Wise is moving to deepen its footprint in the Philippines, aiming to tap into robust demand for remittance services while driving down the cost of cross-border transfers for Filipino consumers.

The Philippines consistently ranks among the world's largest remittance-receiving countries, with inflows underpinned by millions of overseas Filipino workers and a rapidly growing base of freelance and digital-economy participants earning from foreign clients.

Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, Wise Philippines (Wise Pilipinas, Inc.) Country Manager Areson I. Cuevas outlined his vision for the company's trajectory over the coming years.

"Personally, what I would like to have in the next three years is for more Filipinos to be familiar with the power of the Wise account — that they don't need to receive in their other accounts, that they can receive it straight to their Wise account in the currency that they want," Mr. Cuevas said.

Drawing on internal data, he noted that individuals and companies in the Philippines collectively lost an estimated P50 billion to foreign exchange markups in 2024. Despite this substantial figure, only 21% of Filipinos are aware that a hidden markup is applied to their remittances.

"It's really more of the awareness that we have struggled with," Mr. Cuevas said, adding that the estimated loss is "more or less uniform across markets."

"The average cost to move money across borders is 3% to 5%. So, that is how we computed the losses. In Wise, it's 0.5%. That's potential money that can be plowed back into the economy if people just knew about it," he explained.

"So, the market is very big. And of course, the goal of Wise is to be able to ensure that the transparency ethics markup is being shared with our customers so that it's actually a $35-billion market in terms of remittances."

To address the awareness gap, Wise Philippines is engaging with regulators, industry participants, and end-users to educate the public on remittance costs.

"That has been the biggest challenge, and we are having these talks with the regulators, with more industry participants, with actual freelancers, to make sure that the message comes across… They have to make sure that they know what they are paying for, and that so that they can compare among different providers," Mr. Cuevas said.

He also highlighted a growing need among Filipinos for seamless international money movement. "Normally, what I would do is I would wait for my family member to just come back to the Philippines, and I would pay because there's no easy way to move money. So, we're able to solve that by having this multi-currency account that can really span across different countries."

As part of its growth strategy, the company has integrated the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) ID into its user onboarding process. Mr. Cuevas reported that 40%–50% of Filipino users have registered using this national ID.

"We are seeing that more and more customers are becoming familiar with PhilSys ID. What they do is they print their ID on bond paper or even their QR, and that is acceptable to us," he said.

Wise Philippines is also in discussions with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) regarding the rationalization of its transfer fees. This follows the regulator's latest circular requiring financial institutions to establish fair and market-based charges for person-to-person transfers. The circular is part of a broader BSP push to modernize the country's digital payments infrastructure and improve transparency in financial transactions.

"If you're looking at circular, it actually does not require FIs to put their fees to zero. It allows FIs to have their fees at cost, [which is] whatever cost they need to recover to be able to move that money. So, what we are ensuring to our customers is whatever fee you see on the app is the actual cost of moving those funds domestically and whatever margin you see."

The company is additionally exploring partnerships with banks and nonbank entities, including e-wallets, to further reduce fees on its platform.

"In the Philippines, we still don't have any non-financial institutions, but globally we have the likes of travel companies and stockbrokers," Mr. Cuevas noted. "We want to bring costs down as low as possible. We are slowly doing that by having more direct connections globally."

On the demand side, Mr. Cuevas observed that Filipinos are increasingly holding foreign currency within their Wise accounts, a trend he attributed to the recent depreciation of the Philippine peso.

"We see that more and more Filipinos are putting more money in their Wise account because they see that, unfortunately, the peso has been depreciating. We see that more and more Filipinos keep in foreign currency, and they convert to peso when they actually need it, not when they receive it. You convert when you see that the rate is favorable, and when you have actual need of the Philippine peso." — A.M.C. Sy