Remitly vs Wise

Looking at Remitly and Wise, it's quite clear that both are large, duly licensed companies with a track record of success delivering funds across the globe.

On the one hand, there's Remitly, which is licensed as a money transmitter in the US and also authorized to operate in all Canadian provinces (including Quebec), as well as in the UK and Ireland (which represents the entire EU). Like Wise, Remitly has been in the field for 10 years and today moves over $5 billion across the globe for more than 3 million customers annually. What's more, Remitly offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee, or you will get your money back.

On the other hand, Wise is similarly duly licensed, although slightly larger than Remitly: it moves more than US$70 billion across borders for more than 10 million customers every year.

Regardless of which platform you choose, both offer institutional grade security and take preventative measures, such as 2-step login and verification procedures, and both hold client funds completely separate from business accounts, as per FCA requirements. This means that should either country face any financial difficulties, then your money will be safe.

Whether you choose Remitly or Wise, you're in for high-quality service, and you can be assured that your money will be delivered smoothly, the transfer process will be hassle-free, and you can sign up with either platform in just a few clicks.

However, when it comes to the overall transfer experience, Wise has the edge over Remitly, even though Remitly offers more pay-in and pay-out options than Wise. For example, there are slightly fewer steps to both signing up and sending money with Wise, and in our impression, we found its user interface to be slightly cleaner and more intuitive than Remitly's (although Remitly's was by no means bad!)

When it comes to pricing, Remitly and Wise are the two cheapest money transfer providers on Monito's real-time comparison engine on average, and you can be sure that you'll get a good deal with either of them.

Provided you choose Remitly's 'Economy' pricing, Remitly will sometimes be the cheapest provider of all on Monito, and often so for cash transfers (which Wise doesn't support). However, for online bank-to-bank transfers, Wise is very often the cheapest service on Monito, and usually out-competes Remitly for transfers of these kinds.

(However, Remitly is very cheap on transfer corridors from North America and Europe to developing countries, and often is the better choice than Wise, even for bank transfers. That's why it's always important to compare transfer providers before sending money abroad.)

Take a look at the table below to get a better picture of how this works:

Based on how customers review Wise and Remitly, it's quite clear that both platforms impress their users.

Remitly is very popular with users, earning a four- out of five-star rating on Trustpilot with a high number of positive reviews. More impressive still is Wise, which has received overwhelmingly positive reviews on Trustpilot, with around 85% of 116 thousand customers rating the service five out of five stars.

While we think Wise slightly outdoes Remitly in this area too, it's fair to say that both platforms deliver on their promises and satisfy their users.