Wise Multi-Currency Account Review: Fees, Features, and More

The Wise Account is an excellent multi-currency account and card (8.9/10) that's roundly recommended by Monito's experts for use at home, online, and abroad. Offering a flexible, world-class mobile app (8.9/10) via a secure and reputable money transfer platform (9.3/10), the Wise account is a trusted platform that's loved by millions of users worldwide (9.6/10). It offers low fees all-round (7.6/10), although large or frequent ATM withdrawals can be rather pricey.

What Monito Likes About Wise

• Account details in as many as 10 countries.
• Hold money in 50+ currencies.
• Send money to 80+ countries from your account.
• Among the lowest money transfer fees out there.
• Transparent and accessible pricing calculator.
• Mid-market exchange rate offered for currency transfers.
• Debit card can be used to avoid foreign transaction fees.
• No setup fees or monthly charges.

What Monito Dislikes About Wise

• Cash or cheque payments aren't supported.
• Overdraft and loans aren't available.
• Negative interest on large Euro balances.
• Fees to top up the account via ACH, debit, and credit card.

If you're interested in learning more about the Wise Account, then take a look Monito's video review below:

While the Wise Multi-Currency Account (including the virtual Visa debit card) is available in most countries worldwide, the physical Wise card is only available to customers from the UK (including Gibraltar and the UK Crown Dependencies of Guernsey, Isle of Man, and Jersey), the US, the EEA, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, and Switzerland.

How Monito Reviewed Wise's Services

As with all services reviewed by Monito, Wise underwent a rigorous evaluation to assess the quality of its service. To begin with, our experts analysed several key criteria, including customer reviews, the percentage cost of various transaction types, top-up options, access to customer service, as well as business and legal metrics such as revenue, appropriate authorisation, and company size. As with all Monito Scores, Wise's score was peer-reviewed by at least one Monito expert.

We go through both the card and the account below:

Wise Multi-Currency Account Review

The Wise Multi-Currency Account's main advantage is that it gives you unique and personal local bank details in several countries, including major ones such a the US, the UK, the Eurozone, Australia, and Singapore. This means you can use a Wise Multi-Currency Account to be paid like a local in various countries and currencies without the usual fees.

As part of your Wise Multi-Currency Account, you'll automatically get the following bank details:

However, there are some constraints to the above accounts. For example, the Wise USD Account cannot be used to set up Direct Debit payments, and the Wise CAD Account cannot be used to receive domestic wires, Interac e-Transfers, and Online Bill Transfers.

What's more, the Wise AUD, NAZ, CAD, RON, SGD, HUF, and TRY accounts can only be used to receive domestic bank transfers, not inbound international SWIFT payments from outside of the countries respectively.

Wise Card Malaysia

In December 2021, Wise also released its Multi-Currency Account and debit card in Malaysia. If you’re from Malaysia, you may wonder whether opening an account is worth it for you. Monito's video guide, Jonny, explores this question. Take a look at his video review about the Wise Account and card in Malaysia:

How To Use the Wise Multi-Currency Account

You can share your Wise account details with family, friends, businesses, clients and others, and they can pay directly into your Wise Multi-Currency Account using your local bank details — just as if had an actual bank account in that country.

This is a big part of what makes the Wise Multi-Currency Account perfect for people who do business in multiple countries and want to get paid, as well as travellers who wish to spend from their account balance without foreign transaction fees.

You can spend money in most countries around the globe with your Wise debit card and hold money in up to 54 currencies in your account balance, converting between them instantly using Wise’s fees and exchange rates. There are no fees to open or hold a Wise Multi-Currency Account or get virtual bank accounts, but there is a small 0.2% fee to add money to your account using some payment methods.

How To Add Money to Your Account

By going to your Wise Multi-Currency Account and choosing to add a currency and how you want to pay, you can fund your Wise Multi-Currency Account in several ways:

• Debit or credit card.
• Bank transfer from another account.
• Somebody else making a transfer into one of your Wise accounts.

You can use your Wise Multi-Currency Account to convert money between the currencies and balances you hold or make a transfer to someone else’s bank account, either in the same country as you or internationally. You can also spend money from your Wise Multi-Currency Account using your linked debit card.

Conversions between currencies in your Wise Multi-Currency Account are instantaneous. Sending money to someone else’s bank account from your Wise Multi-Currency Account typically takes one to three working days.

In our opinion, the virtual bank accounts provided by the Wise Multi-Currency Account are a unique service, and the debit card offers excellent value when you’re spending money overseas. However, you should be aware that if you’re funding the account or receiving money from elsewhere, it must be the same currency as the bank details you provide, or Wise will reject the transaction.

Wise Debit Card Review

Once you sign up for a Wise Multi-Currency Account, you’ll receive a bright green free travel card that works wherever Visa is accepted (in other words, at pretty much every card machine or ATM in the world!).

While you can use the card to spend in your own country, it becomes instrumental as soon as you need to pay in a foreign currency, whether online or in-person, while abroad. By leveraging Wise’s experience with currency exchange, using the debit card allows you to take advantage of low fees when spending in a foreign currency.

For example, while typical banks such as HSBC mark up the exchange rate to 2.75% for payments in a foreign currency, Wise charges a comparatively low 0.35% on average for major currencies such as the Euro, US dollar, or Swiss franc. This figure is higher for less-liquid currencies such as the Chilean peso or Ugandan shilling, which sits at around 2% of the transfer value.

Every time you spend with your Wise debit card, you'll receive a push notification on your smartphone from the Wise app showing you how much foreign currency you spent and how much balance you have left in that currency. You’ll also be able to change the PIN, freeze the card if you can’t find it anymore, set spending limits, and review your past transactions. Take note of the fact that you’ll need to have a minimum balance of 5 GBP (or the equivalent in another currency) to order a Wise debit card.

Be mindful that Wise's Visa card is a debit card, meaning that you’ll only be able to spend what’s already in your Wise Multi-Currency Account and it therefore won't impact any credit rating you may have.

If you're planning your next holidays abroad, you’ll probably also be pleased to hear that you'll not only be saving on on foreign transaction fees with Wise's debit card, but you’ll save on hotels too. Indeed, Wise has partnered with the Hotel Booking platform Agoda to offer a 10% discount if you book online with the card through its partnership page. Find out more about this offer here.