How to Open a Business Account With Wise

If you run an international business where accepting and making multicurrency payments, among other borderless financial operations, is your daily routine, it might be a real challenge to find a financial service provider that lets your business move freely and cost-effectively. In that case, a Wise Business account is a likely solution thanks to the accessibility of its services.

Opening any business account, if in doubt, before learning about the Wise Business account specifics, keep in mind that a well-serviced business account can promote your business through financial management tools and resources as well as help you to build up a credit rating. It may also enhance the image of your business and make submitting tax returns simpler.

What You Need to Know About Wise

Wise is a financial-technology company: online products and services, developed under the standards and regulations locally and internationally, including AML legislation, are offered to customers around the globe.

Although not a bank itself, it’s authorised by various financial institutions in the countries of its operations, so you may regard it as a reliable financial service provider. Founded in London in 2011 by Estonian entrepreneurs, as a money transfer service provider, today it serves more than 10 million customers in more than 170 countries with various financial products and services.

One of the reasons you can trust Wise is that it has pledged not to misuse or sell customer data, which is one of the indicators of safety and security. To protect all customers’ transactions and guarantee secure customer service, it makes use of HTTPS encryption, 2-step login, and expertise from real employees who monitor every transaction and verify identities.

Wise Business supports many different legal types of business, namely:

• Sole traders and freelancers
• Limited companies
• Public companies
• Partnerships
• EEA, Canada, USA, UK, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand located charities and trusts

Please note that the following type businesses and non-profit organisations are not eligible for a Wise Business account:

• The listed above charities and trust which are not based in any of the mentioned countries
• Unregistered UK charities
• Cryptocurrency businesses, tobacco merchants, businesses selling adult content, or other businesses not supported by Wise
• Brazilian businesses wanting to send transfers in BRL
• Superannuation Funds or Self-managed Superannuation Funds (SMSF) in Australia
• Businesses whose services or products relate to Cuba’s relations with the USA
• Businesses with bearer shares, regardless of where they are incorporated

It’s very important to point out that Wise is licensed to execute personal transfers in all countries where it operates. However, in cases of business transfers, it might be limited because there are some currency routes that Wise doesn’t facilitate due to local applicable regulations on businesses.

Why Choose Wise

The Wise Business Account is a free international multicurrency online account to engage in borderless business activity, while optimizing financial workflows and costs.

What you get with the Wise Business Account:

• Money can be stored, received, and spent in multiple currencies
• Speedy transactions
• Relatively low fees to compare, it is up to 19 times cheaper than PayPal, but might be more expensive compared to other service providers in some regions
• Real exchange rate: Wise doesn’t mark up its rates for currency exchanges to hike its profit margin; hence, you are always provided with a real mid-market exchange rate that lets you save money.
• Internationally accepted debit card
• Open API that helps businesses in ironing out kinks in their operational workflows
• Multi-user access

Multiuser access allows the owner of the account to invite other people and set levels of access to the Wise Business account. Access levels are as follows:

Generally, this is what you can do with your Wise Business account in over 70 countries:

Get paid in local currency

Pay invoices in local currency

Payroll management

Spend in several currencies with the real exchange rate

Manage your cash flow overseas

The card will be able to be used to settle business expenses and to spend your money online or at physical stores anywhere in the world. If the balance of the local currency is not in the account, then Wise automatically converts it. The card can be ordered now by the clients of Wise Business in the majority of European countries, in the USA, Canada, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. If none of these countries is your country of residence, you may want to join Wise’s waiting list and the team will notify you when the card will be available in your country.

How Wise open API Can Support Your Business

Now, let me explain in greater detail how the optimization of your business operations could be enabled by the open API of Wise, as that can save you lots of money and time. An open API is an application programming interface publicly available on the internet to make it accessible to software developers who can make selected applications smoothly interact with Wise. In other words, the open API allows businesses to link their Wise account with their financial management and other business-related software.

The open API of Wise can be used freely by small, medium, and large businesses in order to integrate internal systems and automate workflows of financial processes according to their needs without asking the Wise team to get involved.

How the Wise open API can enable your business by making accounting processes easier:

• You will be able to automate various financial processes: cross-border and domestic invoice payments, recurring transfers, standing orders
• Add Wise as a payment option to your website
• Optimise payroll via automation
• OPTIMISE expense reporting
• Trigger payments from invoicing system
• Monitor payments received to your Wise Business local account
• Get real-time notifications across various internal communication platforms.
• Track various currency exchange rates and automate conversions at mid-market exchange rates.

If that sounds like something your business can use, you can have a sandbox account in a matter of minutes. You can test your integrated application with that, prior to going live. When you’re ready to go live, you can retrieve your live API key from your Wise Business account.

You can generate API tokens, also known as access tokens, which ensure user identity and, subsequently, the highest level of security of your accounts.

Be it building integrations or running your operations, always feel free to contact the customer support team at any time of the day or night at Wise.

Business Requirements

Specific country requirements may be applied, besides the general ones, when opening a business account in Wise. In the case of the USA, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, more information and documentation will be requested by the Wise team due to the fact that your business was registered there. And in case you are not sure how to prepare an application specific for your country, our team will be happy to provide you with personalized legal advice.

Generally, to open a business bank account with Wise, you will have to provide the following information:

Business registration details – business name, legal type, etc.

Registered business address

Business trading address(es) not a virtual address or a PO box

Industry information

Website and/or social media page links

Names, date of birth, and countries of residence for all beneficial owners

Description of the purpose of the new business account

You might be asked to upload the following documents:

A copy of the passport or ID card of the company director

Proof of the registered business address

Proof of trading address(es)

Memorandum and Articles of Association or other documents of business incorporation

Business ownership agreements

Business license if licensable

If a potential owner of the Wise Business account isn’t an owner or senior manager of the company, he/she is asked to provide proof of authorization for opening such an account on behalf of the business.

Credit card statements

Following documents can be uploaded to verify your business address:

Utility bill within the last three months in the name of the applicant: gas, electricity, and landline telephone but not mobile phone bills.

Bank statement or Credit card statement in PDF format, scanned, or photographed.

Tax bill or tax notification.

Proof from another local authority or FCA-authorised institution within the last 12 months.

The problem might occur in some countries because one of the conditions for opening a business account in a traditional bank can be permanent residence status. With regard to this, a Wise multicurrency account will come in handy because this condition is not needed to be met simply because you don’t have to open a local account in order to receive payments in local currency.

Whether you are eligible for a Wise Business account also depends on the nature and structure of your organization. For example, in cases where you run a charity that is registered in any country other than the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, or in any country that is not part of the EEA, then you will not be eligible for the opening of a Wise Business account. The same goes for trusts: Wise supports only those registered in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the EEA.

The Process of Opening a Business Account With Wise

It takes several minutes to open an account in a Wise Business. You will need to provide your personal and business information, then upload the documents and verify your account before you actually begin with transferring funds.

Online verification can take as long as ten business days. This step aims to ensure that the Wise operations meet national financial regulations. It also secures the business money and terms of use of Wise. The provider is doing its best to be as efficient and fast as possible; however, the entire onboarding process is dependent on the quality and correctness of the provided business documents and information.

Wise verifies the business accordingly:

• The business registers for a Wise Business account online – quite cheap and opens an account.
• This is where Wise asks to provide such detailed information about the business and its stakeholders.
• At this stage, Wise will also ask to provide details about the owner of the Wise account so that they can verify the person’s identity and authorisation to open an account on behalf of the company
• The business sets up and pays for a transfer (set-up fees apply)
• The Wise team starts the verification process as soon as the money is received from the business
• If the verification is successful, the Wise team sends a confirmation email to the business and reinitiates the money transfer.

If you would like to open a business bank account with Wise, our team here at Regulated United Europe will be in a position to assist you accordingly. Drawing on a solid eight years of experience and deep knowledge in helping clients open bank accounts across Europe, we have leveraged this wide network of trusted partners in the European financial services industry to offer the best-fitted and affordable solutions that enhance the performance of the businesses we serve.