Banks trying to improve cross-border payments face a choice that is becoming more consequential as domestic instant-payment systems raise customer expectations. They can continue improving their own correspondent networks, connect to emerging payment infrastructures or use specialist providers that have already assembled direct access to domestic clearing systems.

Wise Platform is positioning itself increasingly within that infrastructure decision. Wise processed $243 billion in cross-border volume in the financial year ended 31 March 2026 and served about 19 million people and businesses. In the first quarter of its 2027 financial year, 77% of Wise payments arrived in under 20 seconds.

Samarth Bansal, General Manager for Asia Pacific at Wise Platform, said Wise has direct clearing access to nine payment schemes. For Bansal, the proposition is not simply that banks can outsource cheaper international payments. He said direct clearing removes intermediaries from individual payment chains, giving banks a way to reproduce more of the speed, predictability and transparency customers increasingly expect from domestic payments.

The strategic question is whether banks that initially use Wise for selected customer segments or currency corridors will eventually treat that connectivity as part of their wider cross-border payments architecture.

Direct clearing changes the payment chain

Bansal identified direct access to clearing systems as one of Wise Platform’s most important differentiators.

Instead of passing a transaction through successive correspondent institutions before reaching the domestic payment system, Wise can directly instruct payments through clearing systems where it is a participant. That reduces the number of intermediaries involved and, in Bansal’s view, lowers the opportunities for payments to be delayed or fail. “There is no other hop. There is no other intermediary,” he said.

Wise currently reports direct access to domestic payment systems in nine markets and more than 99% straight-through processing across transfers. It also provides 24-hour foreign-exchange coverage through more than 50 local liquidity partners.

The significance for banks extends beyond transaction cost. As cross-border payments become faster, the operating model supporting them also has to change.

Traditional payment operations were designed around cut-off times and batch processing, with exceptions that could be investigated manually. An always-on environment reduces the time available for those interventions.

Bansal said banks needed their operations, liquidity management and compliance processes to work at the same speed. He added that adapting the operating model had taken some banks longer than others.

That distinction matters. Making the payment rail instantaneous does not make the complete payment process instantaneous if compliance checks, liquidity management or exception handling remain dependent on slower operating processes.

Banks are expanding from corridors to relationships

Wise Platform’s opportunity therefore depends partly on whether good performance in a limited deployment persuades banks to extend the infrastructure across more currencies, customer segments and markets.

Bansal described a pattern in which banks initially deploy Wise for retail customers or a small number of currency corridors and then broaden the relationship after observing payment speed, success rates and customer experience.

Standard Chartered provides one example. The bank announced its Wise Platform partnership in November 2024 to support SC Remit across Asia and the Middle East. The initial proposition covered 21 currencies and was designed to expand into additional currencies and markets.

The progression is important to Wise’s institutional proposition. A provider used for a handful of corridors remains one component in a bank’s payment stack. A provider subsequently extended across retail, small and medium-sized enterprise customers, currencies and markets begins to occupy a more strategic position in the bank’s cross-border architecture.

Bansal said banks want evidence that payments are becoming faster, success rates are improving and customer experience is improving before broadening their use of Wise. Once Wise demonstrates those outcomes, he said, some partners increasingly look to it for guidance on developments across cross-border payments.

AI is being applied behind the transaction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also beginning to change the economics of the operating model, although Bansal saw the immediate opportunity primarily behind the customer interface.

He said more than half of customer service tickets in Wise’s direct-to-consumer business are being handled using artificial intelligence without human intervention. Wise is also applying AI to transaction monitoring and automating parts of payment exception handling that previously required manual investigation. That allows service and payment operations staff to concentrate on more complex cases, he said.

Bansal sees a similar pattern among banks. They are not necessarily rushing to place AI directly in front of customers but are investing in applications that can lower operating costs and improve efficiency.

This becomes more consequential as payments become always on. Faster rails increase the value of automation not simply because it reduces cost, but because operational processes must increasingly function at the same speed and availability as the underlying payment infrastructure.

Stablecoins still have to clear the operating test

The emergence of stablecoins and other tokenised forms of money adds another potential rail, but Bansal was more measured about their immediate role.

He argued that money is already substantially digital and distinguished that from the separate question of tokenised money. Stablecoins have considerable promise, he said, but that promise has to be reconciled with regulation, risk monitoring and liquidity requirements.

“There is a maturing process that this industry will go through,” Bansal said.

Bansal said Wise is examining where it can create value for customers, but he did not describe a production deployment or commit to a particular stablecoin model.

That leaves Wise Platform’s nearer-term proposition grounded in existing payment infrastructure. Its strategic opportunity is not dependent on predicting which new form of money ultimately prevails. It is whether direct clearing, automation and broader bank integrations can make cross-border payments behave increasingly like the domestic instant-payment experiences customers already expect.