International Money Management

The Context

Working at Wise, an app that provides affordable international currency exchange and multi currency accounts. I was part of the Account squad, on the product team responsible for getting more people to hold money in their Wise account.

The Research Question

The original research question was:

• How can we help Wise customers grow their money with the Wise account?
• Would offering an overview of their money overtime encourage users to hold more money with Wise?

In an effort not to start with a solution, I reframed the question as:

• How does Wise fit into the overall money management of our uses?
• How can we help users grow their money with budgeting and saving?

The Method

Desk research on how consumers grow their money, with a result of saving and budgeting. A competitor analysis of budgeting and saving features, especially in neobanking apps.

Exploratory interviews discussing how Wise fit into customers’ money management landscape. How did they spend in multiple currencies? How did they decide what to hold with Wise and what to spend from their Wise account? What were their budgeting behaviors across currencies?

The participants

Wise customers who held multiple currencies with us.

The Findings

Most customers had a primary country of residence with a primary local bank account in that currency. A local bank account was often required for basics like renting accommodation or signing up to utilities. The Wise account was used mostly for their secondary currencies (where they may no longer be able to have a traditional bank account without residency), and money was held with Wise to spend later without the cost of exchange.

Budgeting and saving wasn’t something they needed for their secondary currency. Though many said they frequently used the spending categories feature of their neo-banking apps to watch and control their spending in their primary currency.

The Result

Some stakeholders felt that our true customers were digital nomads who did not have a primary currency or country of residences. However, the teams' analyst was able to corroborate that this appeared to be consistent with how most Wise customers held money with us.

The wealth dashboard was de-prioritised and spending categories was prioritised for further exploration and updating for the quarter. With improvements of spending categories, this feature was used more by customers and more regular spending was happening from the Wise account.