Wise to offer customers a “slice of the Wise pie” with latest share offering

Amid rumours of an imminent IPO on the London Stock Exchange, it looks like Wise (the fintech formerly known as TransferWise) is taking a step closer to putting its company in the hands of its customers.

To celebrate its tenth birthday and 10m customers, Wise is offering 2,000 lucky active customers the chance to win a single Wise share, or roughly 0.0000029 per cent of Wise.

A single Wise share is worth around $125, going off the price of shares at Wise’s last secondary share sale back in July 2020, and if Wise does another share sale its latest shareholders would also be able to participate.

In a blog post announcing the competition, Nicholas Lembo, Head of Growth for the Americas at Wise, wrote: “We believe our customers should also be shareholders.”

“You have the strongest understanding of the problems we’re trying to solve and our mission, so it’s natural you should have a say in how Wise is built and run. We believe having you represented amongst our shareholders will help us move even faster towards completing our mission.”

As shareholders, the 2,000 winners will have early access to new features and products, an invitation to the bi-annual Mission Days team event, an invite to feedback sessions with the Wise team and will also get their hands on limited edition Wise swag.

In a

posted this morning, co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann, wrote: “It occurred to us recently that as a VC backed tech company, we don’t have any customers as shareholders. It’s weird.”

“Customers have the strongest understanding of the problems we’re solving with our mission, so it’s natural they should have a say in how Wise is built and run. Everyone who’s ever worked on building Wise are owners - either through options or shares directly.”

By Wise offering 2,000 customers the chance to own “a slice of the Wise pie” it is taking a step closer to its rumoured IPO.

The global payments fintech is expected to float on the London Stock Exchange later this year according to reports.

True to form, the fintech is also allegedly opting for a dual-class share structure to keep the control of the company in the hands of its founders and early investors.

Wise’s float will make it one of the first of the fintech giants to go public, following in the footsteps of the likes of Funding Circle,Augmentum Fintech and PensionBee, which debuted on the LSE this morning at a £365m valuation.