[Ep. 408] Being Wise with Your Money at Home and Abroad with Ankita D’Mello

Hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast.

I’m your host, Jessica Moorhouse, and for this episode, we’re talking about currency.

We’re talking about moving your money around internationally, because a lot of us, most of us, we travel or we switch countries, we move to a different country, we are digital nomads, or we just get to do a little mini-retirement somewhere, somewhere nice, like Italy.

I’ll get there one day.

But anyways, I have partnered with Wwise for this episode to interview Ankita DMello.

She is the Senior Product Manager at Wwise.

And you may remember, if you’ve been a long time listener of this show, I did also interview Bridget Carroll, who’s the Policy Lead for North America for Wwise in episode 373 that aired on June 15th, 2023.

That one was really more focused, I think, on how to use Wwise for your business.

So highly recommend checking that out.

I use Wwise predominantly for my business, but now I also use it for travel.

So I don’t just rely on my credit card, which you don’t want to ever do.

This episode is really how to use Wwise when you’re traveling or living internationally, or want to send money to your friends or family who live in a different country or receive money from them.

There’s so many ways nowadays that we are moving around and we need our money to move around with us.

And so that’s really what we’re going to focus on in this episode.

So I hope you like it.

So without further ado, let’s get to that interview with Ankita.

Welcome Ankita to the More Money Podcast.

So excited to have you on the show.

Thank you.

It’s so exciting to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Yes, absolutely.

So before we get going, I would love to learn a little bit more about you.

Can you kind of tell me a little bit about yourself and what your specific role is at WISE?

And then for anyone who doesn’t know, even though we did have an episode a few years back, and I’ll talk about that in a little bit.

What is WISE?

What does it do?

Yeah, cool.

All right.

So let me start.

So I’m Ankita.

I am a Principal Product Manager at WISE.

So what do I actually do?

What does that even mean?

You’re like, that’s a great question.

So I work in our North America team.

So I’m based out of the US and New York.

And specifically what I do is I look after two of our major markets.

So that’s the US and Canada.

And it’s really about helping our customers to be able to send money, spend money, manage their money across borders.

And that probably goes quite nicely into what is Wise.

So what does Wise actually do?

And Wise is a company that really does what I just said.

So it’s helping our customers across the world to send money abroad.

It has an account where you can manage your money across different borders.

And we’re really trying to make it super simple and super easy for customers to do this.

So that’s Wise’s mission.

I’d say aside from that, one of the elements that is sort of core to Wise is transparency.

So making sure that we are really honest with our customers about our fees, our speeds, really everything.

And I think that was one of the big reasons why Wise was founded in the first place, was to get customers to understand what it actually means to send money abroad and how they often get scammed when they do so.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m happy to have you on the show.

Like I mentioned, we did do an episode back in 2023 with Bridget Carroll, who was the policy lead for North America at Wise.

And we had a great conversation about Wise at that time.

And since then, honestly, I’ve been using Wise quite a bit.

Yeah, yeah, like personally, but more for my business.

So this is, you know, it’s something you can use personally, but also for your business, same with my husband, he uses it for his business to, you know, work with clients or contractors around the world.

And like you mentioned, in terms of the transparency with the fees, you know exactly that when you are sending money, and that’s predominantly how I use it, it shows you exactly how much it’s going to cost you.

Whereas I feel like for maybe some alternatives that exist out there, usually it’s like embedded, and then you have to do a lot of digging to be like, but how much did I pay?

You know, is it embedded in the currency conversion and stuff like that?

So I think that’s really important.

I’m curious, since that was a little while ago, since we had Bridget on the show, any new updates or what are some features or some things that people should know about WISE that maybe they know after listening to that episode?

Yeah, for sure.

So I think for starters, I’d say WISE has continued to grow in the last few years, which is awesome.

So we are still onboarding, I think over 100,000 customers a week, which is awesome.

And so what that means for us is we’ve also had to listen to those needs of those customers and be like, hey, how are we growing and how are we actually building new products and features to meet your needs?

So I think since then, probably one of the things that we’re proudest for, for Canada specifically, is that we’ve actually launched our B2B product, which is called WISE for Banks specifically.

Again, what does that even mean?

So what it means is that we’ve actually partnered with our first bank in Canada, which is EQBank.

And what that means is EQBank customers can actually send money abroad directly from their EQBank account.

So it means you can take advantage of the great pricing and the speed that WISE offers you when sending money abroad, and you don’t have to worry about, again, the fees, like what’s going to happen when you actually send it, because WISE does all of that hard work for you.

So it’s really trying to bring WISE to where our customers already are, and EQBank is the first one.

Amazing.

Is that the first one in the world or just within Canada?

The first one in Canada.

So WISE for Banks is, again, it’s a part of WISE.

We’re trying to grow this out, and we really do believe that this is a good way to bring WISE to customers, as opposed to try to always bring customers to WISE.

Let’s go the other way too.

Amazing, amazing.

Yeah, that’s great, just because I have an EQ Bank account, so that does make me a little bit more flexible.

One thing I think I forgot to ask you when we were kind of talking about what is WISE, just for people to understand, what are the different currencies that you could have, like different accounts?

For me, I’ve got one that’s Canada, US, Euros, because I had a contractor that I just finished working with who’s based out of Europe.

How many currencies are we talking about?

Yeah.

So WISE has I think over 80 currencies that you can actually manage in the account.

There’s going to be different things that you can do with each one of them.

We’ve got some currencies where we have rolled out like our full suite of products as we call it.

But typically, if I had to break it down for you, the things that you can do with WISE are, you can send money abroad, you can receive money from abroad, you can spend money.

So if you’re holding money within the account in any of these currencies, it’s connected to a card, and you can order that card for free in Canada, and you can actually spend using that.

So those are all of the different things that you can do with WISE.

And within that, to answer your question, you can do a lot of those things with over 80 currencies.

So you mentioned some of our very dominant ones.

So GBP, Euro, US dollar, Canadian dollar, those are some of our bigger ones.

But even more so, if we talk about Asia and the Pacific, we’ve got Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, Japanese yen, Singapore dollar.

There’s a whole host, but I could sit here in the stud every single one.

There’s like 80 plus, so yeah, it could take a while.

But definitely, for anyone who’s interested in like, let’s say you’ve got a holiday coming up or something, like go on wise.com.

We list out every currency that we work with, and the chances are your currency will be there.

Yeah, so talking a little bit more about use cases for wise, there’s this term that’s been floating around on online and social media called inflation isolation, which makes a lot of sense.

I think a lot of us for the past couple years especially have been feeling the pinch just because inflation has just made everything, especially our necessities like groceries and things like that so much more expensive.

We’re staying home and just feeling a little bit isolated.

We’re not going out.

We’re doing what we need to do to save money.

But on the other side of it, are there things that we can do using wise as a tool?

One thing that comes to mind is Taylor Swift doing her world tour.

So many people I know have said, no, we don’t have to not travel.

We just have to maybe travel a little bit differently.

Or it’s not that we can’t go to concerts.

Maybe we just have to go to a concert literally outside of Canada because it’s cheaper to go to Germany and have a whole trip to Germany and see Taylor Swift compared to buying tickets in my hometown, which is actually true when I looked at the numbers.

It’s cheaper than going to Toronto to see her.

So let’s talk a little bit about how someone can use WISE as a tool to rethink their spending and not just be, I guess, isolated with the Canadian dollar, but how can we convert it into a different currency, go to a different country, and get more bang for our buck?

Yeah, for sure.

I’m actually going to tell you a little story about the recent trip that I had, actually.

So I went to Mexico for the first time with my boyfriend, which was very exciting.

I was like, okay, new country.

Mexico is quite a cash-heavy market, and I also had this assumption that you can pay in US dollars in Mexico, so I think everything should be fine.

And in a couple of days, I very quickly realized that even if you’re paying in US dollars, let’s say for a cab or a taco, the exchange rate is actually dictated by the person you’re paying to.

So it wasn’t even that, oh, the exchange rate that this bank was giving me was not great.

It was like, oh, wow, the exchange rate you’re giving me is like 20% worse.

Yeah, they’re turning to a premium.

Yeah.

And so what ended up happening was in about 24 hours, I realized that we were paying 20% more for everything that we were buying.

So I obviously was like, okay, this is a bad idea.

Let’s use my wise card for everything.

And of course, my boyfriend was like, what is this thing?

And I was like, how do you not have one?

Anyway.

Yeah.

And also, how do you not know what I do for a living?

So we started using that.

And it was really just highlighted this whole example of how, if you’re just a bit smarter about when you’re using it and how you’re using it, my holiday essentially became 20% cheaper just because of that.

And that’s, you know, I’m talking about wise, but at the end of the day, if you’ve got any sort of card that is giving you a good exchange rate and you’re not going to be losing out on foreign transaction fees, you should be using that if you’re going traveling.

And there are going to be markets which are, you know, like I said, cash heavy.

Maybe you can’t use a card for everything.

So again, just like be smart about that.

So I would always recommend do have some cash.

Again, the Wyze card lets you withdraw from ATMs.

There might be alternatives though.

Maybe in your hometown, there’s a really good like actual, you know, shop where you can go get money converted.

Definitely keep some cash on you, but use that cash sparingly as well.

So only use it when you need it.

And for the transactions where you can use your Wyze card or an alternative, do that, because it really saves you so much money.

And definitely don’t exchange your cash at the airport.

They just charge you so much money.

Don’t do that if you can avoid it.

So planning is always the best way to save money.

Just to kind of break it down a little bit more.

Let’s say you’re in a similar position where you’re in a foreign country.

You’re like, oh, I should have gotten that currency and I didn’t.

I’m going to use my Wyze card.

How does that look?

So obviously, you would have already set up your account, or maybe you could probably just do it online, open an account wherever you are in Thailand or something like that yourself.

And how does money move exactly?

So would I open up a Canadian account and then, I guess, I went to Thailand.

What’s their currency?

Thai baht.

Ah, there you go.

That’s right.

And then would I have to create a Thai baht account or baht account?

So you don’t have to, and that’s the thing.

This is where Wyze really takes all the hard work away from the customer.

So I think the best way to do this is before you go traveling.

Again, going back to the plan and do some research before you do your travel.

I would, as a Canadian, I would set up my Wyze account while I’m in Canada.

I would get my card.

And all you need to do at that point is almost treating it like a wallet.

So you can top up your Canadian balance.

So let’s say you have another Canadian bank account somewhere.

So top up your balance with however much you want.

And you can continuously topping it up.

Top ups are instant again, so you’re not worrying about, oh my God, when is my money going to actually reach my Wyze account?

So you can top it up with however much money you want to.

And then no matter where you go, so let’s say you’re going to Mexico or you’re going to the US or you’re going to somewhere in South America, you can just use your card.

And when you tap it or purchase anything, what that transaction is going to do is it’s going to pull money from that Canadian balance that you’re holding, but we’re going to take the hard work away.

So we’re going to use the mid-market exchange rate, which is used on Google.

So it’s the exact exchange rate that you would expect.

We’re very transparent about what is the fee when you actually convert into that currency.

So you don’t have to actually manage the money yourself and convert it into different currencies.

You can if you want to.

But we take away all that work from you to the extent that even in your use case where you’re holding multiple currencies, let’s say you’ve got three currencies and you go to Thailand, which balance is it going to pull from?

Again, we do that work for you and we determine which balance is actually going to give you the best rate or the best amount for your buck, and we’ll pull from that balance accordingly so that we give you the best rate and the best fees for that transaction.

Amazing.

And kind of speaking a little bit more to when you are traveling, I feel like a lot of people, myself included, have just gotten used to using their credit card.

Because there are some protections, if it gets stolen, they can be really good.

But if someone wants to, how would you compare the two using your wise account, using the card compared to a credit card, specifically like fees and anything else that might kind of put them compared to each other?

It’s a really great question, especially living here in the US, which is a huge credit card economy, very overwhelming at times.

It’s like, what do you use and how do you know when to use what?

And I think ultimately this comes down to a little bit of personal preference, but again, also just trying to be strategic about what you’re trying to do.

So for really like big ticket items, for example, maybe it does make sense to put it on your credit card because even though the exchange rate is not super great, maybe the points that you get from it weighs that out.

So maybe it does make sense.

But does it make sense to put a coffee that you’re buying abroad on your credit card?

Probably not.

So I think that’s an example where I would say, be strategic about what you’re trying to do.

If you’re trying to get some sort of offer or hit some sort of threshold with your credit card to get a benefit, maybe put the bigger ticket items on your credit card, but don’t put the smaller ones.

At the same time, if you’re not trying to do any of that, and you’re really just trying to be like, hey, I just don’t want to overpay, then in all of those situations, I would recommend using a wise card, because again, your bigger ticket items are also the ones that are going to hit you the hardest in terms of exchange rates and the higher fees that you pay.

Maybe one final point on credit cards.

So you’ll see a lot of credit cards which say, no foreign transaction fees.

And well, that sounds great.

Why would I just not use that the whole time then?

And again, the point here is it’s the exchange rate.

The majority of those credit cards are not using the mid-market exchange rate.

They’re using an exchange rate that’s worse for you.

So that’s the cost that you pay is that for every dollar that you convert, you’re getting less money on the other side.

They’re not going to call it a fee, but that is the fee.

Yeah, it’s like an embedded fee.

Yeah, exactly.

So that’s the real cost of using your credit card.

Again, I see both sides.

I’ve definitely been in situations where I’m like, no, I’m going to use my credit card for this, even though I know it’s not the best.

And maybe I’ve got an ulterior motive for it and that’s okay.

But just be smart and be strategic about what you’re trying to achieve with both of these different tools.

And ultimately, it should benefit you in the best way.

Yeah.

And I’d say just for protecting yourself, because I feel like we’ve all been in a situation where we’re in a foreign country and our card stops working, because who knows why?

A myriad of reasons.

I’ve definitely been in that situation.

It’s always good to have lots of different tools at your disposal.

So maybe if you’re going to bring your credit card, don’t just bring your credit card.

Having a WISE, having that cash on hand just in case while you’re traveling, that’s a really great kind of protection.

And I guess my other kind of thought process was, if you are traveling and you’re really conscious of like, you can get spendy with your credit card, just tap, tap, tap, there’s lots of things.

This is a great budgeting tool because you put in maybe, this is how much we’re going to spend on our meals, the excursions, gifts and things like that.

And it’s all inside of our account.

And maybe you don’t use all of it, you could put some of it in your credit card and then use the money in your wise account to pay off your credit card.

You could do a couple of different things.

But for me, I mean, when you’re traveling, you should definitely have multiple payment methods just in case you’re stuck somewhere and you need to buy a room or a bus ticket or something.

I completely agree.

Which is why I also say, take advantage of adding your cards to your Apple Wallet or whatever phone that you might have.

That saved me on more than one occasion where I’ve just, I don’t know, I’m on holiday and I want to take out a different bag and look cute that day or something, and then all my cards are in the Airbnb or in a hotel and I’ve got no money.

But thankfully, I have my phone and I can still pay for stuff.

So yeah, I think definitely diversifying your payment methods and your tools is really helpful, especially also when you go traveling, especially in a foreign country, sometimes you get caught in tourist traps.

You might accidentally leave your card somewhere.

You know, so I think being careful about those things and making sure you’ve got alternatives is really handy.

And you can, can you add the wise card to your Apple Wallet?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that’s helpful.

Yeah, honestly, I feel like once I and I’m always like 10 years behind everyone, or maybe five years behind everyone, I just recently realized in the past year, like, why don’t I just add everything to my Apple Wallet?

And for the longest time, I just did not know how to quite honestly use my Apple Wallet.

I’m like, I have to mess with the thing a couple of times.

Now that’s all I do.

But I still bring my wallet just in case, I don’t know.

But it’s just, yeah, that’s again, just think outside the box, have a couple of different things at your disposal, protect yourself because you just never know what’s going to happen.

Now, we talked a lot about leisure, travel, and just how to think about that.

Another use case that is probably really important for people to consider is, if you are an international student coming to study in Canada, or you’re a Canadian student going to study internationally, there’s all those programs where you can take a year away.

I think a lot of people don’t really consider, how are you going to move money?

How are you going to get money from friends and family?

How are you going to send money to friends and family?

Maybe you’ve got a job over here and you want to send some money, things like that.

You want to explain how someone can use something like WISE as a tool to easily move money without having to open up a British bank account or something like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I was an international student myself, so I really feel the pain.

I wish that WISE existed many, many years ago, but anyway, it’s fine.

I think that there’s two real points in a student’s journey where I think WISE is really critical.

One is when they first start college.

And this can be challenging, because it might boil down to actually the student’s parents, even if they’re moving abroad.

So I think this is just really helpful for everybody to know.

But you’re going to have a few expenses, right?

You’re going to have to pay college tuition, just the cost of moving, whether you’re staying in a dorm or maybe you’re getting an apartment with some first-year students, whatever that might be, you’ve got upfront costs.

And whether you’re moving to Canada or away from Canada, how are you getting money in a local currency?

And typically, what people do is they’re going to move over a chunk of their money from their home country to their new country.

And for me, that was done by a bank transfer, which is sad and painful.

So yeah, it’s slow and expensive, basically?

It’s slow and super expensive.

I don’t even know how much money was actually lost in that, but that makes me quite sad.

So really, when you’re doing those big transfers, sending money abroad, that is the moment where you can actually lose so much money.

Because, well, your exchange rate is either going to be really bad, or you’re probably going to get charged a bad exchange rate and foreign transaction fees on top of it.

So using WISE or something likewise becomes really, really important when you’re first setting up.

And again, if you’re an international student and you rely on money from abroad, what’s actually perfect is if maybe your parents have WISE accounts, but so do you, you then benefit from that network effect where you’re not sending money to bank accounts, you’re literally sending money to each other on WISE.

And then you don’t have to worry about any middlemen or middle banks in between.

So that’s what I would highly recommend.

And then for students going to study abroad, which is the more fun one because you’ve already had a couple of years, probably of being a student, you’re feeling like you know how to manage things.

You can then open up a WISE account, get your own debit card.

And you can use that as a mechanism for moving abroad and doing that semester abroad as well.

I think where this comes in really handy, specifically again, is like maybe paying rent for that, like six months or a year when you’re abroad.

Like, how are you going to do that?

This is where like it can become really helpful, where you’ve suddenly got a local bank account, like we can give you local bank account details.

You can figure out how to actually make those payments.

Maybe you get a part-time job, you’ve now got the ability to receive payments and that local currency too.

So I think those are really the two key points where why it becomes really helpful.

Yeah, and I guess along the same lines too, I mean, there’s so many immigrants to Canada and they land here, they’re like, how do I send money back to my family very easily?

And this could be a solution for that as well.

Instead of, I know there’s lots of organizations that do that, but yeah, again, the fees can be pretty, you know, then it’s taking away from what they want to send to their family or friends.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that there’s also, I mean, I remember the first time I sent money back home, there’s like a nervousness to it.

Yeah, you’re like, is this safe?

Is it gonna get there safely?

I’m like, is this gonna work?

Like, what is this like black hole that I’m putting my money into?

Obviously, this was me using WISE like, I don’t know, 12 years ago, it was a different time.

Yeah, it was a bit scary to send money just electronically, no matter what.

Yeah, it seemed so bizarre as a concept.

Like, I was like, I have no idea how this is gonna magically work.

And yeah, I think that like that nervousness when you first send money abroad, I think what WISE hopes to do and what I hope we’ve done is that that first experience that you get, you understand that it does arrive on the other side and like you trust the process.

And the things that we’ve tried to do to like get a customer to feel comfortable is a lot to do with speed, you know?

If you know that the money’s reached on the other side within seconds, you’re obviously going to feel a lot better than if it takes five days.

And that’s a very, that’s a very common misconception is that, you know, international transfers take a lot of time.

They actually don’t.

They don’t have to.

And hopefully, you know, if you’re doing that for the first time, even like sending a small transfer, that’s what I did.

I think so a lot of people do is they send like a small amount to make sure it’s okay.

You know, hopefully that will build that confidence as you start to use the product.

So like you mentioned, so how long has Y’s been around now?

I think longer than most people think.

Yeah.

Oh gosh.

I get asked this question all the time.

At least 12 years.

Yeah.

It’s like at least 12 years.

I think it’s officially a teenager though.

I remember us saying like, oh, we’ve officially hit like our teen years, something like that.

So I think it’s 13 years now.

Yeah.

Well, and then speaking a little bit to some of the, I think worries that people have using some new tool, even though, you know, online banking has been around for a while still, lots of people when it’s especially a new tool to them, they’re a little bit, you know, like is my money gonna be safe?

Can you speak a little bit more to how is your money protected?

Like I know in Canada, if you’re with the bank, you’ve got CDI, see if the bank goes bankrupt.

What are some things that people should be aware of in terms of like cyber security and just, you know, making sure that their money is safe with wise?

Yeah, that’s a really great question.

And I think it’s like very topical as well.

I think like even here in the US, there’s been a lot of like, how do I know my money safe?

And where is my where is my money?

Scams out there.

Yeah.

And I think one thing that a lot of people don’t actually realize and maybe we don’t do a good enough job of saying is that, you know, sometimes like, well, I guess like with a lot of banks, for example, like you hold money with them.

But a lot of the time, like your money is used for other things, like maybe it’s like being given out on loans or something.

At Wyse, we don’t actually do that.

So we are not a bank.

And so every, every distinction, I think a lot of people like, is this a bank?

It is not a bank.

And so every dollar that you hold at Wyse is actually safeguarded and we keep it and we don’t use it for anything else.

And so your money is safe, essentially.

Like we’re not using it for other purposes.

And then when you suddenly want to withdraw it, it’s like, oh, we don’t have your money.

That’s like one thing that I think we probably should emphasize more as a company, that your money is always kept with us.

And then in terms of security, actually some of our more global teams have been spending a lot of time around this, like helping customers get educated on scams, like improving our overall global security controls.

Whether that’s things like 2FA or even educating customers around what some common scams actually look like.

We’ve been spending a lot of time trying to help educate customers and bake that into our product as well.

So that as a customer is going through a flow, we can actually prompt them to be like, hey, this might not be a legitimate transfer.

Maybe you want to double check that.

So those are ways in which we’re actually improving our product as well to become more educational.

It’s amazing.

That’s super helpful for people to understand how it works.

You’re not a bank.

And I assume that’s likely why you can keep your fees so low.

Or do you want to speak a little bit to that?

How are you able to keep the fees so competitive?

Yeah, that’s a great question.

I will try to answer that as simply as possible.

I think one of the secret ingredients or like the special sauce of WISE on some level, is that for the bulk of our transfers, we’re not doing international transfers, right?

So what I mean by that is, let’s say you’re sending money from Canada to the UK.

Now what you’re doing is you’re giving us, let’s say, 200 Canadian dollars.

And on the other side, somebody else is getting X amount of GBP.

But what we’re actually doing is we’re taking your Canadian dollars and we’re instructing our bank in the UK to pay that money out.

So really what we’re doing is we’re connecting to domestic transfers.

And that’s the model that WISE uses and that’s what we’ve been using around the globe.

And if you think about it, what WISE is really becoming is this connector of every domestic method, payment method in the world.

Like that would be the large vision.

And that’s how we’re able to keep costs so low because we’re not doing what Swift or other banks are doing where the money is going through so many different intermediaries than banks, where we’re actually just connecting to domestic legs.

So that’s a big part of why our costs have remained so low.

Aside from that, I think WISE is also has historically always been very focused on costs and pricing.

It’s a big part of our roles in the product team as well to keep reviewing our pricing.

And what we do is every time we benefit from a cost reduction.

So maybe that’s, hey, we found a much better automated way of verifying customers, and it doesn’t require so many manual reviews.

Now, what we could do is keep our prices the same and just have more profits, right?

But we don’t do that.

What we do is we actually pass that on to the customer.

So we drop our fees and we say, hey, our fees are lower, that’s better for you.

And I think overall what that’s meant is that our customers are happier, we have more customers as a result, and so it’s a win-win because our profits eventually will increase because we have more customers.

But our customers get to benefit from the lower prices too.

Yeah.

So it’s a great way to attract new customers, but also retain those ones so they don’t go to a competitor.

Absolutely.

And I mean, you yourself have used it for 12 years.

That’s like amazing when you look at the customers.

For me, even with banks, every couple of years I change who I’m with based off of, hey, who’s going to offer me the highest interest, the lowest fees.

If you’re always the one that’s offering the best of everything, then why are you going to move?

I’m going to ask you another kind of hard question, hopefully you can answer as best as you can.

I know one thing that’s probably really interesting being at WISE is you’ve got a lot of access to data and seeing trends and just understanding your customer more.

What kind of trends have you seen?

Or have you seen over the past couple of years, a lot more people joining WISE to try it out because a lot more people are doing more borderless type of thing?

Yeah, I think that’s a really great question.

I think in the last, I mean, we’ve definitely seen a whole bunch of different trends, right?

Like with COVID, that was like a…

Was that huge for WISE basically?

Yeah.

Just because, I mean, so many people moved out of the country because they’re like, this is the apocalypse, I’m moving to Costa Rica.

So it was interesting, right?

There were like good trends.

I don’t want to say good trends or bad trends, but there were just like ups and downs.

So for example, we saw that car transactions were much lower.

And that makes sense because people couldn’t travel.

So that was fair.

But then what we also saw was like a big increase in, I want to say like businesses and like freelance payments and contractors because there was this huge offspin of like remote work.

So that was new for us and we were trying to understand how to onboard these types of businesses, how to work with these types of payments.

So we saw very interesting trends, I’d say through there.

I think, interestingly, like again in the US, like there’s been a lot of like regulatory, you know, shift in the landscape and things like that with like different banks.

So we’ve seen again, different trends there, a lot of businesses more interested and want to know how their money is safe, to your point.

So things like that, which I think has also been interesting to see.

A more fun one maybe recently was the Olympics.

So we saw lots of increased spending in France, which you would expect.

Yeah, there’s a ton of people there.

And a lot of international people, so many people from all over the world literally went there.

That’s so interesting.

Yeah, so I think Canadians came out sixth as the biggest spenders in France during the Olympics.

So yeah, but Canada is actually a big wise card market for us in all of our America regions as well.

I think the only, I think it’s number two, I would say the only one that comes higher is Brazil.

Yeah, so those are some interesting different trends that we see, I’d say like post-COVID though, obviously the card transactions went up.

I think we’re still seeing a trend though of like small to medium businesses be really interested in WISE.

And so that’s been quite interesting for us as product teams as well as how do we support these businesses better.

I think WISE initially obviously when it first started was very consumer focused.

And so we are trying to build out some of our business products a bit better to support our businesses too.

Yeah.

I mean, again, as a business owner, that’s part of the reason I use it.

And even I just, I’ll talk to you after we record this test, you know, with this one little thing, as a little support.

But I was thinking of there’s this new thing that I want to launch and I want to be able to launch it in Canadian currency and US currency.

I don’t have a USD bank account anymore.

And I was thinking, oh, WISE could be that conduit for me to take that US currency and then convert it into Canadian or cash it out or use it however, whenever I want, because it can be pretty expensive, honestly, the fees when you look at the USD, like you need a USD checking account.

There are some savings accounts out there that exist, but WISE could be an alternative.

So I was just, yeah, there’s lots of things that I’m like, oh, that’s a great way that I can connect it to, you know, this portal and this portal, instead of having to shop around at the different kind of USD bank accounts that exist.

And another thing that I honestly talk to a lot of people about is, you know, some people, they have US currency, they want to get it into like their discount brokerage so they can start buying like American stocks or something like that.

Yeah, WISE is actually a great way where you can send that money to it, you know, like you don’t necessarily have to have a US bank account or a USD bank account.

This could potentially be a solution if you’re going to, I don’t know, inherit some money or like you, again, you have parents in the States that want to send you USD.

It can go into your WISE account.

And if you don’t want to spend that money, you want to invest it, send it to your liquefied account or something like that.

There’s a lot of different use cases that I think, yeah, are really interesting that you may be like, oh, that might be the solution, again, getting away from just some of those high fee bank.

For sure.

They exist.

They’re just, you know, it’s, it’s funny.

There was a financial counseling client I had a number of years ago.

I believe he was based out of Venezuela.

And he wanted to but he there’s a time he worked in the US, but then he was back in Canada and he was trying to find a workaround for sending money to his family, USD money to his.

And the workaround he had was very complicated with having a US bank account.

And sometimes, you know, it had to be somehow connected to his Canadian bank account.

But I think I did actually email him after our initial or my episode with Bridget, and be like, hey, just so you know, this may be a better solution than having like all these different bank accounts and all those different, who knows how many fees each time you’re moving money and all that kind of stuff.

So lots of things for people just to think about if they, you know, again, have money in different countries, different currencies, things like that.

Or you’re just, you know, a digital nomad.

And there’s so many more people doing that.

So many more people.

I’m so jealous.

I know.

I know.

I’ve always had one thing that I’m sure I’ve mentioned on the show before, but when I became self-employed, which is now almost eight years ago, my and my husband were like, oh my God, we’re going to like rent a villa or a villa, but, you know, apartment or whatever in like Portugal or Italy and work from there.

Never happened.

I mean, I’ve honestly probably taken two weeks vacation every year since, which is my problem.

That’s a problem I want to solve.

But yeah, that’s still that’s still on the horizon.

That’s still it’s going to happen.

Maybe 2025, we’re going to do that.

The luckier.

That’s my year.

That’s going to be my year.

Before I let you go, just to close things off and to maybe answer a few remaining questions that people may have.

What are some common misconceptions people may have about either using wise or just converting currency in general?

Yeah.

I think I’ll close out with maybe just the ones that I’ve mentioned.

I think the big one is exchange rates, right?

So whether it was my cab driver in Mexico making out their own exchange rate or another bank or whatever it might be, it’s I think a common misconception is that an exchange rate is an exchange rate and it stays the same and that’s entirely not true.

An exchange rate can be honestly anything.

It can be made up on the spot.

It can be really bad, but it can really not be what you Google.

And so making an assumption that if there’s no foreign fees, that you’re going to be fine is the biggest misconception that I think people have.

So what I would always say is make sure you understand what that exchange rate that you’re getting is.

The best way to do this is to ask the question, what are you getting on the other side?

Like what’s the amount you’re getting on the other side?

And if you don’t know the answer to that question, you’re probably getting a bad exchange rate.

So that’s where I would start if you’re getting stressed about, what does that mean?

I don’t know what a good exchange rate is.

So ask that question.

And then I think the second one is, again, what I mentioned before about speed.

So yes, international transfers can take a long time to go through, but that is definitely not the case these days from what we’re seeing.

They can be instant, they can take up to an hour, and at worst case, sometimes it’s only a day.

So yeah, so don’t be afraid of that and try it out and actually see it for yourself to build that confidence.

And then you’ll have your misconception cleared.

Yeah, I mean, I think that was the case for myself.

I opened up an account, tried it out myself, did a really simple, you know, tiny amount transfer just to see how it worked.

And then I’m like, oh, that’s not too difficult.

And like, oh, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

But it is kind of like, again, with any new fintech, it’s always just like, oh, yeah, but people said that about robo-advisors.

Now they’ve been around for a long time and they’re, you know, they’re like, oh, everyone knows about those.

Or maybe they don’t know that term, but they know what, you know, whatever.

So you’ve got to just try new things.

I mean, that’s the ultimate way to kind of stay ahead, save money is to always try to see, is there a better way, a more efficient way, cheaper way?

I can still do this.

If you’re still with the same bank you’ve been with since childhood and you only use their products, look around, there’s some other options out there.

I agree.

I agree.

Well, Ankita, it was so nice to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for answering all of my questions.

I’m sure some people may want to check it out or learn a little bit more.

And one of the things I do actually like about the Y site is I’ve done a deep dive obviously on it.

Lots of great resources.

Do you want to kind of share more where people can find more information about it, check it out for themselves, look at some of the different articles about it?

Yeah, absolutely.

So wise.com is our website.

Super simple.

So if you’re just an individual, like I said, like going on holiday or just want to check it out.

Our personal pages are where you want to go.

If you’re a business and you’re looking for slightly more advanced needs, we have a whole business section for you to check out.

I’d recommend starting there.

You can definitely dive deeper into each section if you’re looking for a particular type of product.

Maybe it’s the card, maybe it’s you’re interested in invoicing.

If you’re a business, there’s so many different tools if you’re a business.

So definitely go deeper.

If you’re not finding something on any of our key pages, we do have a help center.

So just go in there and type in a keyword and it should pop up with some type of article that will help you out.

So yeah, definitely go in there and have a browse as well.

And there’s a support team.

If someone has a question, is there a way to contact somebody?

Yeah, absolutely.

So you can find out the details there in our support center pages as well.

We’ve got a, we actually very recently launched chats as well, I believe.

So yeah, so there’s lots of different ways to contact support team members.

So yeah, just do check out what’s available on there.

Yeah.

Perfect.

Well, thanks again for joining me.

It was so fun.

Honestly, like I know most people are like, I can’t believe this is a whole episode on currency conversion, but I really had a great time.

Because I clearly, clearly have a lot to say and a lot to ask about it.

So I appreciate you taking the time to coming on the show.

Of course.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

And it was lovely to meet you.

And that was my interview with Ankita DMello, Senior Product Manager at Wyse.

If you want to learn more or check out Wyse for yourself, again, it’s totally free to make an account.

Just go to wyse.com.

And if you want to check out that episode I did over a year ago with Bridget Carroll, who was the Policy Lead of North America for Wyse, just check out episode 373.

That aired on June 15th, 2023.

And yeah, I’m going to include a bunch of information and links that may be helpful for you in the show notes for this episode.

Or you can find the link to the show notes that will direct you right to my website in the description of this episode.

So wherever you’re listening, there will be a link that you could just easily click on.

But if you ever want to find the show notes of an episode, you can also simply just go to jessicamoorhouse.com/podcast or go jessicamoorhouse.com/thenumber of that episode.

So that is how you can do that and find all 400 plus episodes of the show on my website.

I also want to just give you a reminder because we didn’t have a guest on the show this week who has a book out, but I am doing my typical big book giveaway that I do every single season.

So make sure to go to jessicamoorhouse.com/contest.

If you want to enter to win one of the many books that I will be giving away.

I think this year I just like simplified it.

And just if I know an author is coming on the show, I’m not waiting until their episode airs.

I’m just putting it out there and putting their book on there.

So there’s a ton of books that are featured on there.

And then I will add to it as more authors are booked for the show.

But honestly, I feel like 80% of my guests are authors.

And yeah, it just makes my life easy.

Cause like, great, you got a book.

We know exactly what we’re gonna talk about and I can give away a copy of your book.

Who doesn’t love that?

Speaking of books, just a reminder that my book is available to pre-order.

You can find more information about my book, Everything But Money on my website, jessicmoorhouse.com/book.

Pre-order, please.

Please, if you wouldn’t mind, it’s a labor of love.

So, check that out.

Okay, that is it for me.

Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week for a fresh new episode of the More Money Podcast.