Global by Design: How a Singapore Creative Agency Scaled Internationally with Wise Business

Greydient Lab is a leading design agency that brings brand narratives and product experiences to life through storytelling and visually compelling, user-friendly designs.

Founded in Singapore and still headquartered there, the agency has won numerous accolades, including Platinum Winner at the 2025 London Design Awards and Singapore Good Design 2024, for its work that spans brand identity, product strategy, UX/UI design, marketing, and more.

But behind the awards and accolades, Greydient Lab faced real operational challenges early on. Managing payments across multiple countries was slow, expensive, and often stressful — from high bank fees and lengthy processing times to complicated onboarding requirements for payees.

That’s why they switched to Wise Business in 2021.

This case study explores how Wise helped them:

• Cut costs with low, transparent fees
• Onboard payees faster with less paperwork
• Gain greater visibility into the status of transfers, reducing uncertainty

About Greydient Lab

Greydient Lab was founded in 2020 by Raj and Keynes with a clear mission: to create a positive impact through design. What began as a single office in Singapore has since expanded into a dynamic, cross-border operation working across the Asia Pacific region.

By leveraging both in-house and remote talent across Asia, Greydient Lab has been able to offer world-class design work for international clients, but without the hefty price tag often associated with big-name design firms in cities like New York, London, and San Francisco.

"We wanted to benchmark our work against the standards set by the world’s best products — while not charging clients an arm and a leg."

Keynes Yeo, Founding Partner, Greydient Lab

With the bulk of Greydient Lab's revenue coming from Singapore, followed by the U.S. and other APAC markets, and its talented teams spread across Asia, the agency operates as a truly global business.

The team has a variety of cross-border payment needs, including paying suppliers and contractors, and managing payroll in Thai Baht (THB). Meanwhile, they often need to handle USD for ad hoc business expenses, and most importantly, for receiving payments from US-based customers.

• Industry: Design Consultancy
• Company size: 20+ employees
• Headquarters: Singapore
• Global team: Operating from office in Bangkok + remote teams in the Philippines and South Korea

The difficulties of managing money across borders in Asia

Greydient Lab initially relied on traditional bank transfers — a process that proved slow, cumbersome, and expensive.

"The business bank options were pricey and required us to provide many details just to onboard a payee, with long processing times. It was cumbersome to provide the correct bank details, such as different codes. In the past, I often felt uncertain or insecure about whether funds would be successfully wired, and if anything went wrong, it was a nightmare to track and resolve.” Keynes Yeo, Founding Partner, Greydient Lab

As for the high fees — whether in the form of hidden exchange rate markups or conversion charges — Greydient Lab and its cross-border teams had to absorb these costs rather than pass them on to clients.

As a result, finding a more efficient and cost-effective way to manage international transactions quickly became a priority.

Doing so wouldn’t just improve profitability — it would also free up time and resources, allowing them to focus on making a difference through innovation and creativity.

Breaking free from banking hurdles with Wise Business

Greydient Lab's search for a better solution led them to Wise Business in 2021 — the same year they opened their physical office in Bangkok and established remote teams in the Philippines.

It was a natural fit, with their new Wise Business account helping to solve many of the pain points they faced:

• Lower, transparent fees replaced expensive, hidden transfer charges.
• Simpler payee onboarding reduced the paperwork and details required.
• Less uncertainty around the status of transfers.
• User-friendly interface made entering correct bank details easier.

"Adding a payee is easy, the fees are transparent, plus you know the status of each transfer. The Wise interface is clean, simple to navigate, and you only need to input basic payee information.”

explained Keynes.

Wise serves as the central hub, enabling them to manage all cross-border transactions easily and cost-effectively from one place.

Switching to Wise Business also aligned with the agency’s deeper values.

People-first

By reducing fees, especially on THB payments to their Bangkok team, Greydient Lab ensured its talented staff and contractors kept more of their well-deserved income, without losing a portion to the foreign exchange conversion fees charged by banks.

Pursuit of excellence

By adopting a modern, remote-work-friendly alternative to traditional banks, Greydient Lab ensured it was delivering excellence not just in design, but also in how it ran its operations. With Wise Business, onboarding payees is now fast and simple, and payments are processed so seamlessly that there’s no longer uncertainty about whether the funds will go through.

Positive impact

By removing the headaches of slow, complex banking processes, Greydient Lab now has more time to focus on the truly meaningful aspects of work: creativity, innovation, and inspiration. This is the secret sauce that’s allowed them to consistently build joyful relationships with clients and collaborators.

Banking on remote work as a competitive edge

For Greydient Lab, remote work has been part of the company’s DNA from day one. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it into the mainstream, co-founders Raj and Keynes, both from Singapore, had already been working remotely and embracing flexibility for over a decade.

In today’s world, remote and hybrid team models aren’t just alternatives to traditional setups; they can be genuine competitive advantages. For industries like design, remote and hybrid work models can open the door to:

• Accessing top talent globally, not just locally.
• Serving clients across multiple markets.
• Leveraging cost efficiencies, whether through talent rates or operational expenses.
• Building diverse, resilient teams.

Backed with the right tools — from virtual collaboration platforms to design software to low-fee multi-currency business account solutions like Wise Business — Keynes believes that remote teams can compete for top-tier clients and deliver world-class work from anywhere.

“We do spend a significant portion of our operating expenses (OPEX) on essential SaaS tools, especially for payments, project management, and design-related work. Wise Business is an alternative to process and receive cross-border payments easily.”

he remarks.

Taking the friction out of business with Wise

As with several other companies who have adopted Wise Business, a common theme in Greydient Lab’s evolution relates to reducing friction in their business workflows.

• Sending money: With Wise Business, transfers to the Bangkok studio team and contractor payments are faster and more reliable than traditional bank wires.
• Receiving payments: Wise Business local account details remove the need to open separate local bank accounts. This reduces fees, and speeds up payments, especially from US and APAC clients.
• Multi-currency support: Wise Business lets Greydient Lab hold all their currencies in one account and avoid unnecessary conversions. It’s now easier to pay suppliers, and cover SaaS subscriptions in different currencies.

In short, Wise Business gives Greydient Lab the tools to move money globally with speed, clarity, and cost efficiency, freeing up more time and resources to focus on delivering exceptional design work.

The outcome

Ultimately, for Keynes and the Greydient Lab team, everything comes back to purpose. It’s what gets them out of bed in the morning—and it’s been a major contributor to their success.

By using Wise Business, they have managed to free up more time and energy to invest in their core mission. As a result, they’ve gained a competitive edge and created work that both lasts and inspires.

• Obtain account details to receive payments in USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD and more for a one-time fee of S$ 99.
• Simply share your account details with customers or add them to invoices.
• Hold, send, and convert money at the mid-market rate in one account.
• Simplify customer payments with Wise request payment feature.
• Accept payments from customers and payment service providers (PSPs) like Stripe and Amazon.
• Generate payment links to request money in specific currencies.

➡️Get started with Wise Business today