From Faster Payments to PIX: Wise’s infrastructure play

Hey!

I’ve been planning to write about Wise for a long time. Wise is a UK Fintech company (founded by two Estonians) that enables individuals and small businesses to send and receive money internationally at significantly lower costs than traditional banks. Wise competes with PayPal Xoom, Remitly and a bunch of traditional remittance companies.

However, under the hood, Wise is a totally different play pursuing a much bigger opportunity. In pursuit of its mission, making cross-border payments fast and cheap, Wise is building a global payment network, aiming to connect to as many domestic rails as possible and eliminate the need for correspondent banks.

In this respect, Wise is somewhat similar to Citigroup, one is one the largest correspondent banks in the world. Similar to Citi, Wise establishes a local presence, gets regulatory permissions, and eventually wants to connect to local rails. Citi’s network is its crown jewel. And Wise is replicating it. 

Now, imagine if Citi had the technological muscle and agility of Wise and could put its global network in the hands of consumers and small businesses instead of solely serving large enterprises and other banks. This sounds like a massive opportunity, doesn’t it? And it is an opportunity that Wise is pursuing.

Let’s dive in!

Jevgenijs

p.s. if you have feedback just reply to this email or ping me on X/Twitter

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