Wise Resumes Signing Customers in India to Tap $32 Billion Remittance Market

Money transfer firm Wise is reportedly hoping to tap India’s $32 billion remittance market.

To that end, Wise plans to begin signing up new customers in the world’s most populous nation after pausing that side of its business in the country, company officials told Bloomberg News Monday (Aug. 12).

Wise, based in London, ceased taking new customers in the past months as it upgraded its infrastructure. This was in response to the company being awarded a license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that lets the app’s customers send more money overseas.

Now, Wise will begin signing up new customers in the next few months, Shrawan Saraogi, Asia Pacific head of expansion at Wise, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

“India is a huge market for remittance,” Saraogi said. “We will be primarily focusing on cross-border movement that’s currently almost entirely done by banks.”

The report cites data from the RBI showing that people in India sent $32 billion to other countries — mostly for travel, education and family expenses — in the year leading up to March 2024. That’s up from $27 billion a year earlier.

Wise in June said it was increasing its investment in its payments infrastructure, a cost that the company is wagering will let it cut fees by making payments processing more efficient.

Kingsley Kemish, the group’s interim chief financial officer, argued during an earnings call that the investment would help Wise to achieve its long-term goal of becoming a global leader in the cross-border payments sector.

As covered here earlier this year, there are a number of challenges that hinder the wider use of cross-border payments, including transaction fees, exchange rates and security concerns, all of which have the potential to deter customers and harm revenue growth.

Illustrating the troubles with this sector, the PYMNTS Intelligence in the report “Cross-Border Sales and the Challenge of Failed Payments,” a collaboration with Nuvei, found that in the year alone prior to the report, American merchants suffered at least $3.8 billion in lost revenue from failed cross-border payments.

“Cross-border payments inherently have more points of failure compared to domestic payments,” Citi Global Co-head of Payments and Receivables, Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) Amit Agarwal told PYMNTS in an interview late last year.

To bring down these higher failed-payment rates, businesses looking to expand internationally should bolster their collaboration with their payment service providers (PSPs). The report found that this can offer merchants access to advanced tools and expertise that allow for efficient and reliable cross-border transactions.