Wise Review 2026: Exchange Rates, Fees and What Your Recipient Gets

Wise's exchange rate and margin

A bank rarely charges an obvious fee to send money abroad. It does not need to. It buys your pounds at one rate and pays your recipient at another, and that gap, usually two to four percent, is the charge you never see on the receipt.

Wise does not do this. We checked it against the mid-market rate, the figure you would get on Google or Reuters, and it converts at that rate with nothing added, even at the weekend.

The whole cost moves into one upfront fee. That is the single reason most people overpay their bank without ever knowing the number.

Wise transfer fees

The fee is small and shown before you confirm: a fixed part plus a variable rate that starts at 0.33% on the main routes. Two things move it.

Fund the transfer with a card and it climbs, so pay from your bank where you can. Send more than £20,000 in a month and the variable rate quietly drops.

Independent comparison, June 2026.

Sending £1,000 to India with Wise

This is what we mean by what arrives.

If you are sending rent or support to family, that ₹126,000-odd is the figure that matters, not the rate on the homepage.

A typical bank would add a 2.75% to 4.60% margin and a £15 to £25 wire fee on top, roughly £30 of cost you would never see itemised.

The numbers above are dated 24 June 2026 and move every day, so use the live comparison for today's.

Countries and currencies

We confirmed coverage of more than 160 countries and over 40 currencies you can hold and switch between, with local account details in ten of them for receiving money. The exclusions are the sanctioned corridors, Russia, Iran, Syria and the like, where Wise will not transfer at all.

Payout methods

• Bank deposit is the standard everywhere
• India: bank transfer or UPI, where you only need the recipient's UPI ID
• Philippines: bank, or the GCash, Maya and GrabPay wallets, usually instant
• Nigeria: Naira to a local bank account; Pakistan: bank, usually same-day on weekdays

Here is the limitation that catches people out. There is no cash pickup, anywhere. If your mother collects remittances in cash from an agent in town, Wise cannot help you, and no amount of low fees changes that.

Speed and limits

Wise leans hard on the word "instant", and for the most part it earns it: about 74% of transfers land in under 20 seconds. Check your own corridor before you count on it, though. GBP to euros is seconds; GBP to rupees is usually a day or two.

Sending money to family overseas

Strong, on the right corridor. To India or the Philippines, the money can land in an account or a wallet in seconds, which is exactly what you want when someone is waiting on it. The single thing to check first is cash: if your family collects in person, you are on the wrong provider.

Business and supplier payments

Capable, and better equipped than most. The Wise Business account adds batch payments of up to 1,000 transfers from a spreadsheet, an open API for recurring runs, multi-user access, and it connects to Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent.

Setup is a one-off £45, with no monthly fee. If you pay suppliers on a schedule or in large lumps, still compare a specialist broker, because rate certainty starts to matter more than a few pounds of fee.

Large one-off transfers

This is where Wise stops being the obvious answer. The limits are high enough, up to £1m by bank transfer, but it cannot hold a rate.

Picture the six weeks between agreeing to buy a flat abroad and completing on it: a 2% drift in the rate dwarfs every fee Wise would ever charge you, and Wise gives you no way to lock it in. A broker does.

How Wise protects your money

We checked Wise against the FCA Register: it is authorised as an electronic money institution under FRN 900507, and has been since 2018. Your money is safeguarded, held in separate, ring-fenced accounts at major banks and kept apart from Wise's own funds.

That is not the same as FSCS protection, and the difference is worth understanding. There is no £120,000 guarantee, and if Wise ever failed, recovering safeguarded money through an administrator could take longer than an FSCS payout.

For an account you fill and empty as you transfer, that is a fair trade. For a balance you intend to park six figures in, think harder.

Account security and fraud protection

Security is ahead of most retail fintechs. Wise requires two-factor authentication and supports FIDO2 passkeys, which means an attacker with your password still cannot get in. You can freeze the card from the app and spin up single-use virtual cards for online shops you do not trust.

Signing up. Opening an account is done online with identity checks. Large transfers trigger a request for source-of-funds documents, which is routine but can stall a payment if you are not ready for it.

App and website. Wise is app-first, and the app is where the sending, the currency balances and the £7 card all live.

Customer support. This is the soft spot. Everyday queries are handled well over chat and phone, but help gets slower and less satisfying exactly when you need it most: when a transfer is held for a compliance check and someone at the other end is waiting.

We read through the recent reviews rather than the headline score alone. The picture is strongly positive, with one clear fault line.

What people praise: the transparent cost, the plain interface, and transfers that arrive almost instantly.

What goes wrong: the one-star reviews share a theme, and it is not lost money. It is frozen money, accounts suspended mid-transfer for anti-money-laundering checks, with slow resolution while a supplier or landlord waits.

For everyday and recurring transfers, Wise is usually at or near the cheapest, and the speed is hard to beat.

For large or future-dated money, a specialist broker such as OFX can serve you better on the right route, because a broker can lock a rate and put a person on the transfer.

For travel and multi-currency spending day to day, our Revolut review covers the closest app rival, though Wise usually wins the one-off international transfer.

For cash pickup, a remittance specialist covers ground Wise does not. Use our money transfer comparison and our head-to-head pages for the route you actually care about, or run a live comparison of today's rates and fees before you send.

Wise is the default, not the universal answer.

For the transfer most people make most of the time, it is the right first choice: the real rate, a fee you can see, money that arrives fast, and enough business tooling to run regular payments through. We rate it 4.6 out of 5.

It loses a point for two honest gaps. It cannot fix a rate for the large transfer you make once and cannot afford to get wrong, and it cannot put cash in a relative's hand.

If neither of those is you, send through Wise and keep the £30. If one of them is, this review just saved you finding out the expensive way.