How Wise is betting on infrastructure and brand

Cross-border payments have a structural problem. A transaction that crosses borders typically travels through two, three, or four correspondent banks before reaching its destination – each one adding time, cost, and opacity. Most consumers and businesses have accepted this as a given. Wise has spent 14 years arguing it shouldn’t be.

Over the past several quarters, two North American executives have been advancing that argument in different directions. Lauren Langbridge, Commercial Director for Wise Platform Americas, has been connecting Wise directly into local payment rails, market by market. Scott Viohl, Regional Marketing Lead for North America, has been making the case for Wise to consumers in the region, who still don’t know there’s an alternative. The work is different in kind, but the logic connecting them is the same.

The infrastructure side

Langbridge is clear about what Wise Platform is trying to do. “Wise has spent the last 14 years building a powerful, new global payments infrastructure which offers a scalable alternative to the legacy correspondent banking system,” she said. “Wise Platform makes this infrastructure available to banks, financial institutions, and major enterprises through simple APIs, allowing them to offer cost-effective international payments directly within their own platforms.”

The mechanism for achieving that is direct connections to domestic payment networks – bypassing correspondents entirely. By early 2026, Wise had eight such connections live: the UK’s Faster Payments System, Europe’s SEPA, Singapore’s FAST, Australia’s NPP, Hungary’s domestic rails, the Philippines’ Pesonet and Instapay, Brazil’s Pix, and Japan’s Zengin.

…