or
- when we have received your payment, if it is a non-guaranteed rate payment order.
9.2 Exchange rate
- When we refer to an exchange rate in this Agreement, it means the exchange rate at the relevant time for the relevant currency pair (for example, GBP to EUR, USD to AUD) that is offered by Wise, which is typically provided by a reference rate provider. We may change our reference rate provider from time to time without notice to you.
- For some currencies, we do not use the mid-market exchange rate, including where we are required to use a different reference rate for the exchange rate for your currency pair. For example, for currency conversions to Nigeria (NGN), we are required to use the rate set by the Central Bank of Nigeria. For these currencies we will notify you of the exchange rate offered by Wise when you place your payment order.
9.3 Guaranteed rates. We will notify you of the guaranteed rate and the guaranteed time period (the "Guaranteed Period") when you create your Money Transfer. Guaranteed Periods are subject to the following conditions:
- (a) The Guaranteed Period may be extended if your Money Transfer is created over the weekend or public holiday.
- (b) We must receive sufficient funds from you during the Guaranteed Period in order to convert your money at the guaranteed rate. You will see when we have received your money by logging into your Wise Account.
- (c) If we receive your funds after the Guaranteed Period, we will not be able to convert your money using the guaranteed rate and your transfer will become a non-guaranteed rate transfer. Accordingly, we may convert your money at the applicable exchange rate at the time we receive your money or we will email you and ask you if you want to proceed with your transfer at the new exchange rate.
- (d) If the relevant exchange rate (as provided by our reference exchange rate provider) changes by 5% or more during the Guaranteed Period, we can, at our option, suspend your transfer for a reasonable period of time or cancel your transfer and refund the money to you.
- (e) For certain currencies, including where you are sending from Japanese Yen (JPY), the guaranteed rate will only be offered after your address has been verified by us.
- (f) We may change these guaranteed rate conditions or suspend the guarantee rate feature at any time.
9.4 Auto Conversion. For certain currencies, you may be able to set one or more conversion orders to be automatically executed once the exchange rate you pick is offered by our Services (an “auto conversion order”). There may be limits to the number of auto conversion orders you are able to set up, as well as the amounts of money you can schedule to convert. Wise does not guarantee that it will be able to execute your auto conversion order in all circumstances. The auto conversation feature is to set up a preauthorised remittance payment transaction and is not a forward, derivative or other financial product or device. If you do not fund your preauthorised transfer it will be cancelled.
9.5 We are not a currency trading platform. Wise is not a currency trading platform, and accordingly, you should not use our Services, including the Wise Account or the auto conversion order function for this purpose (including creating multiple auto conversion orders or a series of Money Transfers without the intention of completing them or for seeking to profit from FX trading). If we detect that you are using our Services for this purpose, we may, at in our sole discretion, set a limit on the number of auto conversion orders you may create, cancel your orders, set a limit on the amount of money you can convert or transfer in one or more currencies or in the same currency, restrict your ability to use this or other features, or suspend or close your Wise Account and disgorge your gains.
10. Fees
The fees for your payment order will be notified to you when you place your payment order. You may also view the fee structure in the "Pricing" section of our Website. For clarity, the fees applicable to you in the "Pricing" section of our Website form part of this Agreement and are subject to change in accordance with section 16.
You agree to pay the relevant fees using your chosen payment method when you send the Funds to us. We will not process your payment order until we have received the applicable fees from you.
We may charge you a variable fee during periods of potential heightened volatility or unpredictability in the foreign exchange market, as determined by Wise. We will let you know if this fee is applicable when you set up your order, for more information see here.
11. Intellectual property rights
While you are using our Services, you may use the Wise Materials only for your personal use and solely as necessary in relation to those Services.
"Wise Materials" includes any software (including without limitation developer tools, sample source code, and code libraries), data, materials, content and printed and electronic documentation (including any specifications and integration guides) developed and provided by us or our affiliates to you for download from our Website. You may not, and may not attempt to, directly or indirectly:
- transfer, sublicense, loan, sell, assign, lease, rent, distribute or grant rights in the Service or the Wise Materials to any person or entity;
- remove, obscure, or alter any notice of any of our trade marks, or other "intellectual property" appearing on or contained within the Services or on any Wise Materials;
- modify, copy, tamper with or otherwise create derivative works of any software included in the Wise Materials; or
- reverse engineer, disassemble, or decompile the Wise Materials or the Services or apply any other process or procedure to derive the source code of any software included in the Wise Materials or as part of the Services.
12. Limitation of our liability
If we do not reasonably meet our commitments to you, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer. We are not responsible for any loss or damage that is not foreseeable.
We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so for example for fraudulent misrepresentation.
We only provide our Services to you for your personal and private use. If you use our Services for any commercial or business purpose we will have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a virus, or other technological attacks or harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material related to your use of our Services.
We have no control over websites linked to and from our Website and so we assume no responsibility for their content or any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.
In case of an unauthorised payment or mistake due to our error, we shall at your request immediately refund the payment amount including all fees deducted by us. This shall not apply:
- where the unauthorised payment arises from your failure to keep the personalised security features of your Wise Account safe as described in this Agreement, in which case you shall remain liable for the first GBP 50 unless section (c) below applies;
- if you do not quickly notify us of security issues on your Wise Account (e.g. loss of your password), you remain liable for losses incurred up to your notification to us;
- if the transaction was unauthorised but you have compromised the security of your Wise Account with intent or gross negligence in which case you shall be solely liable for all losses; or
- if you don’t let us know about the unauthorised or incorrectly completed transaction within 13 months from the date when you sent your payment order.
Section (a) above shall not apply to payment orders made after you have notified us, in which case we shall remain liable and refund any unauthorised transaction immediately to you.
In addition, we rely on you to regularly check the transactions history of your Wise Account and to contact Customer Support immediately in case you have any questions or concerns.
In the case of any incorrect or misdirected payment, we will try to help you with tracing and recovering such payments.
We (and our affiliates) cannot be liable for our inability to deliver or delay as a result of things which are outside our control.
In the event of loss, claims, costs or expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your breach of this Agreement, any applicable law or regulation and/or your, or any authorised third parties’, use of our Services, you agree to defend, compensate us and our affiliates and hold us harmless. This provision will continue after our relationship ends.
In the event you are liable for any amounts owed to us, we reserve the right to collect your debt to us by using any payments received in your Wise Account and otherwise you agree to reimburse us through other means. We may also recover amounts you owe us through other collection avenues, including, without limitation, through the use of a debt collection agency. We may recover all reasonable costs or expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees and expenses) incurred in connection with the enforcement of this Agreement.
13. Accessing our services
We will try to make sure our Services are available to you when you need them. However, we do not guarantee that our Services will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend, withdraw, discontinue or change all or any part of our Service without notice. We will not be liable to you if for any reason our Services are unavailable at any time or for any period. You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to our Services.
14. Information security
You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform in order to access our Services. You should use your own virus protection software. We cannot guarantee that our Services will be free from bugs or virus.
You must not misuse our Services by introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other materials which are malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Website, our servers, computers or databases. You must not attack our Website with any type of denial of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our Website and/or our Services will cease immediately.
15. Linking to our site
You may link to our Website, provided:
- you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it;
- you do not suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists;
- you do not frame our Website on any other site; and
- the website complies with our Acceptable Use Policy.
We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.
16. Termination and/or suspension
We may, at any time, terminate your Wise Account or any service associated with it without giving any prior notice or reason for doing so. You may terminate your Wise Account with us at any time by contacting Customer Support.
We may at any time suspend or terminate your Wise Account without notice if:
- you breach any provision of this Agreement or documents referred to in this Agreement;
- we have reason to believe you are in violation of any applicable law or regulation;
- we are requested or directed to do so by any competent court of law, government authority, public agency, or law enforcement agency; or
- we have reason to believe you are involved in any fraudulent activity, money laundering, terrorism financing or other criminal and/or illegal activity.
We may suspend your Wise Account at any time if:
- we believe that your Wise Account has been compromised or for other security reasons; or
- we suspect your Wise Account has been used or is being used without your authorisation or fraudulently, and
we will let you know as soon as we can if we need to suspend your Wise Account, unless notifying you would be unlawful or compromise our reasonable security interests.
On termination for any reason all rights granted to you in connection with the App shall cease, you must immediately delete or remove the App from your devices.
17. Changes to this agreement
We may change this Agreement by giving you at least two (2) months’ prior written notice. If we do this, you can terminate this Agreement immediately by providing written notice to us during the notice period. If we do not hear from you during the notice period, you will be considered as having accepted the proposed changes and they will apply to you from the date two (2) months after your receipt of the notice.
Changes to this Agreement which are (1) more favourable to you; (2) is required by law; or (3) relates to the addition of a new service or extra functionality to the existing Service; or (4) any other change which neither reduces your rights nor increase your responsibilities, will come into effect immediately if they are stated in the change notice. Changes to exchange rates shall come into effect immediately without notice and you shall not have the right to object to such a change.
18. Communication
We usually contact you via email. For this purpose, you must at all times maintain at least one valid email address in your Wise Account profile. You should check for incoming messages regularly and frequently, these emails may contain links to further communication on our Website. If you don’t maintain or check your email and other methods of communications, you will miss emails about your transactions and our Services. We cannot be liable for any consequence or loss if you don’t do this.
Other ways we may contact you. In addition to communicating via email, we may contact you via letter or telephone where appropriate. If you use any mobile services, we may also communicate with you via SMS. Any communications or notices sent by:
- Email will be deemed received by you on the same day if it is received in your email inbox before 5pm on a Business Day. If it is received in your email inbox after 5pm on a Business Day or at any other time, it will be deemed received on the next Business Day.
- Post will be deemed received three days from the date of posting for UK post or within five days of posting for international post.
- SMS will be deemed received the same day.
Where legislation requires us to provide information to you on a durable medium, we will either send you an email (with or without attachment) or send you a notification pointing you to information on our Website in a way that enables you to retain the information in print format or other format that can be retained by you permanently for future reference. Do keep copies of all communications we send or make available to you.
If you need a copy of the current Agreement or any other relevant document, please Customer Suppor
This Agreement is made in the English language. Documents or communications in any other languages are for your convenience and only the English language version of them are official.
19. Complaints
If you have any complaints about us or our Services, you may contact us in accordance with our customer complaint procedure.
20. Applicable law
Except to the extent that the applicable laws and regulations of your jurisdiction allow otherwise (for instance, you may have statutory rights in your jurisdiction), this Agreement is governed by English law. Any dispute between you and us in connection with your Wise Account and/or this Agreement may be brought in the courts of England and Wales.
21. Miscellaneous
Nobody else has any rights under this Agreement. This Agreement is between you and us. No other person shall have any rights to enforce any of its terms. Neither of us will need to get the agreement any other person in order to end or make any changes to this Agreement.
We may transfer this Agreement to someone else. You may not transfer, assign, mortgage, charge, subcontract, declare a trust over or deal in any other manner with any or all of your rights and obligations under this Agreement (including the Wise Account) without our prior written consent. We reserve the right to transfer, assign or novate this Agreement (including the Wise Account) or any right or obligation under this Agreement at any time without your consent.
If a court finds part of this Agreement illegal, the rest will continue in force. Each of the paragraphs of this Agreement operates separately. If any court or relevant authority decides that any of them are unlawful, the remaining paragraphs will remain in full force and effect.
Even if we delay in enforcing this Agreement, we can still enforce it later. If we delay in asking you to do certain things or in taking action, it will not prevent us taking steps against you at a later date.
This Agreement supersedes any other previous agreements. This Agreement supersedes and extinguishes all previous agreements between you and Wise, whether written or oral, relating to its subject matter.
Which laws apply to this Agreement and where you may bring legal proceedings. Except to the extent that the applicable laws and regulations of your jurisdiction allow otherwise (for instance, you may have statutory rights in your jurisdiction), this Agreement is governed by English law. Any dispute between you and us in connection with your Wise Account and/or this Agreement may be brought in the courts of England and Wales.
22. Definitions
App means the mobile application software, the data supplied with the software and the associated media.
Business Day means a day other than a Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday in Hong Kong when financial institutions in Hong Kong are open for business.
Services means all products, services, content, features, technologies or functions offered by us and all related websites, applications (including the App), and services (including the Website).
Source Currency mean the currency which you hold and/or fund your payment order.
Target Currency means the currency which your recipient will receive.
US Business Day means means a day other than a Saturday, federal or New York state holiday on which our offices are open for business.
Website means any URL, including but not limited to www.wise.com, where we provide the Services to you.