Wise
Financial services company
Follow Wise on Notably News to receive short updates to your email — rarely!
| April 2025 | Wise opened a new office in Singapore to support growth in the Asia-Pacific region. |
| March 2025 | Wise continued its expansion by opening new offices in London and Tallinn. |
| February 2025 | The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the US ordered Wise to pay nearly $2.5 million for alleged 'illegal remittance practices', including advertising inaccurate fees and failing to properly disclose exchange rates. |
| June 2024 | The company announced a potential data breach affecting customers through partner bank Evolve Bank & Trust. |
| 2023 | Founders Käärmann and Hinrikus improved their positions on The Sunday Times Rich List, with Käärmann ranked 156th (£1.134 billion) and Hinrikus ranked 197th (£861 million). |
| January 2023 | Competitor Atlantic Money accused Wise of harming competition by removing them from international transfers price comparison tables and denying access to additional comparison sites in an official letter to the UK Competition and Markets Authority. |
| June 27 2022 | The Financial Conduct Authority reported CEO Kristo Käärmann was penalized for tax affairs, to remain on their list for 12 months starting September 2021. |
| July 7 2021 | Wise went public with a direct listing on the London Stock Exchange, valued at $11 billion. |
| July 2 2021 | Co-founder Taavet Hinrikus announced he would step down as chair within a year, with David Wells set to replace him. |
| February 22 2021 | Wise rebranded from TransferWise to Wise, launching a new website domain to reflect its expanded product offerings. |
| January 21 2021 | Sky News reported Wise had appointed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for its planned initial public offering. |
| July 2020 | Disclosed a secondary investment round of $319 million, reaching a total valuation of $5 billion. New investors included D1 Capital Partners and Vulcan Capital, with existing shareholders Lone Pine Capital, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Investments, and LocalGlobe participating. |
| June 2020 | Wise acknowledged that digital COVID-19 immunity passports were not a 'perfect solution' after experts raised ethical and privacy concerns, with co-founder Hinrikus stating they would not be publicly launched until scientific consensus on COVID-19 immunity was reached. |
| May 2019 | Completed a secondary investment round of $292 million, increasing the company's valuation to $3.5 billion. |
| November 2017 | Raised $280 million Series E round, led by Old Mutual Global Investors and Institutional Venture Partners, with additional investors including Sapphire Ventures, Mitsui & Co., and World Innovation Lab. |
| May 2017 | Wise announced its customers were sending over £1 billion monthly and had become profitable after six years. |
| April 2017 | Wise opened its APAC hub in Singapore. |
| April 8 2017 | An internal Santander memo revealed the bank would lose 84% of its money transfer revenue if charged like Wise. Wise also announced opening its APAC hub in Singapore. |
| April 8 2017 | An internal Santander memo revealed the bank would lose 84% of its money transfer revenue if charged like Wise. |
| May 2016 | UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) called out Wise's claim of saving up to 90% against banks as misleading, finding that the company's currency conversion calculator provided misleading calculations. |
| May 2016 | Secured $26 million in funding, raising the company's valuation to $1.1 billion. |
| August 2015 | The company was named a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer. |
| May 2015 | Wise was ranked No. 8 on CNBC's Disruptor 50 list. |
| January 2015 | Raised $58 million Series C round, led by Andreessen Horowitz. |
| June 2014 | Raised $25 million, with Richard Branson joining as an investor. |
| May 2013 | Secured a $6 million investment round led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures. |
| April 2013 | Wise stopped allowing users to purchase Bitcoin due to pressure from banking providers. |
| 2012 | Wise was named one of 'East London's 20 hottest tech startups' by The Guardian, Start-Up of the Week by Wired UK, and one of five 'start-ups to watch' at Seedcamp's US Demo Day. |
| 2012 | Wise was named one of 'East London's 20 hottest tech startups' by The Guardian, received Wired UK's Start-Up of the Week, was identified as one of five 'start-ups to watch' by TechCrunch, and appeared in Startups.co.uk's top 100 UK start-ups list. |
| 2011 | Wise received seed funding of $1.3 million from investors including IA Ventures, Index Ventures, Max Levchin, David Yu, and Errol Damelin. The company was named one of Seedcamp 2011's winners. |
| 2011 | In its first year of operation, Wise processed transactions amounting to €10 million. |
| January 2011 | Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus founded TransferWise (now Wise) in London, establishing a financial technology company focused on global money transfers. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Wise (company), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.