Wise & Remitly’s surging volumes
The gap between some of the digital-first consumer players and the omnichannel players appears to be widening. This follows from our report a few weeks ago that provided a deep-dive into Intermex and its consumer peers, following the company’s announcement that it was putting itself up for sale.
Though Western Union had long been the leader in terms of cross-border send volume, in the last few quarters Wise has pulled ahead and for Q3 2024 is now significantly in the lead among publicly traded consumer money transfers players who report this metric.
While in the latest quarter Western Union reported its cross-border consumer-to-consumer send volume as $25.9bn for the three-month period ending 30 September 2024, Wise reported send volume in its Personal segment totalling £26.1bn ($33.4bn) for the same period. Remitly, meanwhile, saw volume of $14.5bn, while Intermex reported this metric reaching $6.4bn in Q3 2024.
This demonstrates impressive growth, particularly given that Wise’s Personal send volume was only around half that of Western Union in Q2 2020. Part of this has been driven by Wise’s higher send volume per customer than Western Union, reflecting Wise’s more expat customer base, rather than Western Union’s traditional remittances customer base.
Domestic is small now for WU. However, it should be noted that Western Union reports this metric only for its branded cross-border principal; it no longer reports its domestic volume, which still represents some flow in some regions, particularly the US. It also does not include volume sent via its white label B2B2X solutions.
By contrast, Wise’s Personal volume does not include any domestic volume, but it does include some contribution from its B2B2X Wise Platform service. In our recent post-earning interview following Wise’s latest results, Director of Finance Martin Adams told us that Wise Platform was still a “very small part” of the company’s overall volumes.
Despite Wise’s strong performance on volume, however, Western Union is still well ahead on revenue. While Wise’s Personal division saw revenue of £238m ($304m) in the latest quarter, Western Union reported revenue of $932m. Nevertheless, it’s clear Wise is steadily closing the gap. While WU saw a YoY contraction of -8.5%, Wise saw its Personal revenue climb 18.4%.
Read ‘Intermex’s potential sale: Opportunities and challenges for prospective buyers’
