Founded in 2011, Wise is dual-listed in the US and UK, having moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq Stock Exchange last month. It remains headquartered in London though, and is worth around £10bn.
This is not the first time Wise’s AML controls have come under scrutiny. Back in 2024, the Financial Times reported that the company had been forced into a remediation plan by European regulators after the National Bank of Belgium found evidence that it lacked a proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers.
Then just last year, Wise’s US subsidiary was fined $4.2m following an investigation by regulators in six states for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and AML laws under the Countering the Financing of Terrorism programme.
A Wise spokesperson said it had fully cooperated with US and Belgian regulatory reviews, implementing all recommendations.
Last year, the UK Treasury published its latest national risk assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing. It said that the sector of electronic money institutions – the industry name for e-payment companies like Wise – was booming because of “its convenience and accessibility” but raised the level of threat it posed to money laundering and terrorist financing to “high”.
The report found that the sector had become increasingly attractive to criminals as a way “to manage and launder funds cross-border”. It also found that there had been increasing “exposure to high-risk jurisdictions”.