Huge UK price cuts for Wise’s international transfers

In its mission to make international transfers eventually free, listed fintech Wise today announced a host of price cuts to the fees it charges when sending money.

Its fees are dropping by up to 47 per cent on certain currency routes, a price cut enabled by Wise better managing its foreign exchange risk better, speeding up payments resulting in less risk and lower cost, and increases in the volume of payments.

For someone sending £1,000 from the UK to Poland, the fee will fall 12.4 per cent to £4.25, for UK to Romania the drop is 17 per cent to £4.33, while from the UK to Croatia the fee is nearly halved, falling by 47.1 per cent to £5.52.

Nineteen currency routes from the UK are seeing improved fees and, because the change is across Wise’s entire platform, fintechs like Monzo which use Wise for international transfers will also be able to pass savings onto their customers.

“When it comes to international payments, people and businesses continue to pay high costs because exchange rate markups charged by banks and other providers aren’t disclosed upfront,” said Wise’s head of UK product Lars Trunin.

“As Wise continues to grow around the world, more money flows through our infrastructure, allowing us to find efficiencies across various parts of the business. This means that we can reduce our own operational costs and pass those savings back to our customers in the form of cheaper and faster transfers.”

Today some 10m customers, people and businesses, use Wise to send over £5bn in transactions every month.

Earlier this year Wise listed on the London Stock Exchange at a valuation well over £7bn, since then its latest quarterly results in July showed a 43 per cent increase in revenues to £123.5m while quarterly payment volumes reached £16.4bn.