International payments firm Wise on Tuesday said its revenue in the first quarter of its financial year amounted to 123.5 million pounds ($168.66 million), a 43% year-on-year growth. In its first trading update as a public company, the London-based money transfer company said it processed 16.4 billion pounds in cross-border payments, a 54% year-on-year increase.
Wise said 3.7 million customers made transactions using its platform over the period. Personal customers increased by 28% from a year earlier, and business customers grew by 56%.
Earlier this month, Wise made its debut on the London Stock Exchange. The company made a strong market debut with a valuation of£8.75bn, making it the largest-ever listing of a UK tech company.
Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, chose London for a rare direct listing, a form of flotation where a company begins trading publicly but does not issue new equity.
The company’s first direct listing on the London Stock exchange ended on a grand scale, leaving an inevasible impression in London’s booming fintech market and raising the hopes of London’s Stock Exchange Market of attracting other tech companies. Wise’s shares were priced at 800 pence and were enthusiastically considered by investors, with bids ranging from 100 pence to 1,000 pence.
Wise was founded in January 2011 by Estonian businessmen Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus. The money transfer service Wise offers a cheap way to send money from the U.S. to about 80 countries, with friendly exchange rates. Customers can fund a transfer in various ways, such as with a bank account or credit card, but recipients need to have a bank account. With a Wise account, people and businesses can hold 54 currencies, move money between countries and spend money abroad.
Wise is a global technology company, building the best way to move money around the world, and stipulated as part of the company’s goal are plans to revolutionize cross-border payments by stripping out the markups that banks and foreign exchange dealers add to transactions. The company said it expects to continue the year positively.
