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Wise eyes trillion pounds prize

With H1 profits and revenue ticking upwards, money movement firm Wise has set its sights on crossing the billion pounds transaction processing barrier and moving trillions of pounds across the world.

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Wise eyes trillion pounds prize

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In its H1 results, Wise reported net interest income up 19.2% at £215.8 million and revenue of £591.9 million, up 18.8% year-on-year.

Active customers increased by 25% and transaction volumes grew 19% to hit £68.4 billion in the first half.

The firm has been heavily investing in its infrastructure to gain direct acess to payment rails in key markets and yesterday reported the capture for its platform business of its first Tier 1 global bank in Standard Chartered.

Kristo Kaarmann, co-founder and chief executive officer, says Wise has the potential to move trillions rather than billions around the world.

"A massive problem continues to exist for people and businesses around the world; moving and managing money internationally is still broken. It remains expensive, slow, inconvenient and opaque," he says. "The opportunity that comes with solving this problem is huge. We have less than 5% and 1% share respectively in the expanding personal and Small-Medium Business (SMB) market segments. Including the large enterprise segment of the market, the cross border market across these three segments is estimated to be more than £27 trillion."

He says it is reasonable to expect that in ten years, someone can transfer $10,000 across currencies for $10, compared to the current banks' price of $200-$400.

"We intend Wise to be the one operating these transactions at that price point, with our cost base brought down to $5 or less. It will be profitable and very valuable, when the cross-border volume on our platform is in the trillions.

"We won't be able to achieve this level of efficiency overnight. Nor will the customer response be immediate as we iterate prices, but we believe it's inevitable that the lowest priced provider with the best experience will win the scale needed over time to become one of the most valuable providers of financial services in the world."

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