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 this context, a Wise Business account might be a viable solution due to the accessibility of its services.

If you have doubts about opening any business account, before learning about Wise Business account specifics, bear in mind that a well-serviced business account can help your business grow by providing necessary financial management resources, tools and support as well as help you to build a credit rating. It can also enhance your business image and simplify the submission of tax returns.

What You Need to Know About Wise

Wise is a financial technology company offering online products and services across the world in accordance with local and international standards and regulations, including AML legislation.

Although Wise isn’t a bank, it’s authorised by various financial institutions in the countries of its operations which makes it a reliable financial services provider. Established in London in 2011 by Estonian entrepreneurs initially as a money transfer service provider, today it serves over 10 million customers in over 170 countries by offering an array of 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 customer transactions and ensure secure customer service, it uses HTTPS encryption, 2-step login and the expertise of real employees monitoring every transaction and verifying identities.

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

• Sole traders and freelancers
• Limited companies
• Public companies
• Partnerships
• Charities and trusts based in the EEA, Canada, USA, UK, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand

Keep in mind that the following businesses and non-profit organisations aren’t eligible for a Wise Business account:

• Charities and trusts in countries not listed above
• Unregistered UK charities
• Businesses involved in cryptocurrency, tobacco, adult content, or other industries that aren’t supported by Wise
• Brazilian businesses who intend to make transfers in BRL
• Superannuation Funds or Self-managed Superannuation Funds (SMSF) in Australia
• Businesses offering services or products relating to Cuba’s relations with the USA
• Businesses with bearer shares regardless of the jurisdiction they’re registered in

It’s important to note that while Wise is licensed to execute personal transfers in all the countries of its operations, in some cases, business transfers can be limited to a certain extent as there are some currency routes that Wise doesn’t facilitate for businesses due to the applicable local regulations.

Why Choose Wise

Wise Business is a free international multicurrency online account designed to engage in borderless business activities while optimising financial workflows and costs.

Wise business account offers the following benefits:

• Money can be stored, received and spent in multiple currencies
• Speedy transactions
• Relatively low fees (to compare, it’s up to 19 times cheaper than PayPal but might be more expensive than other service providers in certain regions)
• Real exchange rate – Wise doesn’t mark up its rates for currency exchanges to increase its own profit which means you’re always offered a real mid-market exchange rate allowing you to save money
• A debit card accepted internationally
• Open API that helps businesses to streamline their operational workflows
• Multiuser access

The multiuser access feature enables an account owner to grant different levels of access to the Wise Business account. The levels of access are the following:

• Admin – can view and manage every aspect of the account, including adding and removing team members, as well as spending with the business card
• Employee – can spend the company’s money with their own Wise Business payment cards up to pre-set limits and track their own activity
• Payer – is enabled to make and manage payments, convert between currency accounts and download account statements and receipts, as well as contact Wise Customer Support on behalf of the business
• Preparer – can set up single payments for approval, view the records of the account and download account statements
• Viewer – can view the account activity, connect to accounting software, and download statements and receipts, as well as manage accounting bank feeds

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
• Manage payroll
• Spend money in multiple currencies with the real exchange rate
• Manage your cashflow overseas

A Wise Business debit card can be used to settle business expenses and spend money online or at physical stores everywhere in the world. If you don’t have the local currency in your account, Wise will automatically convert the amount for you. The card can currently be ordered by Wise Business clients in the majority of European countries, the USA, Canada, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. If none of these countries is a country of your residence, you can join Wise’s waiting list and its team will notify you when the card becomes available in your country.

How Wise open API Can Support Your Business

Let’s dive deeper into the optimisation of your business operations that can be enabled by the Wise open API as this can really save you money and time. An open API is an application programming interface, publicly available on the internet to ensure accessibility to software developers who can make selected applications smoothly interact with Wise. In other words, the Wise open API allows businesses to connect their Wise accounts with their financial management and other types of business software.

The Wise open API can be freely used by small, medium and large businesses to integrate their internal systems and automate financial workflows based on 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 can automate numerous financial processes – cross-border and domestic invoice payments, recurring transfers, standing orders
• Add Wise as a payment option to your website
• Optimise payroll through automation
• Streamline expense reporting
• Initiate payments from invoicing systems
• Monitor the status of the business transfers
• Monitor payments received to your Wise Business local account
• Get real-time notifications on various internal communication platforms
• Track exchange rates of multiple currencies and automate conversions at mid-market exchange rates

If it sounds like something your business can take advantage of, you can get a sandbox account within minutes. This will allow you to test your integrated application before going live. When you’re prepared to go live, you can obtain your live API key from your Wise Business account.

You can effortlessly create API tokens, also known as access tokens, to ensure user identification and consequently the highest level of security of your accounts.

Whether you’re still building your integrations or are already running your operations, you can always seek help from the Wise customer support team who’s available 24/7.

Requirements for Businesses

If you wish to open a business account with Wise, you might be required to meet country-specific conditions in addition to the general requirements. The Wise team will request further information and documentation if your business is registered in such countries as the USA, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. If you’re not sure how to prepare the application specific to your country, our team will be delighted to provide a personalised legal consultation.

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

• Business registration details – business name, legal type, etc.
• Registered business address
• Business trading address(s) (not a virtual address or a PO box)
• Information about the industry the business is in
• Links to the website and social media pages of the business
• Names, dates of birth, countries of residence of all beneficial owners
• Explanation of what purposes the new business account will be used for

You may be required to upload the following documents:

• A copy of the company director’s passport or ID card
• Proof of registered business address
• Proof of trading address(s)
• Articles of Association and Memorandum of Association or other business formation documents
• Business ownership agreements
• Business licence if the business is licensable
• If the potential owner of the Wise Business account isn’t the owner or a senior manager of the company, they will be asked to provide proof of authorisation to open such an account on behalf of the business
• Credit card statements

To verify your business address, you can upload any of the following documents:

• A utility bill (gas, electricity, landline phone but no mobile phone bills) issued within the last three months
• A scanned or photographed copy of a bank or credit card statement in PDF
• A tax bill or a tax notification
• A document issued by another local authority or FCA-authorised institution within the last 12 months

In some countries you may run into an obstacle if you’re a non-resident as one of the requirements for opening a business account with a traditional bank might be permanent residence status. In this case, a Wise multicurrency account comes in useful as this requirement doesn’t have to be satisfied simply because you don’t have to open a local account to accept payments in local currency.

Whether you’re eligible for a Wise Business account also depends on the nature and structure of your organisation. For instance, if you run a charity that’s registered in a country other than the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland or in a country that’s not part of the EEA, you won’t be able to open a Wise Business account. The same applies to trusts – Wise only supports trusts registered in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and the EEA.

The Process of Opening a Business Account With Wise

To open a Wise Business account, you only need to dedicate several minutes. You’ll be required to enter your personal and business details, upload relevant documents, as well as verify your account prior to starting money transfers.

The online verification process might take up to ten business days. The purpose of this step is to ensure compliance with national financial regulations in the countries of Wise operations. It also guarantees the safety of the business money and that Wise terms of use are taken into account. The provider aims to be efficient and quick, however, the process ultimately depends on the quality and accuracy of the supplied business documents and data.

Wise verifies a business in the following way:

• The business signs up for a Wise Business account online (a local fee for account opening applies)
  • 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 process is successful, the Wise team drops a confirmation email to the business and resumes the money transfer

If you wish to open a business bank account with Wise, our team here at Regulated United Europe will be delighted to assist you. We have eight years of experience in helping clients to open bank accounts in Europe. We tap into our vast network of trusted partners in the European financial services industry to offer the most suitable and cost-effective solutions that improve the functioning of the businesses we serve.