Wise Brings Instant Money Transfers To Vietnam

Money transfer service Wise says it has given customers in Vietnam a faster way to receive money.

Until now, recipients would need to wait at least 24 hours for money to land in their accounts. With this latest change, customers can receive the Vietnamese dong (VND) in under a minute.

“It’s our mission to make money transfers instant, convenient, transparent, and eventually free,” Senior Product Marketing Manager Chee-Juan Tang wrote in a blog post. “So we’re thrilled to be one step further for those sending money to Vietnam.”

The process works in two steps: customers set up a transfer as they would have in the past, and pay for it with an instant payment method. The instant payment method will depend on the currency from which the user is sending, as well as the bank they use. Wise included a complete list of participating Vietnamese banks in its blog post.

“Right now, 38% of our total transfers globally are instant,” writes Tang. “So our mission is hardly complete. But we’re working hard to bring instant transfers to every corner of the world. Keep your eyes peeled for more currency routes speeding up in the coming months.”

Based in London, Wise — formerly known as TransferWise — was founded in 2011 and moves about $6 billion each month for more than 10 million customers. As PYMNTS reported earlier this month, the company recently began facilitating rupee transfers from India to more than 40 countries, including the United States, the U.K. Singapore, the UAW, Canada and Australia.

Earlier this year, Wise announced a partnership with Visa designed to deploy and expand Wise’s multi-currency debit cards across places like Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific region and the U.S., and marry it with the Visa Cloud Connect.

For more on this topic, read our January interview with Terry Angelos, senior vice president and global head of FinTech at Visa, and Venkatesh Saha, head of expansion (Middle East and APAC) at TransferWise.