Wise Platform, Wise’s infrastructure offer for banks and non-banks alike, has on Wednesday announced its continued expansion in Asia Pacific (APAC), integrating with nine partners in the first half of 2023.

Wise Platform said in a statement that the firm has also launched a new feature to help enterprises and their customers spend and manage money in multiple currencies.

According to the statement, Wise has spent over a decade building an entirely new cross-border payments network that makes sending, receiving, spending and managing money internationally faster and cheaper than traditional providers.

Globally, more than 60 banks, fintechs and enterprises use Wise’s infrastructure for money movement.

In response to growing demand and needs of partners, Wise Platform’s powerful application programming interface (API) can now also be integrated for cross-border money spending and management capabilities — rolling out first in Australia.

By leveraging Wise Platform, enterprises will now have the ability to offer their customers faster and cheaper ways to hold, send, spend, receive and manage money internationally, directly from their existing platforms.

This is launching first in Australia with two partners — ProSpend and Parpera — who will be using Wise’s infrastructure to issue multi-currency accounts and digital debit cards via their own interface to enable their customers to spend and manage money internationally with ease.

This includes one card to spend in 170+ countries, in which, the issue of Wise co-branded or white labelled digital debit cards (Visa or Mastercard) allowing business owners and employers to spend like a local, wherever at the mid-market exchange rate and manage expenses

This also includes 40+ currencies in one account. The issue of multi-currency accounts allow users to hold and convert between 40+ different currencies as well as instantly generate local and global account details to receive funds in multiple currencies, allowing businesses to go global with a few clicks.

It also includes one stop shop, where users can send, spend and manage money across currencies all from the convenience of one platform.

It is noted that in the past half year, Wise Platform launched in three new markets across Asia Pacific, powering low-cost, fast and transparent cross-border payments for millions more people and businesses in Indonesia with Bank Mandiri, Japan with GMO Aozora Net Bank Ltd and sending into India with IndusInd Bank.

This comes after the launch of Wise Platform in Hong Kong with ZA Bank last November.

In addition to banks, Wise Platform deepened its footprint in the investment platforms and business services space.

Interactive Brokers, moomoo, and uSMART have also integrated Wise’s infrastructure to help make global investing easier, while employment platform Multiplier teamed up with Wise Platform to transform payroll management experiences for global businesses.

In total, over 44 million people and businesses in APAC can now access financial services from the convenience of their existing providers’ platform.

“For too long, the traditional international banking system has been slow, expensive and painful, affecting anyone who has ever needed to move or manage money in a different currency,

“Wise Platform’s expansion speaks volumes about the power of Wise’s infrastructure for banks, businesses and their customers across multiple industries in solving this pain point,” said Steve Naudé, Head of Wise Platform.

By leveraging Wise Platform, he said partners can seamlessly integrate market-leading cross-border solutions directly into their platform, which allows them to deliver better customer experiences while staying focused on their core business.

At the same time, with each new integration, he said more people and businesses get access to faster, better and transparent international payments, bringing Wise another step towards enabling better cross-border money movement and management for everyone, everywhere.

Sharon Nouh, Chief Executive Officer at ProSpend, said that the partnership with Wise Platform aligns with the firm’s vision of delivering one hyper automated spend platform.

“Combining our platform that helps businesses manage their business expenses, their account payables, and purchases with budget controls with Wise’s market leading global payments technology, delivers this vision,

“By deeply integrating Wise’s payments infrastructure into our platform, our customers can now run their entire company cards program from the same system they use to deliver all other services,” he said.

Henry Toh, Chief Financial Officer of Tiger Brokers, said that moving money in and out of investment portfolios using traditional payment methods can be slow and expensive when transacting in a foreign currency.

“Wise Platform’s seamless integration capabilities have been crucial in our continued partnership to deliver quicker and more efficient experiences for investors to trade across
major global markets,” he said.

According to him, the results have been remarkable, with customers loving the faster transaction speeds and reduced costs when using Wise to fund and withdraw from their Tiger trading account.

“Notably, since the integration, there has been a 2 to three times reduction in average transaction duration, which demonstrates the invaluable impact on our customers,” he added.

IndusInd Bank partners with Wise to offer online inward remittance to India