Podcast: Jevgenijs Kazanins

I spoke with ⁠Jevgenijs Kazanins⁠ about Wise plc, exploring his thesis that Wise is realising what global banks like Citi, JP Morgan and HSBC have long promised but never delivered: a seamless global platform capable of serving customers locally in every market, through a single sign-up, no matter where they first onboard. Actually, we spent an embarrassingly long time discussing my concerns about Wise before I finally grasped what he was saying!

Jev's Substack ⁠PopularFintech⁠ is a great place to stay abreast of what's happening in Fintech, particularly the convergence of payments companies into software and vice versa. I highly recommend it because the breadth of his coverage allows him to see the wood for the trees.

Jev also posts regularly on X ⁠@jevgenijs⁠.

You can read the transcript below or listen to our conversation on Apple Podcasts (link), Spotify (link) or wherever you get your podcasts.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity:

Graham Rhodes: Welcome to the Long River Podcast. I’m Graham Rhodes, and I’m delighted to be joined today by my friend Jev, author of the excellent Substack Popular FinTech. Jev is a father of three, has a demanding day job, and yet somehow manages to cover more FinTech companies—both in breadth and depth—than most full-time analysts I know. Jev, it’s such a pleasure to speak with you today. A very warm welcome to the podcast.

Jevghenis Kazanins: Thanks, Graham. Pleasure to be here—really excited for the conversation.

Awesome. So we’re going to talk about Wise, which is a company we’ve been corresponding on and sharing notes about for a while. But before we dive in, I’d love for you to tell us a bit more about yourself. What’s your background?

Sure. I’m a Latvian living in Estonia, working for a British bank, and I mostly write about American FinTech companies. So I tend to confuse everyone I meet. My background is in financial services. Back in 2013, my startup failed—and interestingly, there’s a connection to Wise in that story.

After the startup didn’t work out, I got introduced to a peer-to-peer lending platform. If you remember, those were the golden days—people thought peer-to-peer lending was the next trillion-dollar opportunity. We were essentially building the European version of what LendingClub was doing in the US.

Through a series of coincidences, I ended up in banking. I’ve done things like rebuilding payments infrastructure, selecting card schemes, migrating large card portfolios, building corporate liquidity management systems, and so on. Currently, I’m working at a British bank with B2C roots where we’re trying to launch a new current account in the UK. It was the first such product to launch since Chase, so it’s a great company to be part of.

Writing about FinTech is my hobby. I’ve always written in some form, but in 2021—when FinTech was hot—I felt there was just too much nonsense online about the magical capabilities of these companies. So I decided to step in and explain how things actually work. When I talk about payments, cards, or even corporate treasury, it’s informed by my day job. Through my writing, I aim to explain what FinTech companies are actually doing and how they’re disrupting traditional models.

Wise is a great example of that—it's a company that’s reengineering services that do exist, but exist in such poor quality that there's a real business opportunity.

One of the best things about your blog is the breadth and depth of coverage. That’s so important in FinTech, because no matter which companies or geographies we’re talking about, there’s this convergence: once you have the customer and an account balance in your ecosystem, everyone wants to offer everything. Your writing connects those dots better than anyone I’ve seen. Kudos to you—and I’d highly recommend everyone check it out.

Now, let’s turn to Wise. This isn’t going to be a basic primer—there are plenty of those out there—but to set the scene, can you give us a ten-second overview of what Wise is and what it does?

Sure. Wise started as a way for people to move money across borders. There’s a long story there. I actually met the founders early on—my startup and theirs were in the same Seedcamp batch in the UK. So I saw some of their earliest pitches, where they described matching people sending currencies in opposite directions. The idea was to revolutionise cross-border payments.

As we now know, it didn’t quite work like that—money typically flows one way. But fast forward to today: their official pitch is that they offer the best way to move and manage the world’s money.

The way I frame it is this: Wise is building a global bank—with the important caveat that it’s not a bank, and doesn’t want to be. That distinction matters. First, global speaks to the type of customer they serve—people who really need a solution like Wise. Second, not being a bank means they don’t lend, which is typically the primary income source for traditional banks via net interest margin. So if you’re not doing lending, what can you do?

Back to the pitch: they’re building a global bank without being a bank. And in our early conversations, I framed it as: they’re building the modern-day Citi.

That’s a great line. Can you unpack that a bit? There are two distinct pieces in what you said—moving money and managing money. Tell us more. And also, expand on what you mean by “the modern-day Citi.”

Let’s start with Citi. Citi built something unique: a bank that’s genuinely hard to replicate. A few others have done something similar—JP Morgan, HSBC, Deutsche Bank—but Citi’s model was to follow its corporate clients into every country, establish a local bank, and connect to local payment rails.

That meant they could serve large corporates globally: “Need an account in the US? We’ve got it. In the UK? We’ve got it. Across Asia? We’ve got those too.” Around that, they offered services like FX—always a highly profitable line—local collections and payments, money storage, and cross-border transfers. Corporates have very complex cash management needs, and Citi built an unparalleled network to serve them. It’s often referred to as the jewel of their business.

Where Citi fell short, and where I think Wise is succeeding, is in taking all that infrastructure—the legal entities, licences, account-opening capabilities, local payment connectivity—and offering it to customers who aren’t large corporates. Think consumers. Think SMEs.

Citi never really cracked those segments. In fact, they’ve largely exited consumer banking outside the US, sometimes at considerable losses. And they never did anything meaningful in SME banking either.

Wise, by contrast, is doing something very similar under the hood: getting licences across the globe (I think the last count was 70+), connecting to local payment systems, enabling payments in a wide range of currencies. But they’ve built everything from scratch on a modern platform, which allows them to serve consumers and SMEs efficiently.

Yes, they started with consumers—maybe because it was easier, or maybe SMEs weren’t in the initial plan. But today, their platform and operations are allowing them to bring the benefits of that infrastructure to segments that didn’t have access to it before.

Yeah. Let me try to repeat that back just to make sure I’ve got it right. So we start with two guys in an incubator in London pitching a peer-to-peer product. Somehow, it finds product–market fit, it takes off, and they generate enough volume to begin applying for and obtaining regulatory licences around the world.

They now have this global network—pools of liquidity in different places, a lot like Citi. But they’ve built it in the internet age, where the cost to serve consumers is low enough to make it economically viable. And what you’re saying is: that’s a wonderful thing. It becomes a flywheel, and now they’re trying to expand upwards into serving SMEs, maybe large enterprises, and—though we haven’t touched on it yet—other financial institutions as well. Is that right?

That’s correct.

Okay. But what is Wise exactly? Because most people know it as a B2C app. That’s where its roots are—that’s where the brand recognition is strongest. And now it’s trying to become an SME platform. But I think what’s really captured the attention and imagination of the market is its B2B service, where it provides white-label infrastructure for large financial institutions.

And do you see a tension there? Can it be both? Or will it eventually have to choose a direction?

It’s a great question, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Let’s talk about the evolution. During their investor day earlier this year, they showed a slide mapping how they’re moving from serving micro-businesses—because "SME" covers a broad range, right?—all the way up to larger businesses. You’re talking about everything from sole proprietors to companies with 100 employees. And as companies scale, their financial needs and internal processes become increasingly complex.

They talked a lot about workflows. This is a pretty well-established concept in B2B payments. Someone once put it really well: business payments are less about the payments and more about the workflows. The larger the business, the more people get involved in a single payment—approvals, reconciliations, booking entries, and so on.

Right now, Wise’s business account is quite simple. You can generate basic statements, and the UI is familiar, almost consumer-like. You can receive money with QR codes or payment links. But they’re expanding from there. They’ve added payment acceptance, batch payments, and on the roadmap are more complex functionalities.

Because if you look at the enterprise end of the spectrum, corporates don’t use internet banking to make payments. They integrate their banks into their ERP systems, and payments are handled through that interface—often with multiple banks.

So Wise’s move into SME banking is a natural progression. Micro-businesses are very similar to consumers—I'm a good example. I run a small business by myself, and Wise works perfectly for my needs. Now they’re expanding into the commercial segment. That’s where things like lending, treasury management, and more tailored solutions come in. Eventually, you’re getting into corporate banking territory.

So the way I see it: Wise is building for SMEs now, but the platform is how they’ll serve commercial and even corporate clients later on. It’s not two different segments—it’s the same infrastructure scaling up. The key difference is how those customers interact with banking services. And Wise can absolutely grow into that.

Maybe I need to reframe the question a bit and give some additional context.

So, what Wise has done is create a way to move money around the world using local pools of liquidity—rather than relying on the traditional correspondent banking network. That means they can offset a debit in, say, the US with a credit in the UK, so the money actually moves locally on both sides, rather than crossing borders. That infrastructure allows them to offer FX and remittances at very low cost—and they pass those savings on to the customer through low pricing.

And yes, I understand how that same infrastructure can serve consumers, small businesses, larger enterprises, and even financial institutions. That part makes perfect sense.

I suppose what I’m getting at is more about Wise’s identity—how people think about the company, and more concretely, what its product roadmap looks like. Because, as you said, the larger the customer, the more complex the needs become.

As they move into SMEs, they’re competing with players like Airwallex. If they offer platform services, they’re up against Currencycloud—or even JP Morgan and Citi. And on the consumer side, the more they bundle services around FX, the more they start to resemble Revolut, which monetises consumer balances in all kinds of ways.

So my question is: is there an identity crisis here? Can Wise really do everything? Or do they need to focus on one thing and do that exceptionally well? Or is the infrastructure itself the thing they’re doing?

Yeah, and this brings me back to how we define or frame Wise. When I say “global bank,” the word global is doing a lot of work here.

You mentioned Revolut, and in some ways, they’re attempting something similar—building a presence in multiple countries. They have a strong footprint in the UK and across continental Europe, and they’re trying to expand into Latin America, the US, Asia, Australia—basically, they’re trying to build a global bank.

But Wise is different in that their focus is on companies that actually need global infrastructure. If you think about a typical small business, many are purely local. Their clients are local, they get paid in the local currency, and their suppliers are local too. For them, there’s no major pain point when their bank charges high fees for cross-border payments, because they might do one international transfer a month—or even less.

It’s the same with consumers. Most people don’t have global financial needs. They receive their salary and spend it locally. Maybe they travel once or twice a year, and their card works fine for that.

Using Wise helps you understand how they’re different. They don’t just give you a multicurrency wallet—they create local accounts for you. They started as an occasional-use service—say you’re paying a child’s tuition abroad once a month. You’d log in, make the transfer, and leave.

But they’ve evolved into something much more: a global account. For businesses that operate in multiple geographies and collect money across borders, this becomes invaluable.

That’s the fundamental difference. Revolut might operate across countries, but you’re still getting one account—a multicurrency account with, say, a German, Lithuanian, or Spanish IBAN. With Wise, you get local account details in different countries. You can genuinely act as a local in the US, the UK, Europe, and more.

Even their product roadmap reflects this: multicurrency cards, local accounts, domestic payments. It’s not about trying to serve everyone—it’s about serving the people and businesses who need this kind of infrastructure. That focus gives the company its direction.

They can serve global-minded consumers, micro-businesses, and SMEs. They’re building toward serving corporates, and corporates typically consume banking services via API. So, through the platform, Wise can serve that segment too.

So to return to your earlier point—whether there’s an identity crisis—I’d say no. It may look like they’re doing a lot, but it’s all in service of one clear mission: building for people and companies with global financial needs. That’s why I find them so compelling. There’s a clear roadmap here—something that could take decades to fully realise.

Got it.

Let me then ask a practical question. Selling to enterprises is very different from attracting consumers. Does Wise have the sales team and sales machine they need to realise that vision?

Good question. First, let’s talk about how corporates consume banking.

Large enterprises usually work with multiple banks. Not just because they operate globally, but also because of internal risk policies. They don’t want all their money with one provider, so they diversify across banks and geographies.

There’s also a lending component—corporates often get credit lines secured against their total cash balances. To do that, the lender needs visibility into the group’s liquidity across all subsidiaries and accounts. That’s where corporate liquidity management solutions come in. The idea is to aggregate and monitor balances across multiple accounts, banks, and countries.

So what happens is: corporates issue RFPs, define the services they need in each geography, and invite banks to compete. That’s a long process. Once a bank is chosen, they typically integrate with the corporate’s ERP system. This handles approval workflows, and helps consolidate reporting and visibility for treasury.

That’s where the platform comes in—it’s Wise’s entry point into that world. But it’s important to separate Wise for end-users (consumers and SMEs) from Wise Platform. They’re two different things.

For corporates, one route is via partnerships—like with Standard Chartered. Standard Chartered can offer Wise infrastructure as part of their own suite. Under the hood, it’s still a Wise account. The customer may never even know that.

Or, if you’re talking about Wise Platform directly, then corporates can integrate it into their banking stack—just like they would with any other infrastructure provider.

So in terms of product, the infrastructure is already there—or very nearly there. They’ve got the API layer, regulatory licences, and connectivity. But yes, you’re absolutely right—they’ll need to build out a dedicated enterprise sales function.

Selling to corporates is a totally different skillset. It has nothing to do with SMEs or consumers. You need boots on the ground. You need people who can manage RFPs, develop deep relationships, navigate long sales cycles.

But I see that as a natural evolution. There’s nothing wrong with needing to build that muscle.

The parallel that comes to mind—and this is outside FinTech—is Google Cloud.

Google was one of the first companies to really understand the power of distributed computing. Internally, they did it brilliantly. Then they tried to package those capabilities and sell to enterprises—but at first, it didn’t work.

They assumed that a great product would sell itself, just like Google Search. But it didn’t translate. And it wasn’t until they hired Thomas Kurian from Oracle—someone who really understood enterprise sales—that things started to change. He brought a different culture, a different mindset, and that’s when Google Cloud began to gain real traction.

Wise is in a similar situation. They’ve built a fantastic B2C product that has created the infrastructure. That infrastructure can absolutely support other customer groups.

But the challenge is: can they evolve the culture? Can a company that’s grown up as a B2C success story also become a credible enterprise provider?

Yeah, and that brings us back to the whole idea of consumerization of enterprise. Remember when that was the big trend? I’m not sure it ever really materialised. Your Google Cloud example is perfect. With enterprise clients, you have to sell. There’s no way around it.

Because of internal processes, they can’t just sign up and buy. They need to evaluate multiple vendors. And if they're regulated—especially in banking—they have strict procurement policies. They have to run an RFP, select the best provider, and justify that choice to the regulator to show they've managed vendor risk appropriately.

So yes, Wise will have to build that enterprise-grade go-to-market capability. And particularly for Wise Platform and Wise for Banks, that means building out a full enterprise sales and support function.

Maybe the only advantage Wise has is its global orientation. So they may be able to win mandates centrally—at the group level—rather than having to sell country by country. But even then, there’s no shortcut. Enterprise sales is a full-contact sport.

Yeah. And even when the product is excellent, it’s just the starting point. You still need onboarding support. In many cases, there has to be some level of customisation.

Absolutely. And look at the banks themselves—Citi, JP Morgan. When they talk about investment in their services business, they’re not just referring to infrastructure. They’re referring to people—bankers—out there selling to corporates.

These are proactive sales teams. They don’t sit around waiting for customers to knock on the door. They’re out there pitching, winning RFPs, cultivating relationships. That’s the reality. And Wise will need to build that kind of capability if they haven’t already.

Interesting. And you look at Citi and JP Morgan Chase quite closely—they’re not sitting still either. How do you see Wise competing against firms like those, who can offer a comprehensive bundle of services—lending, treasury, and everything else?

Yeah, they’re definitely improving. All of them are investing heavily. But there’s still a fundamental challenge that puzzles me.

Take Citi as an example. They have this incredible global footprint—local presence in 90+ countries. That’s phenomenal infrastructure. But operationally, it’s still a collection of individual banks. Citi in the US talks to Citi in the UK via SWIFT.

Jane Fraser even gave an example on one of Citi’s earnings calls: if you want to onboard globally with Citi, you still have to go through onboarding country by country. That may be fine for large corporates with local finance teams everywhere—but it’s not ideal.

Citi does offer global liquidity management tools to stitch that network together. But at the infrastructure level, they’re still working on making the network instant.

In theory, transferring funds from Citi US to Citi UK should just be a ledger entry—one debit, one credit. But in practice, that’s not how it works. They're still relying on SWIFT, and settlement happens daily or even less frequently. So money doesn’t really move instantly.

They’re trying to fix that. At their investor day focused on services, they talked a lot about making cross-border flows instant. But they’re not there yet. If I recall correctly, it’s still single-digit or low-teens percentage of transactions that are actually processed in real time.

On the other hand, you’ve got JP Morgan with their Onyx platform. That’s their permissioned blockchain. It’s a real system—more than $2 billion per day moves across it—and its core use case is internal: enabling instant transfers between JP Morgan branches globally.

So back to your question—yes, these big global banks are working on catching up. But Wise started from scratch. No legacy. They built for instant from day one. The banks are still playing catch-up.

In the SME and consumer segments, it’s a bit different. Chase has entered the UK and has publicly said it wants to expand into continental Europe. But even there, it's a different offering. Chase competes more directly with Revolut—serving domestic consumer needs.

They’re not building a global Chase account. So Wise, in that sense, is still quite differentiated.

Tell me how Airwallex overlaps with Wise.

Sure. Airwallex is probably the closest competitor to Wise in the SME space.

Like Wise, they offer global accounts for businesses. And they also move money instantly using a similar strategy—connecting to local payment rails via local partnerships, acting almost like their own correspondent bank. They handle the FX and inter-company balancing themselves, and then settle locally on each side.

That allows them to offer cross-border payments that appear instant to the end-user, just like Wise.

So yes, Airwallex is a direct competitor to Wise, especially in the SME segment. And there are others too—Payoneer, for example, and various regional players across different geographies. But Airwallex is probably the most credible challenger in terms of global infrastructure and product quality.

So how do you think Wise will differentiate itself—or win—in the SME segment, particularly against a company like Airwallex?

I don’t think this is going to be a winner-takes-all market. Especially as companies grow, they tend to use multiple banking partners for different reasons—diversification, regulatory coverage, credit exposure, operational resilience. So I don’t think the end game is that everyone ends up with just Wise. That’s not realistic.

That said, the market is enormous. Wise regularly updates this really useful chart showing the size of the opportunity—how many trillions of pounds are moved annually in cross-border flows. I believe the latest update put it at £14 trillion. Wise is still doing just a fraction of that—peanuts, really. So there's plenty of room to grow.

There will always be competition—on the consumer side, in SMEs, both locally and globally. And of course, the big banks aren’t standing still in the corporate segment either.

Maybe let’s flip the question. We keep coming back to Wise’s infrastructure—how radically different it is from the legacy correspondent banking network, enabling low-cost and near-instant money movement. But is that enough of a differentiation to build a really large, enduring business?

At some point, don’t you run into a ceiling? Beyond the price-sensitive customers who just want cheap FX, you start to encounter customers who want bundled services—lending, treasury, more complexity. Doesn’t that cap the upside?

It’s a great question.

Yes, I agree—the market is still huge. We’re talking about trillions in flows. And remember, to move money, you need funds—you need deposits. That brings in FX, cards, and spend.

So there’s plenty of volume still out there, and I think Wise still has at least a decade of strong growth ahead. But you're right—there are limits.

Wise’s strength is in solving real problems for people and businesses with global needs. That focus is also its constraint. Take my own example: I’m a Wise customer for my small business, but I don’t really need Wise as a consumer. I don’t send money across borders frequently enough to make it worthwhile. Sure, I have an account and a card—but it’s more to see how it works.

So yes, Wise’s positioning is inherently limiting. It’s laser-focused on global users. And then there’s another question: what happens when others—like Revolut or even Chase—start to pursue the same global infrastructure?

Maybe Revolut decides to build local accounts in multiple jurisdictions because that’s what a subset of SMEs want. If global accounts become a key differentiator, others might replicate the model. And eventually, they’ll hit their own growth ceilings and go looking for new segments to target.

So Wise’s focused value proposition is both a blessing and a limitation. But that limitation probably doesn’t bite for a long time. We’re talking decades out.

So, to clarify—you don’t think it’s just the infrastructure that differentiates Wise. You think it’s the customer’s ability to open one Wise account and instantly get access to a portfolio of local accounts around the world, enabling them to operate locally in multiple markets. That’s the key?

Exactly.

And yes, that is infrastructure—but not just the technical side. It’s about having the connectivity to local payment rails, the right banking partners, and the licensing and legal frameworks in place. It’s the ability to actually open local accounts and move money quickly.

Fast payments are a key part of that value proposition. But so is the legal infrastructure—being licensed to open accounts, meeting regulatory obligations, and having the right to operate in each market.

Right, right. And the infrastructure is what connects it all together. Like you were saying before—JP Morgan already has all these local banks around the world, but they don’t talk to each other.

Exactly. That’s the problem.

It’s got to be a huge amount of technical and cultural debt.

Yes—definitely.

Even things like KYC are infrastructure. Onboarding a customer in the UK is completely different from onboarding one in the US. Different data, different documents, different compliance frameworks.

And that’s just on the consumer side. In corporate banking, you might have a whole team of people reviewing documents, doing legal reviews, handling onboarding manually. But in the consumer and SME segments, that approach doesn’t scale. You can’t afford the cost. So you need to build infrastructure that allows you to do global KYC at scale.

That’s what Wise has built.

So I wanted to ask you then—what do you think is Wise’s moat or competitive advantage? If it has one. I guess most people would point to the infrastructure—these local pools of liquidity and everything—but maybe what you’re saying is that actually, it’s a compliance moat?

I think it’s all of this together, right? Because compliance—getting these licences—is not easy. And keeping those licences is not easy either.

Getting the licences, doing the onboarding at scale—such that it satisfies the requirements of each local jurisdiction.

Exactly.

Because you onboard once, right? As a customer, you just open a US account. But under the hood, what that means is Wise has used the data they already had from you, and—when needed—transferred it to their banking partner in order to open the US account. So essentially, they’ve done a second onboarding in the US behind the scenes, using the data they’d previously collected. And if they need more data, they just ask for it in a friendly way during the account opening flow.

So yes—licences are the moat. The ability to do KYC globally is a moat. Connectivity to payment rails is a moat. All of these are layers in a moat that’s extremely difficult to replicate. That’s the point.

We’ve been talking for about 45 minutes, and I’m sorry it’s taken me that long to finally understand what you’ve been arguing! But okay—that’s super interesting. I hadn’t thought about it that way.

Where does it go from here, then? What can they build with this?

They’re building this global account—or global bank.

They’re still building the infrastructure. You probably saw the news that they applied for a national trust licence in the US, right?

Unfortunately, that’s a limitation of how the system works. In many jurisdictions, you have to be a bank to connect to the local payment rails. The US is one of them. For instance, in the UK, Wise can connect directly—the infrastructure is open to non-banks. In Europe, it’s now possible too. A few other countries are similar. But in the US, you need to be a bank to have a master account with the Fed.

So they keep building out this global account. They’re also investing in the US. They’re investing in marketing. I don’t know exactly how they split or allocate that marketing spend across different customer segments, but as we discussed at the beginning—the more complex the customer, the more complex the marketing becomes. And at some point, it blends into sales.

I believe this is an investment they’re already making.

This is what excites me about Wise as an investment. They don’t have to go and discover new markets or look for entirely new opportunities. The opportunity they’re already pursuing—with what they already have—offers a very long runway. It’s essentially: just keep doing what you’re doing. Compete successfully. Because yes, many people will try to go after them—in each segment, in each geography. But the blueprint is there. Now it’s just about execution.

Just to be clear here—the blueprint is adding more markets. Markets like, say, you can open an account in the UK, then the US, maybe Australia, the EU as well. Are you saying they’ll just keep adding more regulatory licences to become an even more global bank?

And more customers.

And more customers.

Jevghenis Kazanins: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Well, I do feel like a bit of an idiot for only getting your thesis so late—but it's a really interesting take. I’ve never heard anyone frame it quite that way—emphasizing the value of a global account as opposed to just the value of cheap cross-border transfers.

It’s way more than that. I believe they don’t want to formulate it that way as a thesis, because they still rely on a lot of banks for infrastructure. But anyway—I believe that’s the real story. They’re building a global bank. And if you have global needs—if you collect money in different currencies, send money in different currencies—then Wise is absolutely your kind of bank.

Think of all the expats living in Europe, with real estate, family, or kids in the UK. Or businesses with clients all over the place. My own business is a good example—my clients aren’t in Estonia. They’re in the US, in the UK—and they want to pay locally.

There’s no other place where you can get that. Where you can get those local accounts.

And the Citi comparison is a great analogy—because that was the most profitable part of Citi.

It is.

Whatever banking franchises they had elsewhere were masking the crown jewel—which was the global network.

Absolutely. Still is, right? Still is. I mean, it’s still what makes Citi… Citi.

And at the moment, [Wise is] monetising in three ways: we’re monetising with the commission on FX, we’re monetising with the net interest, and we’re monetising on interchange every time someone spends using their Wise card.

Do you see them adding more products as well? For example, you keep referring to a bank—are they going to get into lending?

Yeah, exactly. This is very important.

I believe they don’t want to be a bank. And I’ve seen different snippets from various conversations with analysts that suggest Wise doesn’t want to become a bank. But let’s talk about why you’d want to be a bank in the first place.

You want to be a bank to be able to lend your deposits. That’s where a lot of the value—and the risk—comes from. You’re taking short-term deposits and giving out, say, 20-year mortgages. That’s the basic model. It’s a critical function, and that’s why regulators have put a lot of guardrails in place to control how it’s done. But the risk is there.

If you think about it, banks are some of the most leveraged entities in the world. And the only reason people feel safe putting their money there is because of all the protections—deposit insurance, capital requirements, regulatory frameworks, and reporting obligations.

My understanding is that Wise is saying, “Look—we don’t want to be a bank because we don’t want to lend.” They’re happy to help you put your funds into money market funds. There’ll probably be more offerings down the line—like treasuries and other ways to invest idle cash and earn yield. But they won’t take your money and lend it to someone else. They won’t put your funds at risk through credit transformation.

And that means, for them, the only way to earn revenue is through fee-based services. Which banks actually love, because fee services don’t require as much capital, and they’re more profitable on a per-unit basis than lending—again, because lending ties up capital.

Still, even for banks, usually only about 20–30% of revenue comes from non-interest income. The rest is from interest. So Wise is, in a sense, limiting its customer base—to those with global needs—and also limiting its revenue model—to non-interest income.

So as you already mentioned, there’s payments fees, there’s FX, and there’s card spend—those are all monetised. But I think you called it “interest income,” even though they’re not lending.

Yeah—I call it interest income, but I believe over time that will grow into something like asset management. Some form of helping businesses manage their cash—invest idle balances, earn interest, optimise liquidity.

They’re also expanding into accepting payments. Right now, that’s very basic—payment links. But on the roadmap, they’ve shown POS terminals, or some kind of terminal solution, and e-commerce gateways. So acquiring is clearly part of the plan.

They’ve also started to show a lot of software around managing a business. I don’t know if that means they’ll build a full accounting suite—but there’s a lot you can do around business management.

Look at companies like Toast or Square. Their whole businesses are built around payments as the driver, but then they’ve layered a lot of software on top. That’s what I see Wise doing.

They’ve started with the most obvious revenue streams—FX, payments, interchange—and over time, they’ll expand into payment acceptance and software around that.

And again—that’s what I love. The runway is very long.

I just—I’d like to go back to the first question I posed to you, which is about the tension between realising the vision you’ve just described, and frankly, competing with their customers. If everybody’s converging into each other, then Wise won’t just be providing the rails like Visa—it’ll be doing everything.

And I just wonder if there’s some tension there, or some conflict, between what it could achieve and what its customers might want to achieve. Do you know what I mean? Visa’s not trying to also do enterprise resource planning. They’re just providing the rails to connect acquirers and merchants.

No, it’s a good question. I hear you.

But look—take JP Morgan and Citi. They are competing, and they’re also offering infrastructure to other banks. Correspondent banking is a great example of exactly the kind of conflict you’re describing.

Citi competes with many banks—at least in the corporate segment, globally. And yet they’re also one of the largest correspondent banks, helping those same banks with cross-border payments. Because those banks don’t have that kind of infrastructure themselves. And their customers do have that need, maybe not every day, but it’s there.

So it’s already happening. There’s nothing new in that respect. If we think of Wise as a modern Citi, then this kind of channel conflict is already baked into the model.

One of the questions everybody’s wrestling with now is: what do stablecoins mean for Wise? And do they make Wise’s infrastructure advantage redundant?

But maybe the way you’ve framed it is: no. Still, I’d love to hear what you think. What do stablecoins mean for Wise? And I appreciate it’s still very early days.

Yeah. No—it is clearly early days. It’s not that it keeps me up at night, but it’s always on my mind.

There was a question to Kristo on one of their earnings calls—someone asked, “What are you doing with stablecoins?” And his answer was basically: “We’re not doing anything because we don’t believe it helps us achieve our mission.”

And I honestly don’t understand that answer. I assume it’s me who’s missing something. Because I’m more bullish on stablecoins. But I also fully recognise that Kristo understands this business much better than I do. So I keep thinking about it—what am I not seeing?

But as for whether stablecoins replace Wise? No—I don’t think so.

We’ve just talked about how Wise’s infrastructure is multi-layered. It’s not just about moving money from A to B. There are so many layers—licensing, local payment rails, compliance, KYC, account infrastructure, customer experience. So no, stablecoins don’t replace all that.

But I do think stablecoins could still play a role. Not necessarily by giving customers the option to send or receive in stablecoins—but Wise internally using stablecoin infrastructure to move money, or eventually for intercompany settlement.

Because remember, Wise still needs local pools of money in different countries to make their system work.

Say you’re sending money from the UK to the US. What actually happens is that Wise UK acts like a correspondent bank to Wise US—they move money across the ocean, then settle domestically on each side. That kind of internal settlement is costly, because you have to maintain those pools of liquidity.

With stablecoins, maybe you don’t have to do that. Or at least, you can reduce it. Plus, if it’s for internal tooling, there’s no KYC issue—no need for end-user onboarding. So that could be a very real use case.

At least with the remittance part—the onboarding and the offboarding?

Yes.

You could imagine them just using blockchain infrastructure. So back to what I explained—what JP Morgan is trying to do with JPM Coin and Onyx, right? They’re creating this blockchain infrastructure that can be used internally to move money across the ocean—not just make a booking on both sides of the ledger, but actually move the money from one entity to another. And then maybe extend that to corporates as well.

And if people stop on-ramping and off-ramping—if they start holding stablecoins—then the infrastructure would be there. That’s what I don’t fully understand.

I heard someone mention on the Talking List podcast that maybe Wise is saying publicly that they don’t care about stablecoins, but in reality they are building this kind of killer platform behind the scenes.

Yeah, we’ll wait and see. Because I keep thinking: it was the infrastructure that allowed them to get the volumes, which in turn made it economical to build this global network—this global portfolio of licences.

And that’s what enabled them to build the global account product you’ve described.

But if someone can come along and make that economic to do with stablecoins—at much lower scale, or with a much smaller user base—then Wise’s moat seems to deteriorate dramatically.

Yeah. But again—that’s not happening tomorrow.

And secondly, there are still layers and layers to this infrastructure. It’s not just about moving money. It’s about how you do KYC on both sides of the transaction—and not just between the UK and the US, but across the globe.

So I think there’s way more to it than just “using stablecoins to move money.”

Yeah, I agree. Why do you think Visa is getting so behind this?

That goes back to one of your earlier questions: why not just be Visa? Why not avoid competing with customers and just be a pure infrastructure provider?

And that’s exactly the concern some investors have. If you are an infrastructure play, and along comes a new kind of infrastructure—then maybe your business is at risk.

At least in my head, that’s how I see it. Stablecoins might pose a bigger threat to companies like Visa and Mastercard than to a company like Wise—because Wise is much more than just a rail.

Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point.

Okay—in the interest of time, let me close with this: is there anything we haven’t talked about—about Wise or the broader space—that you think is worth raising?

Yeah, I think we haven’t touched on one thing—and one company—that always needs to be mentioned when we talk about payments, and that’s Stripe.

And there are a few angles here. First of all, I think Stripe is a generational business. It’s an amazing company. There are very few companies that can match their ambition. But if you think about what they’re doing, they’re also moving into global accounts, right?

They’re, of course, a vessel for stablecoins, and they’re also moving heavily into software. For example: billing. Software that helps you calculate how much to charge your customers. That’s a big business. They’ve said it’s running at a $500 million run rate or so.

But I look at it even more broadly—not just, “What if Stripe does this?” or “What if Google does that?” It’s bigger than that. There’s this underlying thesis: that small businesses in the future won’t buy financial services from banks. Instead, financial services will be embedded into the software they already use to run their business.

That’s the story of Toast. That’s partly the story of Square. That’s Shopify. And so on.

Payments are a commodity—what gets people to stay is the services you provide around the payments.

Exactly. Or even more than that: these platforms know more about your business than your bank ever could.

Your bank just sees the incoming payments from your acquirer. The acquirer actually knows what you sold. And if it’s Shopify, then Shopify knows even more than the acquirer. They know exactly what you sold—down to the SKU level.

So they’re in a much better position to serve you. At the very least, with lending. Definitely with payments. They know your suppliers. They know your customers. They know what currencies you’re getting paid in. They can even offer FX.

So yeah, there’s this broader idea that financial services will be consumed through software platforms.

And the second dimension I think about is this: think of two basic functions—earning money and storing money.

So if you’re a Shopify merchant, you earn money into Shopify. Then what happens? You transfer that money out to a bank account. From there, you pay your bills, your employees, your taxes, and so on.

But here’s the question: why move the money out at all?

If you’re already using Stripe to collect from customers, why not stay in Stripe? Why not just pay bills and salaries from Stripe—why does the money have to leave?

Same with Shopify. Why move the funds when you could manage everything from within the same platform?

That’s a real question. And I think it poses a risk to companies like Wise. Which is why I believe they’re extending their offering—not just as a new revenue stream, but as a way to participate in this convergence.

They’re helping customers collect payments, they’re building software around that—because it’s no longer just about moving money. It’s about playing a role across the entire flow: collecting, storing, spending.

I guess the answer would be: a traditional bank still offers a bundle of services that are useful to small businesses. Your deposits are insured. You can earn interest on them.

But Shopify already offers you an FDIC-insured account, with a high yield—higher than most banks. Bill pay, cards, interest-bearing savings, lending—it’s all already there. And with better UX. And it’s all automatic—sweeping funds from sales into savings, into treasury.

So in many ways, they already do everything that a traditional bank does.

So what’s left? Maybe a bit of inertia, a bit of habit. But practically—objectively—for many small businesses, there’s no longer a strong reason to move the money out of Shopify.

Or—and this is the point I was making earlier—when you look at this in its entirety, once you have a customer, once you have their money—their liquidity—it’s actually not that hard…

And I say this tongue-in-cheek—it’s obviously very hard—but there’s nothing stopping you from adding more products to monetise that liquidity in more and more ways, and to add more and more value and convenience for the customer while they’re with you.

Which is why I think a lot of the businesses you cover are starting to converge—offering similar services and competing with each other.

Exactly.

So think about what’s happening: the acquirers—or PSPs like Stripe and Shopify—they’re moving downstream, closer to the account, right? And then what Wise is doing is moving upstream—helping customers collect payments as well.

With payment links, the upcoming gateway, the point-of-sale terminals—all of that. Because eventually, this becomes one thing. You don’t need two companies to help you with that.

One thing—right. But that goes back to the question: are they better off trying to compete with Stripe? Or are they better off trying to be the infrastructure champion and just doing one thing?

It’s absolutely a race, right?

Stripe is not there yet. People don’t really hold money with Stripe—not meaningfully. They’ve only just launched global accounts. They’re only now entering that part of the race.

But Wise already has the accounts. They already sit on part of the payment flow, and now they’re building upstream too.

So yeah—it’s a very exciting race.

And it was interesting—the CEO of Airwallex disclosed that Stripe tried to buy his company. I think it was when it was less than a year old. So they must have had this vision even back then.

Yeah. I think this is a very exciting trend. It’s going to be a really exciting battle.

Stripe will become a competitor to more and more companies—more banks, more software businesses, more payment providers. They’re going to keep expanding.

Okay. What do you think the US listing means for Wise?

Look, Wise is present in the US through an ADR, right? But ADRs—as I understand it—aren’t available on Robinhood.

And Robinhood is becoming the brokerage. I mean—not seriously, but seriously. What’s going to stop Robinhood, or Schwab, or others? They started with traders because that’s where the money is, but they’re going to go all the way to people who just want to passively invest.

So that’s an example of what ADRs are. For people like you and me—yeah, we use advanced brokerages. We can buy ADRs. But for most people, they’re typically not available.

So I think we can expect Wise to get a lot more attention in the US once it’s directly listed. It’ll start appearing on people’s screens on Robinhood.

Yep.

I think it’s a great thing. It’s a loss for the UK, but overall, I think it’s a good thing.

I think Wise is an anomaly in the sense that Kristo has built this very thrifty culture. And you just look at how much equity he still owns in the business, for example. They really bootstrapped—and have consistently been profitable.

And that can be a good thing, but it can also be a disadvantage when you’re competing against companies with a very different view of financing—venture-backed players who want to take over the world, fast.

So the fact that we still talk about Wise trading on a PE multiple, rather than a PS multiple, is going to be a really interesting dynamic.

Oh, I agree with you. But it’s clearly a generational company, and I really admire what they’ve done.

Of course, it all starts with the founders—and with Kristo now acting as CEO. It’s absolutely an exception. There are very few of these outliers out there. Companies that are building something fundamentally revolutionary—and that have figured out how to do it with discipline, and with an endless runway ahead.

I love every FinTech company I write about. But for many of them, you can see where the ceiling is—where the runway might end. And your investment is essentially a bet that they’ll figure out what comes next.

With Wise, you don’t have to make that bet. You can just let them keep doing what they’re already doing. And they’ve shown they can do it well—and profitably. That’s why they’re the exception.

Cool. Let’s wrap it up there. How can people find you if they’d like to learn more?

Sure. I’m very active on Twitter, but my Twitter handle is just my first name—so it’s impossible to remember or pronounce! It’s easier to find me through my newsletter, which is popularfintech.com.

Okay, and I’ll share your handle and a link to your Substack in the show notes. Jeb, it’s been fantastic to speak with you today. Thank you so much for making the time in your busy schedule—I really appreciate it.

Thanks a lot, Graham, for inviting me. It was a great conversation—and great to hear some pushback on my thesis too.