On the final day of Sibos Frankfurt 2025, Samarth Bansal, the Asia Pacific general manager of Wise Platform, described how Wise has evolved over 14 years from a consumer remittance player into a platform provider moving EUR 165 billion (about $176 billion) annually in over 40 currencies. Seventy per cent of transactions now settle end-to-end in under 20 seconds. Wise Platform embeds that capability into banks, fintechs and large ecosystems. From retail remittances to embedded infrastructure Bansal traced Wise’s journey from its “simple mission of making cross-border payments cheaper, faster, transparent and more convenient” for individuals to a broader small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) business offering and then to Wise Platform. The latter integrates directly with banks and platforms such as Aspire, Bank Mandiri, Standard Chartered and Shinhan Bank, allowing them to deliver instant, low-cost remittances from inside their own platforms. He said the shift reflects customer demand for seamless experiences: “People no longer want to leave their banking app or platform to make an international transfer. They expect the same convenience as domestic payments.” Meeting rising customer expectations Bansal noted that customers increasingly compare cross-border transfers with instant domestic payments. “People are used to domestic payments being instant and close to zero cost. The same expectations are now extending to cross-border payments,” he said. At Sibos, conversations with banks and partners focused on speed, transparency and cost — the same themes that have driven Wise’s model since inception. Working with banks, regulators and clearing schemes Wise helps banks enhance their “legacy correspondent infrastructure” by acting as a direct correspondent on certain corridors and providing application programming interfaces (APIs) for 24/7 cross-border payments. A dedicated policy team engages regulators to explain the benefits of faster, more transparent payments, while the banking team secures direct connections to domestic clearing systems — seven live with one more pending. Bansal emphasised that these connections reduce reliance on intermediaries and deliver better predictability for customers. “It allows us to move money faster, at lower cost and with greater certainty,” he said. Leveraging Swift and ISO 20022 Wise was one of the first non-banks to connect to the UK’s Faster Payments Scheme and to be granted access to join Zengin, Japan's domestic payment network. Since its collaboration with Swift, announced at Sibos in 2023, Wise Platform partners have also been able to leverage Wise as a correspondent, instructing Swift messages and actively supporting the ISO 20022 migration to ensure structured, machine-readable data across its flows. Bansal said this improves reconciliation and helps meet compliance requirements as Wise scales. Collaboration to scale instant cross-border Bansal’s remarks show Wise Platform taking a three-pronged approach — embedded infrastructure, regulatory engagement and direct clearing access — to bring instant, low-cost cross-border payments to banks and their customers. He also emphasised that collaboration, not competition, is key. By opening its infrastructure to banks and SMEs, Wise is helping the industry meet the G20’s 2027 goals for faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payments and to normalise the “speed of a text message” as the benchmark for money movement.
