Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus, two Estonian friends living in London, were tired of losing money to bad exchange rates and hidden charges whenever they moved cash between pounds and euros. Their fix of swapping currencies directly with each other to bypass traditional banking fees became the seed of TransferWise, founded in 2011 and rebranded to Wise ten years later – the same year that Hinrikus stepped down from his role as chairman.

In 2026, Wise looks nothing like the workaround it once was. The business now serves around 19 million customers worldwide and moved $243bn in cross-border volume in the financial year to March 2026 – up 31 per cent on the year before. As one of the few UK fintechs to have scaled while staying profitable, Wise is one of the more durable survivors of the 2021 listing boom (that said, Wise has since shifted its primary stock listing to the US in 2026, adding itself to a lengthening list of scale-ups that have decamped from London in recent years).

Regulatory concerns have somewhat clouded Wise’s growth story this year. Reports emerged in June 2026 that Belgian prosecutors are investigating Wise's European arm over money laundering control concerns. Still, the core business has kept humming along largely undisturbed. We value the fintech at £7.2bn, as the market weighs strong underlying growth against this year's regulatory setbacks.