British money transfer firm Wise has received $300 million pounds (about $347.1 million) via a syndicated debt facility from the United Kingdom branch of California’s Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
The debt investment was a joint effort between SVB and six other banks, according to published reports Thursday (Oct. 27).
Wise Chief Financial Officer Matt Briers said the funding “will offer us flexible and efficient access to working capital. This means we can continue bringing our service to as many as possible and we can keep investing in making our payments faster, cheaper and more efficient for our millions of customers around the world.”
Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, was not immediately available for comment.
Last week, Wise announced it had raised its average transaction cost for the first time since 2020 by 2 basis points to 0.64% in the third quarter of 2022, versus a year earlier. Briers said in a webcast that the fee hikes reflected higher levels of foreign exchange (FX) volatility.
Read more: Wise Hikes Transfer Fees, Upgrades 2022 Outlook
“We’re committed to a fair, transparent pricing structure, but also a sustainable profitable business model,” he said. “In the long run, prices will go down, but it’s not a straight line.”
Nonetheless, Wise said in a trading update last week that customer volumes and revenues performed well in the year to July, which means it has upgraded its outlook for the year.
In the update, Wise CEO and Co-Founder Kristo Käärmann said: “This quarter 5.5 million customers moved 27 billion pounds ($30.5 billion) with us, 50% more than in Q2 last year and for the second consecutive quarter more than half our payments were instant.”
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