Wise is the app most people should open first when they are sending money from a UK bank account to a family bank account abroad. On a normal UK bank-to-bank send it usually lands in seconds and shows the fee on the line before you press send. On most sends it is either the cheapest, or so close that the speed and the visible fee are worth the small gap.
That is the default answer, and it is right most of the time. It is not right every time. Here is when Wise is genuinely the app to open, and when to open something else.
When Wise is the right app
Open Wise when you are sending from your UK bank account into a foreign bank account, and any of the following is true.
- The receiver has a working bank account and does not need cash in hand.
- You are sending as euros, whether to Germany, France, Ireland, Lithuania or elsewhere in the eurozone, and you are sending more than about 300 pounds.
- You are sending more than about 500 pounds on almost any route.
- You are sending to India into a normal Indian bank account or a UPI ID, for family maintenance, education or medical costs.
- You are sending to a big established route (India, Philippines, Nigeria into a bank account) and you want the money there in seconds, with a fee you can see.
On all of these, Wise gives you the real exchange rate, the one you would find on Google if you searched it right now, and a small visible fee on the fee line. The fee is a small fixed part in the send currency plus a small percentage of the amount, so it scales with the send. On a euro send of a couple of hundred pounds the visible fee is around a pound; on a send of a few thousand it is still well under half a percent. Wise’s edge on the amount that lands is small on a two-hundred-pound send and clearer on the bigger one.
Wise is also faster than almost everything else in this market on the routes it treats as instant. Wise itself says most transfers on those routes land in under half a minute; on Nigeria, Philippines, India and Kenya bank sends we see them land in a few seconds most of the time. When you are sending on a Sunday night and the rent is due Monday morning, that speed is worth real money. For the actual amount that landed on a recent live send in a given corridor, check the most recent Friday number.
When to open something else
Change any part of the send and the maths quietly changes with it. On these sends, a specialist beats Wise most weeks.
Small sends of pounds to zloty, on next-morning delivery. TransferGo has spent years wiring itself into Poland, Lithuania and Romania. On small weekday sends to Polish and Romanian bank accounts on its “Tomorrow” tier, the bank-to-bank pricing tends to run at a low percentage, often near-free on the Poland leg. Wise’s own delivery estimate on GBP to zloty runs longer than the seconds it takes on most other routes. Open TransferGo’s own calculator on the same amount before you press send; if it lands more zloty than Wise, open TransferGo first.
Direct-to-M-Pesa in Kenya. Wise sends to a Kenyan bank account. It does not send straight to an M-Pesa wallet, which is where most of your family in Kenya actually holds and spends money. Sendwave and WorldRemit are the apps built for this leg. Sendwave charges no upfront fee on sends to Kenya and takes its cost from a small gap in the rate. WorldRemit shows the fee in the app the moment you type the amount in.
An app going direct to M-Pesa usually lands a shade more than a bank send on the same amount and puts the shillings in a phone rather than a branch queue. The Friday number for Kenya shows who landed the most shillings on the same 300 pounds. If the destination is a phone number and an M-Pesa PIN, do not use Wise. If the destination is a Kenyan bank account, Wise is fine and close on the total.
Nigeria on a week where LemFi is quoting close to the CBN rate. Wise usually leads the standard comparison feeds on Nigeria. LemFi does not appear in those feeds, but it tends to quote a naira rate very close to the CBN official rate with no fee, and it is one of the apps a lot of Nigerian senders in the UK reach for. Check both apps on the same amount before you press send. If LemFi is landing more naira, use LemFi. If Wise is landing more, use Wise. Keep both installed. The most recent Nigeria Friday number has the amount each app landed on the same 200 pounds.
GBP-EUR under about 500 pounds if you have Revolut and it is a weekday. Revolut’s free Standard plan lets you convert money at the real rate up to a monthly limit, on weekdays only. Outside that free amount, or over a Saturday and Sunday, Revolut adds a markup to the rate and Wise is cheaper again. The exact monthly limit and the weekend markup are set by Revolut and change from time to time; if the transfer matters, check the current numbers on 
Revolut’s own fees page before you press send. On a weekday, inside the free amount, Revolut on GBP to EUR is free and lands in seconds.
Cash in hand at a village agent. No app on your side, Wise included, will put paper money into your family member’s hand in a place that only has a Western Union or MoneyGram counter for miles. If that is the send, use the Post Office counter, which is Western Union behind a Post Office logo, or Western Union directly. It costs a small extra in the rate. It is worth it for the service.
The one Wise trick worth knowing
If you already know that a chunk of euros is coming up soon, for family, for rent, for a trip, and today’s rate is one you would take, you can convert pounds to euros inside your Wise account at the same fee you would pay to send them to a bank later. The euros sit in your Wise account until you need them, and you send them across when the moment comes. You are not paying the fee twice. You are paying the fee once, at the moment of your choice, and locking today’s rate.
That is what people mean when they call it the swap trick. It is not a way to avoid the fee. It is a way to time the rate. If you have no view on where the rate is going, do not bother with it. If you have watched the rate slide against you for three weeks, it is the tool that costs you nothing extra to use.
What Wise hides less well than its own marketing suggests
Two catches worth naming.
The fee scales with the amount. Wise’s fee is a small fixed part in the send currency plus a small percentage of what you are sending. On a small euro send the visible cost sits a shade under one percent; on a bigger send it falls closer to a third of a percent. In pounds, that means the fee grows with the send even as its share falls. It is still much less than a bank keeps on the same send in a worse rate, but if you were expecting a flat 99 pence forever, that is not what Wise does. Read the fee line every time.
The Wise debit card charges you after 250 pounds a month at the ATM. The card itself costs 7 pounds to order and nothing to hold. The first 250 pounds you take out of an ATM abroad in a calendar month is free. After that, Wise charges 2.69 percent of anything above 250 pounds. Two ATM pulls of 200 pounds on a Lagos trip cost you nothing on the first pull and about 4 pounds on the second. Split larger cash needs across months, or pay by card in shops, where it costs you nothing.
Where your money sits
Wise the UK entity is Wise Payments Limited, authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority as an electronic money institution, firm reference 900507. It is not a UK bank. Your Wise balance is safeguarded by law in ring-fenced accounts at partner banks, but it is not covered by the UK bank compensation scheme the way money sitting in a normal UK bank account is. In practice this is the same shape as TransferGo, Revolut in the UK, and every other non-bank money-transfer app. It is worth knowing, not worth losing sleep over.
The verdict
For a UK-to-abroad bank-to-bank send of any real size, Wise is the app to open first. The fee is on the screen, the rate is close to the one on Google, and the money usually lands in seconds.
For small sends to Poland or Romania on the “Tomorrow” tier, open TransferGo. For direct-to-M-Pesa in Kenya, open Sendwave or WorldRemit. For Nigeria on any week where LemFi is quoting close to the CBN rate, check LemFi on the same amount before you press send. For cash in hand at a village agent, the Post Office counter and Western Union behind it are still the right thing to open.
Whichever app you use, the number that matters is the naira, the pesos, the euros or the shillings that arrive in the other account. Open two apps, type the same amount into both, and send with the one that puts more of them there.
Corrections
- 2026-07-27: Removed dated corridor numbers per the evergreen rule (PROVIDER-REVIEWS.md §4). Specific arrival amounts on named dates (naira on 200 pounds to Nigeria, euros on 200 and 1,000 pounds to Germany, zloty on 200 pounds to Poland, shillings on 200 pounds to Kenya) have been reframed as structural framing or replaced with cross-links to the most recent Friday number for that corridor. Wise’s own speed statistic has been softened from a named percentage to a stable structural claim. The fee-scales-with-amount section now expresses the mechanic in percentages rather than a dated per-corridor pence figure.
- 2026-07-13: An earlier version of this page named specific competitor-side figures (TransferGo’s GBP to zloty send, and a direct-to-M-Pesa Kenya send on Sendwave or WorldRemit) that were not captured from those providers’ own live surfaces on the day, described TransferGo’s “Tomorrow” tier as “often at zero fee” against TransferGo’s own “from 0.2 percent” bank-to-bank pricing, and put Wise’s GBP to zloty delivery at “up to a day” against Wise’s own estimate of more than a day on that route. The specific unsourced competitor numbers have been removed or reframed as directional, TransferGo’s fee line has been corrected to about 0.2 percent, and the Wise GBP to zloty speed line has been widened to match Wise’s own estimate.