Wise plc, the London and New York listed cross-border payments company, reported full-year results on Friday that showed it pushing prices down and volume up at the same time. The group moved $243.5 billion across borders in the year to 31 March 2026, a 31% rise, while cutting its average cross-border take rate to 0.52% from 0.58% a year earlier.
Net revenue climbed 19% to $2.5 billion and income before tax reached $660.4 million, a margin of 26% that sat above the company’s own 20% to 25% medium-term guide. Active customers grew 21% to 19 million, according to the results statement issued through GlobeNewswire and filed with the London Stock Exchange.
The figures are the first full-year set since Wise moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq Global Select Market on 11 May 2026, keeping a secondary line in London. They land at a moment when cross-border payments has become one of the most contested arenas in commerce, with merchant acquirers, card networks, and stablecoin issuers all reaching for the same flows.
Chief executive Kristo Kaarmann framed the year around scale and the runway still ahead. “With $43 trillion moved across borders yearly, we remain focused on the opportunity ahead,” he said in the statement, repeating the company’s long-running pitch about building infrastructure for the world’s money rather than a single consumer app.
In short
- Volume up, price down: Cross-border volume rose 31% to $243.5 billion (about £181.7 billion at prevailing rates) while the blended take rate fell to 0.52%, a deliberate trade that Wise treats as a growth engine, not a margin problem.
- Revenue mix has shifted: Almost half of net revenue now comes from outside core cross-border fees, led by net interest income of $806.1 million and card and other revenue of $636.6 million.
- Profitability held: Income before tax of $660.4 million delivered a 26% margin, ahead of the guided range, on net revenue of $2.5 billion.
- Customers and balances grew: Active customers reached 19 million, balances held in Wise accounts rose 40% to $39 billion, and card spend climbed 37% to $43.6 billion.
- Capital returns expand: Wise flagged a new share purchase program expected to exceed $500 million, following $470 million directed to its employee share trust in the year.
What did Wise report for FY26?
Wise closed its 2026 financial year with growth across every headline operating metric it tracks. The company processes money transfers, multi-currency accounts, debit cards, and a business-to-business platform that other banks and fintechs plug into. The results covered the 12 months to 31 March 2026.
Net revenue of $2.5 billion was up 19% year on year, landing at the top of Wise’s medium-term target band of 15% to 20%. Income before tax of $660.4 million translated into a 26% margin, slightly above the 20% to 25% range the company guides to over the medium term. Both measures suggest the business is converting rapid volume growth into durable profit.
The most-watched number for analysts was the cross-border take rate, which measures how much Wise keeps as revenue on each dollar moved. That figure fell to 0.52% for the full year, down 6 basis points, with the fourth quarter reportedly running closer to 0.51%. Lower prices usually compress revenue, yet Wise grew the top line because the volume response more than offset the price cut.
The reporting currency adds a wrinkle worth flagging. Wise has historically presented results in pounds, where full-year cross-border volume was reported at about £181.7 billion, up roughly 25%. The larger 31% gain reflects the dollar conversion the company now leads with, after moving its primary listing to the United States, so the two growth rates describe the same flows measured on different currency bases.
The headline numbers
The table below sets the FY26 result against the prior year using the dollar figures in the company’s statement. Wise has historically reported in pounds and now presents dollar figures alongside its US listing, so sterling equivalents are shown where the company disclosed them.
| Metric | FY26 (to 31 Mar 2026) | FY25 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net revenue | $2.5bn | about $2.1bn | +19% |
| Income before tax | $660.4m | not directly comparable | 26% margin |
| Cross-border volume | $243.5bn (about £181.7bn) | about $185bn | +31% |
| Cross-border take rate | 0.52% | 0.58% | -6bps |
| Active customers | 19m | about 15.6m | +21% |
| Customer balances held | $39bn | not stated | +40% |
| Card spend | $43.6bn | not stated | +37% |
Wise also said 75% of payments globally were completed in under 20 seconds during the fourth quarter, a speed metric the company uses to argue that price is not its only competitive lever. Instant settlement, it argues, is what keeps customers from shopping around on every transfer.
The take-rate story
Cutting the take rate is a choice, not an accident. Wise has lowered prices repeatedly over its history, passing infrastructure savings back to customers in the expectation that cheaper transfers attract more users and more volume per user. Management describes this as a flywheel, comparing it to the way large online retailers reinvest scale efficiencies into lower prices.
The risk is obvious: if volume growth ever fails to outrun the price cuts, revenue stalls. FY26 suggests the flywheel is still turning, with a 31% volume gain comfortably outpacing the roughly 10% decline in the rate kept per dollar. Whether that ratio holds as the base grows larger is the central question for the years ahead.
Why is Wise cutting its take rate on purpose?
The strategy rests on a simple bet about the cross-border market. Legacy remittance and bank transfer channels have historically charged blended margins far above Wise’s, and the company believes a structurally lower price wins share over time. By compressing its own rate, it makes it harder for new entrants to undercut it and harder for incumbents to defend premium pricing.
Lower prices also deepen engagement. Customers who trust that Wise is consistently cheap are more likely to hold balances, spend on the card, and route business payments through the platform. That behavior turns a transaction app into an account relationship, which is where the more durable revenue sits.
This logic mirrors a wider repricing across payments, where margins on the core movement of money are falling while value migrates to data, accounts, and embedded services. The same pressure is reshaping merchant acquiring, where the prize is increasingly recurring payments and data revenue rather than headline transaction fees.
For Wise, the danger is that price leadership becomes a race with no finish line. Each cut must be funded by genuine cost reduction in the underlying network, or the model degrades into buying volume at the expense of profit. So far the margin has held, which is the strongest evidence that the cuts are funded by efficiency rather than subsidy.
How did interest income and cards change the revenue mix?
The most strategically important line in the results is not the take rate but the shift in where revenue comes from. Wise said almost half of net revenue now originates outside core cross-border fees. That diversification is what allows the company to keep cutting transfer prices while still growing the top line and holding margin.
Net interest income
As customers park more money in Wise accounts, the company earns interest on those balances. Net interest income reached $806.1 million across the year, a substantial contribution made possible by the $39 billion now held in customer accounts, up 40%. Higher balances and a still-elevated rate environment combined to make interest a major earnings pillar.
This is also a vulnerability. Interest income rises and falls with central bank rates, so a sustained easing cycle would pressure this line even if balances keep growing. Wise’s FY27 guidance explicitly assumes stable interest conditions, a reminder that part of its profit is exposed to forces it does not control.
Card and account revenue
Card and other revenue grew to $636.6 million, up roughly 38%, as customers used the Wise card for everyday spending alongside transfers. Card spend of $43.6 billion, up 37%, shows the product is becoming a primary payment method for travelers, expatriates, and online shoppers buying across currencies, not just a way to access transferred funds.
The table below shows how the revenue base has broadened. The lines are reported gross and use different definitions, so they are not intended to sum exactly to net revenue, but they illustrate the direction of travel.
| Revenue source | FY26 figure | Role in the model |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-border fees | take rate 0.52% on $243.5bn volume | Core movement of money; price deliberately falling |
| Net interest income | $806.1m | Earned on $39bn of customer balances; rate-sensitive |
| Card and other revenue | $636.6m | Everyday spend on $43.6bn of card volume; recurring |
The breadth matters for resilience. A business that depended solely on transfer fees would be fully exposed to its own price cuts; one that earns from balances and cards can absorb cheaper transfers and still compound revenue. That is the architecture Wise has spent years assembling.
What does the Nasdaq move mean for Wise?
FY26 is the first full year reported under Wise’s new listing structure. The company moved its primary listing to Nasdaq on 11 May 2026, keeping London as a secondary venue, a decision pitched to shareholders as a route to deeper capital pools and a valuation more in line with US-listed fintech peers.
The move was contentious in London, where Wise had been one of the larger technology listings since its 2021 direct listing. Supporters argued that a US primary line widens the investor base and supports the kind of infrastructure partnerships Wise wants to strike with American banks. Critics saw it as another blow to the London market’s standing.
The listing shift sits inside a broader thaw in fintech capital markets, where the appetite for payments and commerce flotations has been building through 2026. That backdrop is explored in our analysis of why a fresh wave of fintech and commerce IPOs is likely to price before the end of the third quarter, a cycle Wise’s relisting both reflects and reinforces.
Practically, the dual structure changes how Wise communicates. Reporting now leads with dollar figures, aligning the company with US conventions and US analysts, even as its operational heart remains in London and Tallinn. The FY26 statement is the clearest sign yet of that reorientation.
How does Wise’s platform reach into e-commerce?
Wise is often read as a consumer remittance brand, but a growing share of its strategic value lies in business and platform services that touch online commerce directly. Wise Business serves companies that pay suppliers, contractors, and staff across borders, and the company said business customer numbers reached 572,000, up 26%.
For online sellers, cross-border friction is a real cost. Marketplaces collect in one currency, suppliers invoice in another, and marketplace payouts often arrive net of opaque conversion fees. A multi-currency account that holds, converts, and pays at low spreads directly improves a seller’s working capital and margin.
Wise Platform, the company’s infrastructure arm, lets banks and fintechs embed Wise’s rails inside their own apps. That positions Wise as a supplier to the payments industry, not only a competitor to it, and connects it to the same merchant flows that drive marketplaces and storefronts. The thread runs through the consolidation reshaping the sector, including Nuvei’s $2.75 billion acquisition of Payoneer, which created a cross-border payments group aimed squarely at marketplace and seller flows.
The competitive overlap with Payoneer is direct. Both court online sellers and platforms that need to move money across borders, and both are now part of a market where scale and a broad account relationship matter more than a single cheap transfer. Wise’s larger balance base and card volume give it an account franchise that pure payout rivals lack.
Why merchants care about settlement speed
Speed is not a vanity metric for sellers. When 75% of payments clear in under 20 seconds, a merchant paying a supplier abroad can release an order or restock faster, shortening the cash-conversion cycle that ties up working capital. For thin-margin online retailers, days saved on settlement translate into inventory turns and fewer financing costs.
The same speed reduces foreign-exchange risk. A transfer that settles in seconds locks in a rate the seller can see, rather than leaving funds exposed while a slower bank transfer clears over days. In volatile currency conditions, that certainty can be worth more than a few basis points of headline fee.
How does Wise compare with cross-border peers?
Wise sits in a crowded field that runs from legacy money-transfer operators to card networks and newer account-based challengers. The comparison below is qualitative on competitor economics, since rivals disclose pricing differently and direct take-rate comparisons can mislead. Wise’s 0.52% blended rate is among the lowest published in the category.
| Player | Model | Listing | Cross-border positioning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wise | Multi-currency accounts, transfers, cards, platform | Nasdaq primary, LSE secondary | Low published take rate (0.52%); account and balance franchise |
| Payoneer (Nuvei) | Seller and marketplace payouts, business accounts | Private (acquired by Nuvei) | Marketplace and freelancer flows; now inside a larger acquirer |
| PayPal / Xoom | Consumer wallet, remittance, checkout | Nasdaq | Huge consumer base; remittance is one of many products |
| Revolut | Neobank, multi-currency, trading, cards | Private | Broad super-app; cross-border is a feature, not the core |
| Western Union | Cash and digital remittance network | NYSE | Cash reach in emerging markets; industry analyses suggest higher blended cost |
The pattern across the table is that account-based models are converging on the cross-border opportunity from different starting points. Wise approaches it from low-cost transfers and balances, neobanks from broad consumer relationships, and acquirers from merchant flows. The structural pressure on legacy remittance margins is reinforced by the rise of new settlement rails, including the prospect that merchant stablecoin checkout moves from pilot to launch by early 2027, which could route some cross-border value outside both banks and money-transfer firms entirely.
Where is Wise expanding next?
Geographic reach is central to the take-rate strategy, because every new corridor and license adds volume that can defray the cost of price cuts. In FY26 Wise added direct payment connections in markets including Brazil and Japan, deepening its ability to settle locally rather than routing through correspondent banks.
The company also secured new license approvals in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Thailand, extending its regulated footprint into faster-growing remittance and trade corridors. Direct local connections matter because they cut the cost and time of each transfer, feeding the speed and price advantages Wise markets to customers.
Bank and fintech partnerships
Wise Platform signed or extended partnerships with institutions including UniCredit, Raiffeisen Bank, MBSB Bank, and Capitec during the year. Each partner embeds Wise’s cross-border rails into its own customer experience, turning incumbent banks into distribution channels for Wise’s infrastructure.
This partner-led distribution is strategically attractive because it adds volume without the marketing cost of acquiring each end customer directly. It also entrenches Wise inside the banking system, making its rails harder to displace once a partner has integrated them into core flows.
What does FY27 guidance signal?
Wise guided to FY27 net revenue growth around the middle of its 15% to 20% medium-term range, on a constant-currency basis, with income before tax margin near the top of the 20% to 25% range. The guidance assumes stable interest conditions and steady customer retention, two assumptions worth watching.
A mid-range revenue guide after a 19% year reads as confident but not heroic, consistent with a company that expects to keep trading price for volume. The margin guide near the top of the range signals that management believes the diversified revenue base can defend profitability even as transfer prices fall further.
On capital returns, Wise flagged a new share purchase program expected to exceed $500 million, following the $470 million it directed to its employee share trust in FY26 to cover 35.9 million shares. The scale of buybacks underlines that the business is now generating enough cash to fund growth and return capital at the same time.
The interest-rate assumption is the soft spot. With net interest income contributing $806.1 million, a sharper than expected fall in policy rates would pressure a meaningful chunk of profit, and no amount of volume growth fully offsets that in the short term. Investors will read every central bank signal through that lens.
What does it mean for retailers and online sellers?
For merchants, the headline is that cross-border money movement keeps getting cheaper and faster, and Wise is a primary force pushing that trend. Sellers sourcing inventory abroad, paying overseas contractors, or collecting marketplace payouts in foreign currencies stand to benefit from lower spreads and quicker settlement.
The deeper signal is competitive. As Wise, acquirers, card networks, and stablecoin issuers converge on cross-border flows, the cost of moving value internationally should fall further, easing a long-standing drag on global online trade. That pressure connects to the broader reshaping of the sector traced in our coverage of why European payments consolidation is likely to intensify before year-end.
There is also a working-capital story. Multi-currency accounts that hold and convert on demand let sellers time conversions and avoid forced spreads at payout, a practical margin lever for any business with international suppliers or customers. For high-volume sellers, even a few basis points of saved conversion cost compounds quickly.
The caution is concentration. As more sellers route payments through a handful of large platforms, dependence on any single provider grows, and pricing power can swing back toward the platform once switching becomes painful. Cheap today does not guarantee cheap forever.
What are the main risks to watch?
The first risk is the take-rate flywheel itself. The model only works while volume growth outpaces price cuts, and the larger the base becomes, the harder that arithmetic gets. Any quarter where volume disappoints against a lower rate would test the thesis quickly.
The second is interest-rate exposure. With net interest income now a major earnings pillar, a faster easing cycle would hit profit in a way volume cannot fully cushion, and the FY27 guidance leans on rates staying broadly stable.
The third is competitive and regulatory. Cross-border payments is drawing in card networks, acquirers, neobanks, and stablecoin rails at once, while regulators across multiple jurisdictions scrutinize fees, licensing, and consumer protection. The same capital-markets energy that surrounds Wise also feeds deal activity, a theme covered in our read on why a payments IPO and M&A wave is likely in the second half of 2026.
Investors will want to see the FY27 quarters confirm that the diversified revenue base can carry the model through both lower prices and any softening in rates. FY26 made the case; the year ahead will test it.
The bottom line
Wise’s FY26 results show a company executing a coherent strategy with discipline: cut the price of moving money, grow volume faster than the cut, and build a balance and card franchise that earns when transfer fees do not. Net revenue of $2.5 billion and a 26% pre-tax margin suggest the approach is paying off for now.
The questions that remain are about durability. The take-rate flywheel must keep spinning, interest income must not unwind too fast, and competitors closing in on cross-border flows must not erode the price leadership Wise has built. For retailers and online sellers, the practical takeaway is simpler: the cost of moving money across borders is falling, and FY26 is fresh evidence of how fast.
Frequently asked questions
What were Wise’s FY26 headline results?
For the year to 31 March 2026, Wise reported net revenue of $2.5 billion, up 19%, and income before tax of $660.4 million, a 26% margin. Cross-border volume rose 31% to $243.5 billion and active customers grew 21% to 19 million.
Why did Wise’s take rate fall to 0.52%?
Wise deliberately lowers prices to attract more customers and volume, passing infrastructure savings back to users. The blended cross-border take rate fell from 0.58% to 0.52%, but volume rose fast enough to grow revenue despite the cut.
How does Wise make money if it keeps cutting prices?
Almost half of net revenue now comes from outside core transfer fees. Net interest income on customer balances reached $806.1 million and card and other revenue reached $636.6 million, letting Wise keep cutting transfer prices while still growing.
What did Wise guide for FY27?
Wise guided to net revenue growth around the middle of its 15% to 20% medium-term range, on a constant-currency basis, with income before tax margin near the top of the 20% to 25% range. The guidance assumes stable interest rates and steady retention.
Why did Wise move its listing to Nasdaq?
Wise moved its primary listing to Nasdaq on 11 May 2026, keeping a secondary London line, to access deeper capital pools and a valuation closer to US-listed fintech peers. FY26 is the first full year reported under the new structure.
How does Wise affect online sellers and retailers?
Lower, faster cross-border payments reduce the cost of paying overseas suppliers and collecting foreign-currency payouts. Multi-currency accounts let sellers hold and convert on demand, improving working capital and protecting margin on international trade.
Who are Wise’s main competitors?
Wise competes with money-transfer operators like Western Union, seller-focused payout firms like Payoneer (now owned by Nuvei), consumer wallets like PayPal and Xoom, and neobanks like Revolut. Stablecoin settlement rails are an emerging competitive factor.
How much is Wise returning to shareholders?
Wise flagged a new share purchase program expected to exceed $500 million, following $470 million directed to its employee share trust in FY26 covering 35.9 million shares. The scale signals the business can fund growth and return capital at once.
What is the biggest risk in Wise’s model?
The main risks are the take-rate flywheel stalling if volume ever fails to outrun price cuts, exposure to falling interest rates given large net interest income, and intensifying competition from acquirers, card networks, and stablecoin rails.