Cross-border payments specialist Wise (LSE: WISE) made its Nasdaq debut on Monday under the ticker WSE. The U.K.-founded business is keeping its London Stock Exchange listing as a secondary, but it has officially planted its flag in U.S. markets. And the timing isn’t an accident.
In the financial year ended March 31, 2026 (its fiscal 2026), Wise processed $243 billion in cross-border volume, up 31% year over year. The company also quietly applied last June to charter a U.S. national trust bank and connect directly to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails. Together, those moves position Wise to play a bigger role in the U.S. dollar payments stack — where, by Wise’s own estimate, Americans are on track to lose roughly $43 billion in hidden cross-border fees this year alone.
The question for investors interested in the stock is whether Wise’s pricing edge and direct-infrastructure strategy can hold up against entrenched U.S. banks.
The U.K.-founded fintech is leaning more heavily into its biggest market opportunity — and pursuing a more direct path into U.S. payment rails.
Cross-border payments specialist Wise (WISE +0.00%) made its Nasdaq debut on Monday under the ticker WSE. The U.K.-founded business is keeping its London Stock Exchange listing as a secondary, but it has officially planted its flag in U.S. markets. And the timing isn’t an accident.
In the financial year ended March 31, 2026 (its fiscal 2026), Wise processed $243 billion in cross-border volume, up 31% year over year. The company also quietly applied last June to charter a U.S. national trust bank and connect directly to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails. Together, those moves position Wise to play a bigger role in the U.S. dollar payments stack — where, by Wise’s own estimate, Americans are on track to lose roughly $43 billion in hidden cross-border fees this year alone.
The question for investors interested in the stock is whether Wise’s pricing edge and direct-infrastructure strategy can hold up against entrenched U.S. banks.
Image source: Getty Images.
Exceptional growth
The fintech company’s business momentum is impressive.
Wise’s fiscal 2026 net revenue rose 19% to $2.5 billion. Within that, transaction revenue grew 22% to $1.9 billion — broken out as $1.3 billion of cross-border revenue (up 17%) and $0.6 billion of card and other revenue (up 34%). Additionally, card spend climbed 37% to $44 billion.
Customer holdings ended the year at $39 billion, up 40% from a year earlier, with $9 billion of that held in Wise’s investment product, Wise Assets.
But it’s the company’s pricing that’s central to the bull case for the freshly listed Nasdaq stock. The company says its average fee is 0.52%, versus the 3% to 5% it says is typical for traditional providers. And it claims 75% of payments arrive in under 20 seconds.
Much of that speed comes from a particular architecture choice. Rather than route payments through correspondent banks, Wise has spent years plugging directly into eight domestic payment systems, including the U.K.’s Faster Payments, Europe’s SEPA, Brazil’s Pix, and Japan’s Zengin (the most recent addition).
“Fifteen years ago, we set out with a simple but ambitious goal: to make moving and managing money around the world as fast, simple and cost-effective as sending an email,” said Wise co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann in the company’s announcement of its Nasdaq listing.
Chair David Wells went on to say in the same release that the U.S. is “the biggest market opportunity for our products in the world today” and that the company is looking to expand its local presence and reach thousands of U.S. banks.
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A direct line to the Fed — if regulators allow it
The more provocative part of the strategy arguably isn’t the listing. It’s what Wise wants to do with U.S. payment rails.
In June 2025, the company applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to charter Wise National Trust, a non-depository national trust bank to be based in Austin, Texas. As part of the application, Wise has said it intends to seek a master account at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas — the kind of account that’s typically the preserve of banks.
A master account would let Wise clear and settle U.S. dollar payments directly with the Fed, including over real-time rails like FedNow. Right now, like most fintechs, the company relies on partner banks to do that work. If approved, Wise could shave costs and gain more end-to-end control over its largest currency flow (the U.S. dollar represents close to half of its global cross-border volume).
But the path isn’t easy — and it will be subject to plenty of uncertainties.
So is this fast-growing payments company coming for U.S. banks?
Wise has been competing with banks on cross-border money movement for years, and has clearly been winning share at a fee level that traditional providers haven’t matched. But the company also partners with banks. Some global banks, including Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered, already use Wise’s network through Wise Platform. So even as Wise tries to bypass intermediary banks via the Fed, it’s also embedding itself inside other banks.
So, no. I don’t think Wise will necessarily disrupt banks. But it could, over time, take market share from banks and other fintech payments companies.
What makes the stock worth a look for new investors is the rare combination of profitable growth and a credible piece of payments infrastructure outside the legacy correspondent banking system. The challenge, though, is that the most ambitious part of the U.S. story — the national trust charter and a Fed master account — isn’t a sure thing.
