Wise reports Q3 revenue growth

We did this while continuing to make good progress on our mission to make moving and managing money across borders faster, easier, cheaper and more transparent for everyone, everywhere. We dropped prices, sped up payments, and expanded access to Wise’s products and features in more countries and through more partners.

Most notably, 45% of transfers were instant this quarter, and we launched the Wise card in Canada, Brazil, and Malaysia, with the Wise account also going live in Malaysia.”

In line with our mission, growing volumes and reducing costs allows us to sustainably reduce prices for our customers whilst generating gross profits for reinvestment. Over the last year we dropped prices across 50 currencies, including 5 currencies in the most recent quarter. Our customer price is now 0.60% on average, 9bps lower than a year ago and 2bps lower than the previous quarter.

Wise customers are also benefiting from faster payments with 45% of all transfers delivered instantly this quarter, up from 40% in Q2. This was in part thanks to a constant focus on improving how we operate, in particular by speeding up security checks and resolving technical issues that were causing delays on payments sent to India.

In Q3, we launched the Wise Account and Card in Malaysia, and the Wise Card in Canada and Brazil. Business customers are now able to make payments to China from 8 currencies while Alipay users will now be able to send money to China from any supported Wise currency to an Alipay recipient.

Convenience is about providing access to Wise wherever it best suits our customers and we have made further progress in serving more customers through platform partners in the quarter. New partners include music royalty manager Eddy, armed forces credit union Andrews Federal, and invoice platforms Bilingo and Libeo.

1. Customer price is based on a fixed basket of representative currencies which reduces the effect from route mix and other factors, making it a more accurate representation of our progress in reducing the cost of international transfers over time.

Q3 FY2022 was a strong quarter with over 4 million customers transacting on Wise. The number of active personal customers grew by 26% YoY to 4.1 million while the number of active business customers grew by 39% to 250k compared to the prior year.

Volume grew by 38% YoY and 15% QoQ to £20.6 billion, driven by growth in the number of active personal and business customers and a higher average volume per customer (VPC). Our business customers’ VPCs are seasonally strong in Q3 but have nonetheless grown 13% YoY. This reflects that as our customers grow, so do their VPCs, as well as reflecting the increased adoption of the Wise Account and card.

Revenue grew by 34% YoY and 13% QoQ to £149.8 million, broadly in line with the rate of growth in volume. Our continuing efforts to engineer and optimise away costs to support sustainably lower prices for customers resulted in a lower take rate as expected, reducing to 0.73%, down 2bps YoY and 1bp QoQ. This reflects the price drops which are partially offset by incremental revenue from other sources beyond cross-border transactions.

Looking ahead, we continue to expect the take rate to be slightly lower in the second half of FY2022 compared to the first half as a result of price reductions. This is expected to be more than offset by higher volumes as we now anticipate revenue growth of c.30% for FY2022 over FY2021. We continue to expect gross margin for FY2022 to be c.65-67%, subject to foreign exchange related costs continuing to remain broadly stable.