• Source: Wise (company)

Wise, previously known as TransferWise, is a financial technology company focused on global money transfers. Headquartered in London, it was founded by Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus in January 2011. As of 2023, it offers three main products: Wise Account, Wise Business, and Wise Platform.




History



Wise was cofounded in London by Taavet Hinrikus, one of the first employees of Skype, and Kristo Käärmann, a Deloitte management consultant.
Hinrikus moved from Estonia to London around 2006, when he began experiencing the challenges of international money transfers. He became aware that when sending money between Estonia and the UK, banks would typically deduct at least a 5% fee, and also remarked that most of the charge is hidden in the exchange rate. According to him, banks try hard to make it extremely difficult to understand what the consumer is paying for, and there is no transparency in the market.
The company's system has been compared to the hawala money transfer system.
In its first year of operation, transactions through Wise amounted to €10 million. In 2012, Wise was named one of "East London's 20 hottest tech startups" by The Guardian, Start-Up of the Week by Wired UK, one of five "start-ups to watch" at Seedcamp's 2012 US Demo Day by TechCrunch, and appeared in Startups.co.uk's list of the top 100 UK start-ups of 2012.
In April 2013, Wise stopped letting users purchase Bitcoin, citing pressure from banking providers. Independent comparison site Monito reported that Wise was on average 83% cheaper than the big four UK banks on major currency "routes", but could be up to 90% cheaper in certain specific cases.
In May 2015, Wise was ranked No. 8 on CNBC's 2015 Disruptor 50 list, and in August 2015, the company was named a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer.
On 8 April 2017, an internal memo from British bank Santander claimed the bank would lose 84% of its revenue from its money transfer business if its charges were the same as Wise. Also in April 2017, the company announced the opening of its APAC hub in Singapore. In 2019, the company announced opening an office in Brussels. In May 2017, the company announced its customers were sending over £1 billion every month using the service, and that the company had turned profitable six years after being founded.
On 21 January 2021, Sky News reported that Wise had appointed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as joint global coordinators for its planned initial public offering. On 22 February 2021, the company rebranded from TransferWise to Wise. As part of this rebranding, the company also launched a new website domain. The company rebranded to reflect its expanded product offering beyond international money transfer.
On 2 July 2021, it was announced in a prospectus published by the company that co-founder Taavet Hinrikus would step down as chair within a year. It was also announced that David Wells would replace him in this position.
On 7 July 2021, Wise went public with a direct listing on the London Stock Exchange and was valued at $11 billion.
On 27 June 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority reported that the Wise CEO, Kristo Käärmann, was included on their list of individuals and businesses receiving penalties for a deliberate default regarding their tax affairs. He would remain on the list for 12 months, starting in September 2021. He reportedly failed to pay £720,000 for the 2017–2018 tax year.
In 2023, the founders, Käärmann and Hinrikus, have improved their positions in The Sunday Times Rich List 2023 of the wealthiest people in the UK. Käärmann, ranked as 156th, being worth £1.134 billion and Hinrikus ranked 197th with a net worth of £861 million.
In June 2024, the company announced that its customers may have been affected by a data breach at partner bank Evolve Bank & Trust.




Services



Wise offers three products: Wise Account, Wise Business, and Wise Platform. Wise is not a bank, as it states it does not lend out customer money to others. However, it offers accounts through Wise Account for customers to hold their money while sending, receiving, and spending. Customers may opt-in to earn interest on the account and gain FDIC insurance on up to $250,000 of their deposit, relying on Wise's partnership with banks. Wise Business allows businesses to perform cross-border money transfers. Wise Platform is a platform allowing "banks and businesses to offer their customers fast, cheap and transparent ways to manage their money across borders".
As of 2023, Wise partners with BlackRock for its interest bearing accounts.




Funding


Wise received seed funding amounting to $1.3 million from a consortium including venture firms IA Ventures and Index Ventures, IJNR Ventures, NYPPE as well as individual investors such as PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, former Betfair CEO David Yu, and Wonga.com co-founder Errol Damelin. Wise also received investment after being named one of Seedcamp 2011's winners.
In May 2013, it was announced that Wise had secured a $6 million investment round led by Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures. Wise raised a further $25 million in June 2014, adding Richard Branson as an investor.
In January 2015, it was announced that Wise had raised a $58 million Series C round, led by investors Andreessen Horowitz. In May 2016, Wise secured a funding of $26 million. This raised the company's valuation to $1.1 billion. As of May 2016, Wise has raised a total of $117 million in funding.
In November 2017, the company raised a $280 million Series E led by Old Mutual Global Investors and Institutional Venture Partners, as well as Sapphire Ventures, Japanese Mitsui & Co., and World Innovation Lab.
In May 2019, the company had the secondary investment round of $292 million and reached the total valuation of $3.5 billion, more than double the valuation Wise achieved in late 2017 at the time of its $280 million Series E round.
In July 2020, the company disclosed a secondary investment round of $319 million and reached the total valuation of $5 billion, led by new investor D1 Capital Partners and existing shareholder Lone Pine Capital. Vulcan Capital also came on board as a new investor, with Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Investments and LocalGlobe adding to their existing holdings.




Criticism


In May 2016, Wise's claim "you save up to 90% against banks" was called misleading by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ASA determined that the currency conversion calculator on Wise's website provided misleading calculations.
In June 2020, after experts raised ethical and privacy concerns around the digital COVID-19 immunity passports Wise was helping develop, the company conceded immunity passports were not a "perfect solution" and co-founder Hinrikus said they would not be launched publicly until there was scientific consensus on COVID-19 immunity.
In January 2023, Wise was accused of harming competition in an official letter to the UK Competition and Markets Authority by its competitor Atlantic Money. Wise is said to have removed the cheaper challenger from its international transfers price comparison table for economic reasons. Wise is also alleged to have denied Atlantic Money access to additional comparison sites the firm owns and controls.




References

• Source: Wise Company

The Wise Company (stylized The Wise Co., a.k.a. The Wise Store) was a department store in Long Beach, California founded in the early 1900s by W. H. ("Herb") Wise.
In 1894 Wise opened a grocery store at Cherry Ave. and Third Street in Long Beach. On July 28, 1902, he opened "The Cash Store" grocery in 27-by-75-foot (2,200 sq ft (200 m2)) quarters that W. H. Wise rented for $30/month at Pine and First street (later the site of the Bank of Italy). Wise offered the first grocery delivery by motor vehicle in Southern California, an early Oldsmobile "one-lunger". Wise added dry goods to his assortment, then removed groceries to deal exclusively in dry goods.
It moved to successively larger quarters: in 1906 to 333 Pine between Third and Fourth (later home to a Woolworth store). The Cash Store Co. added linens and furniture to its lines. In 1911, Wise moved to a larger location again, this time to Broadway west of Pine, where it would do business until December 2, 1925. In 1915 Wise doubled the size of the 1911 store.




1925 store


In that year 1925 Wise bought The Wall Company department store, changed the name of The Cash Store Co. to The Wise Company and on December 3, 1925, opened for business in new 57,000 sq ft (5,300 m2) quarters at 113-123 Broadway (since razed), reported to have cost $500,000 (($8.69 million in 2023)). W. Horace Austin, its architect, who also designed competitor Buffums 1912 store and 1924 addition. The Long Beach Press-Telegram already called the 1925 building "splendid" and "one of the finest department stores on the Southern California Coast". Only a few years later, the Wise Company would impress Long Beach again and add to its growing civic pride.




1929 Building


On October 5, 1929, it opened a new building 216 Pine Avenue, adjacent to and immediately west of its 1925 store, at the northeast corner of Broadway, in art deco style with six stories and 150 ft (46 m) of frontage on each street, for a total of 135,000 sq ft (12,500 m2) of total floor area, of which four floors (90,000 sq ft (8,400 m2)) were dedicated to merchandising.
The building harmonized with and formed an addition to, the existing Wise Co. building, which had been opened only four years earlier in 1925. A Van de Kamp's Holland Dutch Bakery store operated in the Wise Co. store.




Closing and epilogue


Wise closed his department store and retired in 1934, after which the building was mostly empty for decades. Montgomery Ward operated for a time in the eastern (1925) portion of the store, but closed its store there in 1958.




= For decades, a "blot on Downtown Long Beach"

=
Buffums department store, the Independent and the Press-Telegram newspapers saw the prominent nearly-empty building as a negative influence on the overall economic health of the retail core and central business district in general.
As Buffums put it in 1960:

We have had truly wonderful neighbors all of our 56 years on the southwest corner of Pine and Broadway, excepting only… the Wise Building since out close friend and fine competitor Herb Wise retired from retailing some 26 years ago. The almost disgraceful misuse of the fine structure carrying his respected name over the last quarter century has proved an utter waste of an excellent property and a blot on all Downtown Long Beach




= Syndicate to gain control of the building

=
The building had multiple owners at that point. Claude John owned the eastern (1925) part and National Dollar Stores owned the western (1929) part. John sold to Belcher Investments, who formed a syndicate with Buffums and the two newspapers and gained an option agreement with National Dollar Stores which would give them control over the western portion should they find a major retail anchor tenant for the building. However, despite spending $81,105 by April 1960 (($835,318 in 2023)), they failed to find one.
By that time, most retail growth had shifted to the suburbs. In particular, the Lakewood Center had opened in 1952 at the northern edge of the City of Long Beach. May Company California, which operated Downtown Los Angeles' largest department store, taking up a full city block and with more than one million square feet of floor space, had opened a 347,000-square-foot (32,200 m2) branch at Lakewood, the world's largest suburban department store at that time. May Company Lakewood alone was larger than Downtown Long Beach's Buffums, which in the first half of the twentieth century had been such a protagonist of civic pride.




= Library option

=
In June 1960 Long Beach citizens voted on Measure C: whether a new library should be housed in the Wise Building. Buffums expressed strong support for this option. Another option was for Long Beach to issue bonds to finance a new library building in the Long Beach Civic Center, which won over the Wise Building option.




= Current status

=
The building still exists in Downtown Long Beach and has been refaced with glass and steel. The two square towers that once topped the building are no longer present.




Herb Wise


In addition to growing and running his retail business, W. H. "Herb" Wise had served as the head of the Long Beach Merchants' Association and of its Rotary Club.




External links






= Photos of the 1929 building

=
"The Wise Co. Building in 1932 (7 views)". California State Library. The Mott Studios. 1932. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
"Wise Building, Long Beach — Horace Austin, Architect | Architectural Digest | 1931 Volume VIII Issue 2". Architectural Digest | The Complete Archive. VIII (2). 1931. Retrieved 4 December 2023.




= About The Wise Co.

=
Addison, Brian (4 April 2019). "Long Beach Lost: Downtown's 'Gray Ghost,' the Art Deco masterpiece known as the Wise Building". the Hi-lo. Retrieved 4 December 2023.




References

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• The Wise Guys Who Fool Around
• Isaac Mayer Wise
• Sup tomat dan telur
• The Walt Disney Company
• Kirk Wise
• Oliver & Company
• Muhammad
• Radio satelit
• Perang Dunia II
• John Russell
• Wise (company)
• Wise Company
• Wise
• Wise Foods
• Ray Wise
• Brownie Wise
• David Wise (composer)
• WISE Campaign
• Honda Aircraft Company
• Sudha Murty