The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Hugo: So welcome everyone. We’ll just wait a couple of minutes, give everyone a chance to join before we get started. And Ankita, we were just talking. So you are, you’re in New York?
Ankita: Yes, I am. I went out to try and get a coffee and then it was snowing and I made my way back inside very fast.
Hugo: It’s kind of cold in the UK this morning, but no snow. We had frost, sunny here though. Is it sunny there? It’s not, it’s kind of alright when it’s sunny.
Ankita: It’s not that sunny yet, but I think New York, I feel like New York compared to London. It, it does get, it does get like quite a lot of sun in the winter, which is, which is nice, but it is significantly colder.
Hugo: You were saying before we… You were saying just now that we’d, that you’d lived abroad a lot. You spent quite a few years in the UK and various countries.
Ankita: Yeah, I did. I did. So I was in London for about, yeah, about 10 years. And yeah, it’s funny, I tried to wear the same coat that I owned in London, in New York, in winter 2022. And it, it did not last for more than two days, so I had to go and get myself a new one. So that’s what I really learned.
Hugo: Yeah. I don’t think that would be for me. I, yeah, like warm places, but…
Ankita: I know, I know. I do miss London though. It was really fun. But I do come back quite a bit because our company is actually headquartered in London.
Hugo: That’s good. Good to, yeah. Winter to, to warm up a bit, which is not, people normally come to London, but that’s true. So look, I think numbers of people joining have slowed down, so maybe let’s get started.
Ankita: Okay. Awesome. So hold on, let me I’ll, I’ll just read my little intro and then I’ll pass.
Hugo: Alright, sounds good.
Conference Introduction
Hugo: Cool. So, hello everyone. Welcome to day three of the 2025 US Expats Financial Conference, sponsored by Expat Focus, the web’s favorite destination for anyone moving or living abroad and Wise, the leading provider of fast, low-cost, international money transfer services and multi-currency accounts for individuals and businesses.
We have a fantastic schedule for you consisting of nine sessions over three days, covering multiple aspects of financial information for Americans living abroad with perspectives from some of the world’s leading experts in their fields.
Today is the third and final day of the conference, and for this our first session of the day, I’m delighted to be joined by Ankita Dello, head of Payments North America at Wise, who will be discussing international currency transfer considerations and strategies for expats in 2025.
Before we start, please bear in mind the information presented is for educational purposes only, and you should always seek your own personal financial advice. It’s also while the conference is free to attend, if you’d like to leave a tip for the organizers, you can do so using the PayPal link that is on the conference website.
That’s usexpatconference.com. And I’ll also drop that link into the chat window. And Ankita will also be answering your questions at the answer. Please add them in the Q and A popup at the foot of your screen throughout, and we’ll try to answer all of them time permitting. So without further ado, over to you, Ankita.
Main Presentation
Ankita: All right. Thank you so much, Hugo. And thank you so much for having me here today. I hope that I can give you everything that you need, all the helpful information. And yeah, if I don’t cover something, please just do share it in the Q and A and we’ll try and go over it at the end.
So I’m gonna share some content with you. So give me one second while I just grab that. Okay. All right. Hopefully you guys can see my screen.
Hugo: Yes.
Ankita: Okay. All right. Amazing. Give me one second. Cool. Okay, cool. Alright, so let’s get started.
So just to kick off, I know Hugo introduced me already, but I’m Ankita. I work at a company called Wise. And we will talk about that in a second.
So what I actually do is I’m a product manager at the company. So I help to build some of the products and features that we actually offer to our customers. And specifically I head up our payments infrastructure in North America. So that’s really looking after the US dollar and Canadian dollar.
And I help to set up two of our major products, which we will talk you through in more detail. And that is basically sending money abroad as well as being able to open an account and hold money.
So in terms of content, we’re gonna cover quite a few things today. We’ll go over high level, you know, what is Wise and the context here as well is I’m gonna talk you through how you can use products. Like Wise, there might be other products that you choose. They all work in a very similar way.
And what you should feel empowered to do by the end of this session is to really make that choice yourself, be able to use whatever product you think is most beneficial to you. And we’ll talk through just the importance of different factors during that selection.
So next up we’ll talk about foreign exchange fees, commonly known as hidden fees. And I do wanna spend a chunk of time here because this is super important for anybody who’s considering moving abroad or who has already moved.
Next up we’ll go through verification and tax. Obviously there are implications here as well when you move abroad, and it’s good to know about that. We’ll sort of recap with essentially managing your money internationally and what does it mean? And then last, but not least, we’ll save some time for Q and A at the very end.
What is Wise?
So let’s move on to the next section. So what is Wise? So I’ve just pasted our homepage on here so that you guys can see what this actually looks like. And this is really the bread and butter of how Wise actually started.
The company is about 14 years old. It started in London and really what it set out to do was to help people to be actually able to send money abroad and to make sure that they weren’t getting ripped off.
I know that maybe some of you or all of you have been in a situation where you’ve tried to do this and it hasn’t gone so smoothly. I can talk through my own experience. So I have lived abroad in multiple countries. I moved to the UK, I moved to Singapore, and I finally moved to New York.
And during that time, I actually used Wise as a really key part of my journey through moving. Now again, it could have been another provider as well, but a lot of these companies tend to be quite instrumental when you are moving countries because you need, you need a certain way of accessing your financial life in your new country as well as your previous country. And you need to be able to connect those two, and that’s what’s really important.
So this is just for you to get an idea of what Wise looks like and the biggest part that we’ll talk about in more detail later as well is around transparency and ensuring that you are getting the right amount of money on the other side.
So what you can see here is I’ve input two numbers of saying, Hey, I’m gonna send a thousand dollars to GBP. Again, the most important part is being able to see upfront what the recipient is gonna get on the other side, as well as what fee you’re being charged. So we’ll spend time on that later. But just giving you sort of a flavor of this right now.
So we won’t spend too much time here, but overall, I just wanted to highlight, you know, what is Wise? What is it that we do? Wise is a global technology company. We specialize exactly in this, in sending money abroad and building the payments infrastructure for customers to do this and manage their money internationally.
We onboard about a hundred thousand customers each week, and what’s important to know is also we’ve been in this space for a really long time, so we are about 14 years old now, and we’ve really been a leader in currency transfers and actually managing money internationally.
So hopefully, you know, me being here today can also help you, guide you through some of the common mistakes that our customers make or that people make. And hopefully you won’t get stuck in those traps as well.
If I can draw your attention to one figure to remember on this slide is the bottom right. You know, we helped to save about 2.2 billion in fees that customers would’ve normally paid. And this, this is something that we are so, so passionate about and really the reason why WISE was created in the first place was that often when customers send international transfers through their banks, they don’t realize that there are fees associated with that.
That the exchange rate that’s actually being used is not as good as the one that they might get elsewhere and they end up losing hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars in moving money with a bank. So this is the most important reason of, of really why we, why we exist.
Core Products
So we’ll go through what you can do with Wise and I’ve put in a bunch of videos coming up shortly after so we can walk you through what this actually means for you.
So during my journey of, you know, moving abroad and, you know, the products that I really needed, there were two things that were super important to me. One was being able to send money abroad. And this can be for a variety of reasons. This can be to help set you up in your new country when you’re first moving, or this could be sending money back home because you need to pay for a bill or pay for taxes or something like that.
The second one is actually being able to get a local bank account. Now this is really, really important when you move to a new country because you’re thinking about how do you actually get set up financially.
I remember when I moved to New York, I actually went into a branch at Chase because I was not able to open up an account online. And it actually took me a really long time because I needed a bunch of documentation, I didn’t have it, and I sort of had to go back and forth with the, with the branch manager quite a bit before I actually opened an account.
I still wanted to do this. But at the end of the day, the thing that was really handy with Wise was that I actually was able to get USD local account details instantly through the application.
So while I still wanted a Chase account anyway. I could still get my salary paid into me immediately, and I didn’t have to worry about the fact that I didn’t have this documentation and that I couldn’t get an account just yet.
So getting a bank account, sending money abroad. And lastly, there are gonna be times where you need cash depending on the country that you’re moving to or the country that you’re already in.
Cash can be a big part of the ecosystem. So countries that are normally like that are Japan, for example, even countries like Mexico and the Philippines. And so really like how are you gonna be able to do that? And so we do have a product that allows you to actually withdraw money with Wise. So if you hold money in any particular currency, you can use the debit card to actually spend the money that you hold with Wise.
So those are three key important things to remember. And we’ll also get into things like what to do when you send large amounts and how that can actually trip you up along the way. I’ve had a few hiccups with those things too, so we’ll get into that as well.
Exchange Rates and Transparency
So, what I’ve tried to do here again, is just highlight, you know, what does this look like? And with any sort of provider that you are gonna look at, there are certain things that I want you to watch out for.
So number one is looking at the rate, right? So right at the top here, you’ve got, you know, one USD is equal to 0.799 GBP. If you do decide that you wanna send your money through a bank. I really want you to go and think about where are they actually displaying the exchange rate for you.
If it’s not written there upfront, the chances are that you are probably not getting the best rate. And often banks will do things like saying, Hey, there are no foreign transaction fees. There are no fees associated with this transfer.
But really that’s where your fee is because if they’re giving you a poor exchange rate, you’re gonna be getting so much less money on the other side. So what’s really important is two things to be able to see the rate, and secondly, to be able to see the money that you’re getting on the other side.
Now Wise does go the extra level. We really do sort of weave transparency into everything that we do sometimes. Too much. But I do think it’s useful for our customers to know every step of the way, you know, what fees are you paying? At what point is your money actually going to reach your recipient as well.
These are, these are things that, particularly as you send larger amounts, these are things that you really wanna know. You know, how many of you have had anxiety because you have spent a really huge amount of money and it hasn’t, it hasn’t showed up on the other end. And you’re like, where is my money? Where has it gone?
So things like being able to track your transfers, being able to know upfront, where it’s going, when it’s going to land. Those are things that are really helpful to understand as well.
Use Cases
So what I’ve tried to highlight here as well is, you know, when, when are you gonna actually use, use this product? When is it relevant?
So, drawing back on, you know, some of my own life experiences, I can think of three times where I had to do this.
So, for example, when I moved over to the US and when I moved to Singapore, I had really no money in the, in the country. And I wasn’t gonna start working for about a month. So I had this limbo period for a while. And I needed money to actually set myself up.
This was for, you know, putting down a deposit on a house or an apartment that I was about to rent, and where was I gonna get the money to do that. So I did have to move a chunk of money to this new country to actually be able to do that.
Some of you might be considering, you know, relocating altogether and really moving your entire life somewhere. So it might not be just for a small stint. It might be, it might be bigger than that. And that’s really where you get into, you know, these sort of larger transfers. And we do see that a lot as well.
And thirdly if, you know, for those of you who are already abroad and enjoying your life somewhere, you might need to send money back home to the US or to any other place that you call home for a variety of different things.
Maybe you’ve, you know, you’ve got a house that’s still there and you’re paying a mortgage on it, or maybe, you know, you, you’re Airbnbing it and you still have to pay bills through that. Maybe you’ve got, uh, money coming through from a tax rebate or things like that.
So there’s a, there’s a bunch of, um, use cases that you will also need to send money back home. And this is really where Wise and other providers that specialize in this can come in to help.
Getting Local Account Details
So the next thing I’m gonna walk you through is getting local account details and why this is really important. So I’ve got a little video here, which sort of goes through opening New Zealand account details.
So let’s say I’ve just moved to New Zealand. I need to have an account number. It’s really as simple as clicking, get account details in this New Zealand balance.
And what you can see here with Wise is the currencies that we actually offer this in. We don’t offer it in every currency. There’s about 17 where you can actually get local account details. And as you continue, it’s really just a few clicks and then right there what you’ve got is an account number and a swift number that you can actually use in the country.
You don’t even have to be in New Zealand to use this. You can get this instantly. So if there was some reason that you even needed to get paid from a vendor or you have any other use case, those are things that you can do.
So when does this become handy and like why, why would you need a product like this?
So going back to what I talked about earlier, one of the biggest things that people find them, the biggest situations people find themselves in is how do I get a local bank account? And if you’ve just moved to a new country or you’re considering just moving, it’s that those documents and that those first few steps that can really be problematic at the start.
Often things like, Hey, do you have a proof of address? Or maybe you need a local identification card. Those are things that sometimes take a few months to actually get and to go into a, a branch or get a local bank account. Sometimes you do need those things.
So what you can do here is you can really set yourself up quite easily without having to go through those steps. You don’t have to go through a branch and let’s say you’re about to start work and your employer’s asking you for your bank details to pay your salary. This is where it becomes really handy.
You have account details that you can use and share with your employer, and it’s not to say that you have to do this forever.
Even in my situation when I first moved over, I did use Wise to receive my salary at the start because I didn’t have another bank account. Eventually in time I did get another bank account, and then I chose to sort of split my salary and get some of it here and some of it there. And those are all personal choices that you can make.
But the point is that you’re not left high and dry at the start when you first move.
You might also be in a situation where you go out with a friend and they are asking you, how can we pay you because you just paid for dinner or you just paid for something. And I’m sure most of you will be familiar with Venmo, and you’re wondering, you know, what’s the local version of Venmo and how do I do this? How can I use this?
And so here’s another way where you actually are already set up now with a local bank account and you can get paid even from a friend.
And last but not least, there are gonna be things that you need to set up direct debits for. We all know how much that’s used in any country that you go to. So having a local bank account where you can get this set up is very, very handy.
Multi-Currency Card
So next up here, what I’m also highlighting is that you, you, when you actually receive money into these accounts, and I’ll pause this for a second. The money isn’t stuck there. You’re probably wondering, okay, now it’s here. What do I do with it? What if I don’t wanna, what if I don’t have a use for it?
And there’s a couple of things that you can do, right? So number one, you can choose to actually send it on. So in this particular case, I’m in my USD balance and I’m saying, Hey, I actually wanna send it to euros, and you can send it on to somebody else if you actually need to do that.
But maybe you don’t have a need to do that. So then what do you do? And this is really where we talk about the card, where there’s a card that essentially powers this account. And so really you can use this to actually spend your money or withdraw your money, as and when you please.
The power of having a multicurrency account and a multicurrency card associated with it is the biggest benefit is not having any foreign transaction fees.
Now, I know that in the US there’s a whole bunch of, you know, really powerful credit cards which we all love and we get a lot of points from. But sometimes even with that, you don’t realize whether the exchange rates are good, whether there’s foreign transaction fees, and if you’re really considering, you know, moving or you have moved at some point, you’re probably gonna wanna stop using those cards.
So. The Wise card again, it becomes a good measure to actually be able to spend some of this money that’s in your balance and not get charged any foreign transaction fees. You can use the card to withdraw cash shop online, set up, automatic payments, all this good stuff.
So there’s a whole bunch of providers that will allow you to do these things and we’ll talk through that as well in terms of like understanding what’s good for you and like how can you figure that out.
Key Differentiators
Okay. So that was a lot about Wise and sort of just to kind of cover, you know, why we think it’s different and hopefully why it might help you on your journey and sort of how it’s helped me.
We really try to always be fair and show you the mid-market rate at all times. This is the mid-market exchange rate, which you can just put in on Google. So if you were about to send money and you weren’t sure whether this rate is good, and if you Googled it, you should see exactly the same rate there too. If you don’t let us know, because something’s definitely broken in our product.
60% of our transfers are instant at Wise. That means the transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. And it’s something that I personally take a lot of pride in because that’s my area where I work. And really it’s, it’s a challenge to be able to get money, you know, from, from one currency to another that quickly. But it’s something that we strive for and we push ourselves to do every day. And the goal is that one day we’ll be a hundred percent instant.
We do have a very global network in the sense that we have a lot of coverage in different countries and currencies, so you should be able to use us in most countries and you can check this out on our website as well.
And last but not least is customer service. So if anything goes wrong, we do have a lot of different avenues, whether that’s email, phones, chats, we do offer 24/7 coverage in the event that anything goes wrong with your transfer.
So thanks for listening to that about Wise. And again, like I said, we sort of talked through some of the key products that you can use and there will be other vendors that you can also do this with.
Important Considerations
So going over a few things to think about while you are in the process of moving money and, you know, when is this actually good for you?
So, the live exchange rate, so we’ve talked about this quite a lot, but really this is super, super important. So you need to be making sure that you get this a good exchange rate and it’s the mid-market rate whenever you are sending money.
Now, the second part is when should you send money? And you really need to think about this one carefully. Some people might be less sensitive to this because maybe they have an urgent need to send money and the money needs to arrive immediately. If that’s the case, maybe you’re not gonna be looking at whether a particular rate makes sense for you or not, but if you have the luxury of waiting and thinking about it.
You can set up things like rate alerts, whether that’s within Wise or outside of Wise. You can, I think you can even do this just in Google. Try to look at trends of when a two currency pairs actually are working in favor for you in, so if you’re trying to send USD to Euro, for example, you wanna make sure that the dollar is stronger so that you can get more Euros on the other side. It’s as simple as that.
So take a look at those things. Try to maximize the amount that you’re getting on the other end, especially when you’re sending big amounts, because those small fluctuations can really lead to big yields on the other side.
Okay, so in terms of why it matters, and again, I know we’ve talked about this a ton. I really wanna get into the details of what can happen when you are actually sending these transfers. So we’ve talked about hidden fees. Yes. And I’ll give you an example of what happened with me.
So I was sending money from Singapore to the UK and I used HSBC and I was actually sending money for my college tuition at the time, and I didn’t really know what to expect and what to look for.
And so I actually sent, I think it was like a whole year’s worth of tuition fees from Singapore to the UK. And it was sent directly to my, my college’s bank account. And what ended up happening was the exchange rate was so poor at the time that I underpaid my fees.
And that was really catastrophic because I almost lost my seat in my college because it was deemed that I didn’t pay on time. And it was something that I didn’t even know and I didn’t even realize. And, and the repercussions were, were huge.
So there’s a lot at stake sometimes when you’re sending big amounts. And this is why it’s really important to know how much the recipient is receiving on the other side, and that you’re not, you are not being taken advantage of by doing those things.
So compare currency conversions across different services. So no matter who you’re using, whether it’s a bank, whether it’s another provider, take the time to actually educate yourself and learn about where you’re getting the best offer, where you’re getting the best deal, and whether the rate is actually good.
There are a bunch of financial tools out there in terms of like how you can actually do this. Wise itself has just a single page where you can track currency conversion and it will actually tell you about all the different vendors that you could use to give you the best rate as well. So we are very transparent in the situations where we’re not gonna be good for you and you should actually use somebody else.
And last but not least, you should really check that the service that you’re using is financially regulated. So when it comes to actually sending money abroad, there are a lot of implications to that, particularly for US citizens and things like that. And we’ll get into tax implications in a second.
But making sure that the vendor that you’re choosing is actually reputable is really important. So make sure that you have done a little bit of research as well, and that the organization is regulated in the countries that you are sending to.
Comparison Example
So this is what I was referring to when you are looking at different vendors. So here you can see what we’ve called out is a bunch of different vendors that you can actually use to send money abroad. So you’ve got Wise, you’ve got Instarem, Zoom by PayPal, OFX, and then some of the bigger banks as well, PayPal.
And what you can really see here is the exchange rate that these providers are using. And often it’ll come with a stamp on it saying that there’s no fee. So this is really where you. Where you can get mixed up. It’s a very common trap. But what you get on the other side is ultimately a lower amount.
Now, it also really depends on the amount that you’re sending. This is a pretty large amount, but maybe if you send smaller amounts, these vendors are gonna sort of shuffle up and down and some might be more beneficial for smaller amounts. Some might be beneficial for big amounts, so take the time to actually look at that as well.
Verification and Tax
So coming up on verification and tax. So with most vendors, like Wise, it’s pretty easy to sign up for an account. So if some of you are thinking, I don’t know how to use this, this seems overwhelming, everything’s online and if you’re more used to doing things in a different way, I just wanna say that it’s really simple.
All we typically need is your name, your physical address, proof of address, and a photo ID. In some cases, we make it really simple as well. If you’ve got, you know, in countries where there’s a smoother way of verification, you might not even need an actual physical ID. And a lot of vendors will ask you for very similar information.
When you’re signing up, it typically just takes a few seconds, maybe a few minutes, you know, if you need to go and grab a copy of your passport or things like that. You should be all set up and ready to go.
So, in terms of, you know, the, the information sometimes that I’ve had to, I’ve been asked for in other countries with physical banks, it’s often been a lot more, you’re looking at, you know, three months of salary slips and things like that. There might be times where you’re asked that from companies like this.
But typically I think because we, what I would say is like FinTech sort of operate in a space where we try to streamline things and like keep it really simple for the user and we sort of leverage a lot of KYC and online automated checks. We can sometimes make things a bit easier for our customers.
So one thing to note about large transfers, and this is where I, I did touch on this earlier. You’ve gotta be pretty careful. When you’re sending large amounts of money. All providers tend to ask for a source of funds or source of wealth document when you are actually sending a large amount.
So things that you may need to provide, if it’s, you know, you’re putting a deposit on a house, or you’ve sold a house, inheritance, things like that. Make sure that you do have that documentation in advance because it most likely, if not always, will be checked. And this is, these are the things that can cause stress where you’re like, Hey, I’ve sent my money. I don’t know where it is.
So make sure you do have this on hand to speed up that process and avoid your transfer being stuck.
And last but not least, so living abroad as a US citizen comes with, you know. tax implications for sure, and US Taxes are some of the most complex out there, and so often, even when you’re sending money abroad, this does need to be reported for tax purposes.
So the things to keep in mind, some of you may be able to do this yourselves, but when you’re leading an international life tax can sometimes also get really complicated and it can be really overwhelming if you’ve, if you’re being taxed twice. So that’s the biggest thing that you wanna avoid is double taxation anywhere.
There might be things that you need to do. I remember when I left the UK I had to, you know, put in a form to say I was like actually leaving. And, you know, so please don’t, please don’t tax me, basically. But there’s probably different steps along the way that you, that you need to do whenever you’re moving abroad.
So please ensure that you consult a tax professional if you are in any way unsure of what might be coming your way. If you do send money abroad as well, keeping details of your transfers is very handy so that you know what you’ve sent, why you’ve sent it. So if there are any questions or you know, any inconsistencies in tax, you can avoid that as well.
So hopefully that, that is helpful. It’s very broad guidance and if you have any more questions, please do, please do ask away. And we’ll see if we can get into that.
Managing Money Internationally
So just to wrap up, in general, I think that overall, when you’re managing your money internationally, it is complicated, but it can be made really easy if you try to find ways to have a one stop shop to put everything together or find products that can connect your money in different parts of the world.
That is for me, how I use Wise, where I use it as a connector for my different bank accounts in different countries. And really some of the things that you’re thinking about when you’re, when you’re first moving abroad or if you’re already there, are things like paying rent, utilities, you know, getting set up with a bank account so you can receive money. Those are the things that you will need services like this for.
And so hopefully that will help you in, in your journey if you’re, if you’re not already there yet.
In terms of who can actually use Wise, I’m just highlighting here that this is a product that’s for everyone. Just in case you’re wondering like, Hey, it can I use this? Is this for me?
You can, it it’s for everybody. So it is not tailored to any particular person. Even if you have a business, you can use it as well. And this will be the case for a lot of other providers as well. Like Do check that as well to ensure that you can use it. Some vendors might only be for personal customers and maybe not for businesses. So have a look and see what actually makes sense for you.
And with that, I think we are gonna move on to the Q and A. So thank you so much for listening. I hope that was helpful and I hope that you got enough information to equip you with and I will do my best to answer any questions.
Q&A Session
Hugo: Thanks so much for that presentation. No, we’ve had lots of questions come in. First one’s quite an interesting one for Americans abroad, which hopefully, I’m not sure if you’ll have, if you’ve come across it, hopefully you have, which is whether the Wise Multicurrency account needs to be reported on an FBAR foreign bank account report form.
Ankita: Yeah. So I think, again, it’s gonna depend on your specific situation. So I will try to keep it as broad as possible. But, but yes, so for example, if, you know, I own, I’ll talk about myself, like I have a Wise account and sometimes I do receive money. You know, if it’s things like, Hey, my friend owes me money because I paid for a trip and, you know, they’re late, that’s very different. But if it’s, Hey, I did, you know, maybe I did some consulting work or maybe I did something and it’s actually income, then yes, you would need to report that as you would need to report any foreign income that you receive.
Hugo: I think the FBAR form is just a, it’s not about income, it’s about non-US accounts. And so if, if once somebody transfers sort of US dollars in their multicurrency account, where is the account registered? Is it in the US is it in the UK for example, or is it where the expat is?
Ankita: Yeah, that’s a really great question. So, for the Wise accounts specifically, it’s gonna be registered to where you live. So if you, if your address with Wise is the US, then you are, you are governed under US regulation. If you are in the UK it is UK regulation, but this is where, where a hundred percent, it gets complicated when you’re a US citizen because you might be under UK regulation, but you’ve still got the US coming for you to be like, Hey, what about me? Yeah. So those are the things that you definitely have to think about.
Hugo: Definitely. So it sounds like, for I think two or three people asked that if you are, if you’re abroad and you are, you’re living abroad, yeah. You would probably include that in your FBAR form. Yeah. if you, If you meet the other criteria for finding FBARs.
Some of these are quite technical. How can one can only rent a car in the US with a credit card? Does Wise provide a credit card or,
Ankita: Oh, I know we get asked that question all the time. We do not actually provide a credit card right now. I’ll be honest, it’s something we’ve like, danced around for a while of like, should we, shouldn’t we? I think it’s just such a competitive market with credit cards that it’s hard to break into that space without, you know, without like really going for it. So it’s something that we haven’t done. But that’s a great call out. I actually didn’t know that you can only rent a car with a, with a credit card, so that is. That is helpful information for me too.
Hugo: Yeah, so there’s a debit card, but not a credit card with Wise, is that right?
Ankita: Yeah, so it’s a debit card. And but yeah, I think, you know, the US in particular is a very credit card heavy market. It took me some time to adjust to that as well. So yeah.
Hugo: Cool. Thanks. Diane says, can you transfer money internationally to a business?
Ankita: Yes, you can. Yeah. And Wise does has kind of business accounts, doesn’t it as well, or,
Hugo: Yeah, so if you are a business yourself, what we do is like, let’s say you’ve got. One email, for example, what we allow you to do is open up different profiles. So maybe let’s say I have an ice cream shop so I can open one account for me, which is like, I’m Ankita, this is my personal account. I also have a profile that’s, you know, Ankita’s Ice Cream Shop, and I can do my business transactions on that profile. So they’re both connected to me. They just have different purposes. And if I need to send to a business, I can do that from both my accounts. There’s no limitation on that.
Hugo: Yeah. So you can send, you can open a business account and a personal account and you can send from either of ’em to a business account. Yeah. Donald says, do you have to be in the US to get set up? But I think as I understand it, you don’t do, you can.
Ankita: No. Yeah. So yeah, you can use Wise anywhere. You can get set up wherever you are. There might be countries, you know, sanctioned countries and things like that where we don’t offer the product. So, do check and see if it is available in the country that you’re looking for. I’d say nine outta 10 times. You know, based on the audience, I don’t know where all of you are, but based on, you know, where I think most of you are from, you should be able to use it and get signed up.
Hugo: Somebody asked, do you support India? Can you move Indian currency to US Euros? And, And yeah.
Ankita: Yeah. Great question. India is always a complicated one. I suffer from this myself. So you can move money from India with, with multiple providers. You can do it with Wise as well. The challenge with India is the purpose for which you are moving the funds. So, Indian regulation deems that you can only move funds abroad for a few reasons. One is medical expenses, tuition, and there’s a third one, which I can’t remember, but basically very specific use cases for which you can move money abroad. And if you’re not moving money abroad for those reasons, the limits become much lower. So essentially it’s harder to get money out of India. It’s much easy to send money to India. So it’s just something to think about. You do get into quite a lot of like verification and documentation with anyone, even if you’re doing this through a bank. If you’re sending money from India,
Hugo: Somebody asks, how do you upload money to Wise?
Ankita: Oh, great. Very simple. You, let’s say you opened a, make it up, Canadian Dollar Balance. Let’s say I lived in Canada. You would essentially have a little Canadian dollar bucket and you click on it and you say, add money. And all you would do is add money to that account using various payment methods. So in Canada, maybe you have interact or you’d have a local bank account or you can use a card to top it up.
Other things that you can also do, depending on your use case. So let’s say I’m only holding US dollars, for example, and I want to hold pounds. So what I can do is I can actually just go into my US dollar balance and I can say convert and it will convert all of that money into pounds for me.
And that will be very similar to what you would do if you were sending to GBP. It’s a, it’s the same process, it’s just that it’s in your account and it’s to yourself. So switching money into different currencies becomes really simple and it’s just a click. But yeah, so you can add money. You can convert money and and then from this account you can spend that money using a card or you can send it on somewhere else.
Hugo: Nice. Somebody asks whether sort of is there a maximum amount you can transfer using Wise?
Ankita: You know, that’s a very, very good question. It’s gonna be complicated to answer because there are limits depending on which currency you’re sending. And that is usually dictated by the regulation in the local market. So some countries will be limitless. Some countries will be much stricter about how much you can send in and out.
It’s very easy though, with most providers, what they will do is as you’re sort of entering the amount that you wanna send, if you hit a limit, they’ll tell you and they’ll tell you why. So it might be like, Hey, you can only send up to, I don’t know, 50,000 and here’s why. So we, I think generally people try to do the work for you so that you’re not having to Google all the limits of the world. So yeah, but it, it is something that’s, that’s harder to sort of give a broad statement on.
Hugo: Somebody else is sending money internationally a taxable event covered that a little bit. I guess it varies, but it shouldn’t be, should it?
Ankita: Yeah. It shouldn’t be taxable, just the transferring it. No. So it’s, it’s not taxable if like for example, I am just sending money to. An account that I own and I’m gonna be using that money for, for my purposes, when these things start to become taxable again, is typically when it’s income.
So that’s the thing that you need to think about. And that’s where it becomes important to get a tax advisor because you might have received that money in one currency and that’s fine, but it’s, it’s still classified as income and it’s still taxable. You might then send it on to another country in another currency.
The question then becomes, which part is taxable? Was it taxable at the start when you got it as as income, or is it taxable now that you’ve brought it into this new country? My view is it’s only taxable at the first point, but again, depending on where you are. It’s good to check those things, especially if you are a US citizen. Just to avoid double taxation, but generally sending transfers here and there, if you know it’s assets that you already hold, you should not be taxed. The taxation events typically happen when you’re liquidating an asset. Property sales, like it’s, it’s all related to income.
Hugo: Yeah. It’s the event, it’s not the transfer. I think Americans of course have, you know, potentially if they’re residents in a tax resident in another country, they may have to file or report their income in, in both the country where they live and in the US yes. But it’s not the act of transferring it that’s gonna make a difference. It’s where the monies come from.
Ankita: Correct.
Hugo: Somebody says, does the exchange rate improve for larger sums transferred in Wise?
Ankita: Great question. So the exchange rate will never improve. The exchange rate is always fair. So whether you’re sending $10 or $10,000, the exchange rate will always remain the same. What we do offer though is we call it like tiered fees, or for lack of better words, it’s discounted fees. So if you are sending very large amounts, you our, our fee doesn’t scale in a, in a linear way depending on the size that you’re sending. So it will be lower, and we will give you a discount for that.
The reason we do that is because to be really transparent, and maybe this is a bit technical, but with our fees, there’s gonna be a part whether you’re sending $5 or $500,000. There’s a part of it that’s always the same. The fee is always the same, but there’s a part of it that doesn’t scale like you’re making a transaction. So whether it’s small or whether it’s big, it shouldn’t matter. So that part of it is what you get discounted to ensure that, hey, we’re not overcharging you, because that wouldn’t be very nice.
Hugo: Okay, thanks. This is quite a personal question which would be, I think, interesting. Somebody sent $3,000 from a Wise account to a US Chase account. They mistyped a digit in the recipient bank account. Oh no. The transaction went to the, to somebody else’s account. Chase says, Wise to investigate? Wise hasn’t received a response? What should they do? How can they get that resolved?
Ankita: Yeah, that’s very sad. I’m sorry to hear that. And you know, these, these are things that, that do happen. And particularly in the US where we don’t have something called confirmation of payee where we can actually determine, like say, Hey, are you sending to this person? Are you sure? Like, we don’t have the access to do that, so I’m sorry about that.
Honestly, what I would do, the typically the way Wise handles this is we do have cases where we get in touch with the bank. There the it’s, it’s common. So you, you won’t be the only one. And we do have to wait till the case is actually resolved before we can actually do anything. I think there is a certain amount of time though that you should expect a response in.
So honestly, if you have not heard back, you know me, you can find me. So I would just say like, reach out, maybe I’ll, I’ll share my details or something like that and we can see what we can do. But yeah, I’m really sorry to hear that that happened. That’s very frustrating.
Hugo: Thanks. Somebody else, can you use your Wise account to transfer and pay estimated tax to the IRS from abroad?
Ankita: Yeah, you can. We have a lot of customers who do that. And we also have customers who use their, so the product where I was talking about where you have like US local account details, you’ll also get your IRS refund. If you are due one will come into your Wise account as well, so you can link that up.
Hugo: Nice. Does Wise pay interest on funds held in a Wise account?
Ankita: Aha, great question. And some of you may have seen that in my video. We do, it is a slightly different product depending on where you live, which is why I didn’t, I didn’t really wanna get into it ’cause it’s not the most relevant maybe for like moving your money abroad and things like that. But since you have asked the question, we offer different products in the US we offer a, a product that would be very similar to something that you get in a Wealthfront or, you know, it’s a high yield savings account. But what we do is we just put it on your USD balance.
So the money is not we, we don’t lock it in. You can still spend it, you can still send it whenever you want, so you have access to it at all times. And yeah, you get a, a, a rate, it’s transparent, it’s on there and you can just use it as a regular, think of it as a, a good rate, but on a regular checking account. That’s the way I would describe it.
In the UK we have a slightly different product and it’s a little bit more complicated in the UK where I think it is actually a money market fund using BlackRock where your funds are actually invested. So it is actually like a bit, you know, the money at risk is still a thing there, where it’s not just a sort of a regular interest product where you’re getting a certain amount every month. Your money is actually being invested.
So, you can read about those things on our website to get into the technicalities of it, but we do offer interest products in the UK, in Europe, in the. I think in Singapore as well. It’s a fairly newer product, so it’s not launched everywhere. But do take a look and see if you can take advantage of it.
Hugo: Nice. Somebody else? Can I open a Wise account in Japan?
Ankita: You can. I know that I, I launched that product there. I dunno why I had to think about that, but yes you can.
Hugo: Somebody that says they have a Euro denominated account in a Canadian bank, could they open a Wise account and transfer from their Euro denominated account in Canada straight into a Euros in Wise without being converted through Canadian dollars?
Ankita: Yes you can. The way that this works is this is what we call like global currencies. So, you know, the traditional systems of sending USD or Euro to like a bank in Hong Kong or a bank in China, you’ll have like USD denominated accounts. So in this case, you have a Euro denominated account. It would be exactly through the same flow. You would just need to tell us how you’re sending the money, where you’re sending it. But yeah, our systems are capable of understanding where the money’s coming from and how to treat it.
Hugo: Thanks. Just trying to a few more of these questions. If you start a Wise account when you’re in the US then you move abroad, can you switch to a, an address in a different country?
Ankita: Yeah, you can change your address. We might just ask you a couple of questions just to make sure you’re still, you are who you are. But yes, you can.
Hugo: What about joint accounts?
Ankita: No. Yes. Joint account. Our favorite question. It is our biggest feature request from our customers to have a joint account. So, we are finally starting to work on it. We’re not there yet, but it’s coming.
Hugo: That’s in, in the pipeline.
Ankita: Mm-hmm.
Hugo: Somebody says, is there an email address to contact Wise customer service for if they have more questions?
Ankita: If there is, and I should know this off the top of my head, so that’s bad that I don’t know it, but I wanna say support@wise.com, but give me one second. Make sure that’s. Yes, I think it is. So yeah, you can use that email address to find out. But also just go on our website as well. You can I, I’d say probably the quicker thing to do is also you can just that we have chats as well, so we have a phone number, you can pick up the phone. We’ve got chats, we’ve got emails. So whatever you think is the best channel for you that you can contact us.
Hugo: Thanks. Somebody else, do you, does Wise charge to if, if you put money into your account? If you just, yeah. Yeah. Is there charge when you just put money into your account for the first time?
Ankita: In some currencies, yes, there is. In a lot of the currencies, it’s free, so it depends on which currency you’re sending. Transparently for USD, we do charge you. Which it annoys me too. The reason we have that is because of everything here is done through ACH where you connect an account. And that’s a, that’s actually quite expensive to do, so that, that’s a reason why there’s a fee. But in other markets where you’ve got local bank transfers, like in the UK, topping up your account is free.
Hugo: Nice. Somebody else, can they receive Social Security benefits directly into Wise? I think you can into, yeah. Make sense?
Ankita: Yeah. You can,
Hugo: Somebody can, somebody, can you accept a payment via a credit card from somebody else into a Wise account?
Ankita: You can In the UK. Yes.
Hugo: Okay. So kinda local rules in different countries sometimes that affect?
Ankita: Yeah, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a different product. It’s a payment facilitator product where you can essentially allow customers to pay you via credit card and that money will enter your Wise account. It’s typically used for businesses and merchants. So that product has been launched in the UK. It is being rolled out to other markets. We are, it’s a, it’s, I, it’s not entirely in beta mode, but it’s the UK is our first market where we’ve launched it.
Hugo: Fantastic. Thank you. There are a lot more questions here, but we are on the hour. Have you got another couple of minutes questions?
Ankita: Yeah, sure.
Hugo: Thanks. Are there any limitations, any money between the US and Mexico?
Ankita: Are there any limitations? I mean, there will be limits. So I don’t have the limits off the top of my head, but there will be like limits to the amounts that you can send. So do just have a look at those online. I think the big, thing call out from Mexico is some providers, for example, like Remitly, which is a, a big provider for that route here, they will, I believe, allow you to do cash pickup in Mexico. Wise does not offer cash pickups. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t use Wise for that. But but yeah, you can send to Mexico, there’s just certain payment methods that you might be, wanna pay a bit more attention to.
Hugo: Is it possible to set up a, a regular transfer form or to a bank account in Wise? Like a recurring, I guess a recurring payments or,
Ankita: Oh yes, yes. We call, yeah, we should actually call them recurring payments. Why don’t we do that? We call them scheduled payments or something wonky like that. But but yes, you can.
Hugo: And that could be a payment both into the account or from the account. Yeah, I guess, yeah. I guess if it was into the account, you’d set it up at where the, where the was coming from. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. And I think a lot of these are things we’ve covered. People ask sort of where they can see the, the con, conversion rates and things, the exchange rates. So I guess you’d go onto the WISE website and, and yeah.
Ankita: Yeah, we actually have like a, a, well if you wanna see, you know, if you wanna see fees and things like that, I would encourage you to look, look at any sort of, you can go on Wise, you can put it in the calculator and you can see fees. But if you wanna see just, you know, exchange rates in particular, I think the best thing to do is I’m gonna pop this page into the chat. It’s, it’s just called the currency converter. I find this really handy. It’s a very generic page, but it’s just so helpful and like being able to understand what an exchange rate is and being able to track it and all of that. So it’s just a very good tool to have at your disposal.
Hugo: Fantastic. Thank you. I’m just, I thought there was one last one. Yeah, I think this just wants to finish off. Can you print reports from your account for, for example, the US tax year, perhaps somebody’s receiving income into it. Is, Is there a way to kind of create a statement or report?
Ankita: Yeah so, if you hold money with Wise, we have a whole like documents section. So you can have, you’ll find your statements there. If you do have any sort of interest income or anything like that, you will also find all of those like tax reports or anything else that you might need in there. And if there’s something super specific that you need, again, like please do, just reach out and, more than happy to, you know, our, our support teams can help you with any of those queries that you have.
Conference Conclusion
Hugo: Fantastic. Well, Ankita, thank you very much for taking the time, joining us, telling us about Wise. I know from firsthand experience it’s a great way to transfer money internationally in terms of compared to compared to regular banks. It’s huge, you know, savings. And yeah, if head over to wise.com to find out more. There are a couple of links in the chat that you might wanna grab before, before we finish.
And our next talk starting in just under an hour is on tax savings strategies for US expats in 2025. So if you haven’t already registered, head over to usexpatconference.com and otherwise, thank you all very much for joining us and thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Ankita: Thank you so much.