Top 5 Wise alternatives: compare fees, features & benefits

What is Wise?

Wise is a UK-based financial technology company focused on simplifying global money transfers. Its platform is designed to help consumers and businesses send funds overseas easily at a low cost.

With a Wise multi-currency business account, customers can accept and hold payments in nine currencies and transfer funds to over 70 countries at competitive rates. Additional payment options are available for vital markets. 

Best known for supporting consumers and micro-businesses, Wise offers a simple, fast but basic service with low costs.

The top alternatives to Wise

Here are the top alternatives to Wise.

Airwallex is a global financial technology company that offers a range of financial services, including online payment acceptance and processing (checkouts), international payments, multi-currency accounts, and Borderless Cards. We strive to simplify cross-border transactions for businesses of all sizes.

Payoneer: Specializes in cross-border payments, offering business accounts that facilitate global transactions, with capabilities for mass payouts and receiving funds from international marketplaces.

HSBC: A global bank offering a wide range of business banking solutions, including current accounts, savings accounts, loans, and trade finance services.

PayPal is a leading payment gateway that's been serving customers worldwide for 20 years. It enables eCommerce brands to facilitate payments from credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers.

Revolut: Provides business accounts with features like multi-currency wallets, corporate cards, and expense management tools, catering to both SMEs and larger enterprises.

Compare the top 5 alternatives to Wise

Why choose Airwallex over Wise?

What questions should I ask when choosing alternative providers to Wise?

Here are the top 10 most important questions for you to consider when choosing an alternative to Wise. Use these as a handy guide when doing your research.

• What are the transaction fees?

• What is the currency exchange markup?

• Are there any account set up or management fees?

• How extensive is the geographical coverage?

• What currencies can be held in your business account?

• What funds management services do you provide?

• What security measures do you have in place?

• What integration capabilities do you offer?

• Do you provide dedicated account management support?

• Do you offer corporate and employee cards?

Final thoughts on alternatives to Wise

Airwallex and Wise are both known for offering competitive cross-border money solutions for businesses. But if you compare the key features and cost of each platform, there are some important differences.  

For global reach, Airwallex is hard to beat. With a multi-currency business account, businesses can accept and hold 23 currencies and handle transactions to 150+ countries.

Wise only supports holding nine currencies and global payout coverage to 70 countries. Plus, it charges a £45 account set up fee⁸.

If you want to send payments internationally, with Wise, you’ll pay a fee. How much depends on the currency. With Airwallex, customers enjoy 0% international transaction fees to 110+ countries using our local payment rails⁹.

Beyond offering multi-currency accounts and debit cards, Wise’s services may be limited depending on the size of your business. In contrast, Airwallex’s full-featured account gives businesses everything they need to simplify and scale financial operations.

It includes account management services, payment links and plugins, and expense management capabilities. For accounts payable solutions, Wise offers a basic offering, integrating with a few software providers¹⁰.

A more holistic platform, Airwallex is designed to free up your finance team. It’s easy to pay invoices from one place within the Airwallex dashboard and automate reconciliation with multiple accounting software integrations available.

Our verdict? Wise offers simple, easy, low-cost global money transfers for consumers and smaller businesses, but larger enterprises may struggle.

As an end-to-end financial solution, Airwallex is built to solve sophisticated cross-border payment challenges helping with fast, cost-effective international money transfer services. It supports more currencies, software integrations and offers important services like account management, online payments and expense management.

Sources & references

1. https://www.airwallex.com/uk/blog/best-business-bank-accounts-uk

2. https://www.payoneer.com/get-paid-by-clients/#:~:text=Payment%20request%20%E2%80%93%20sent%20payment%20requests,bank%20debit%2C%20direct%20bank%20payment

3. https://www.payoneer.com/about/pricing/#pay-your-supplier

4. https://www.paypal.com/uk/enterprise/payment-methods

5. https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees

6. https://www.revolut.com/business/accept-payments/

7. https://www.revolut.com/business/accept-payments/

8. https://wise.com/gb/business/

9. https://www.airwallex.com/uk/blog/comparison-wise-vs-airwallex

10. https://wise.com/gb/business/app-marketplace

11. https://wise.com/gb/pricing/business

12. https://wise.com/gb/pricing/business/send-money

13. https://wise.com/gb/pricing/business/receive

Disclaimer:  

We wrote this article in Q2 2024. The information was based on our own online research and we were not able to manually test each tool or provider. The information is provided for educational purposes only and a reader should consider the specific requirements of their business when evaluating providers. If you would like to request an update, feel free to contact us at [email protected].

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