Wise, the cross border payments firm, is making its first major steps into the stablecoin space by hiring a product leader for digital assets. In a LinkedIn post, Wise’s Product Director said he is looking for someone who has previously “built wallets and/or payments solutions based on stablecoins”.
For the payments firm, stablecoins are both an opportunity and threat. While it can leverage the efficiencies of stablecoins, startups using the technology are becoming Wise competitors, potentially impacting its growth. Some competitors could potentially catch up relatively quickly. However, Wise has taken years to build relationships around the world with banks, and many of those may still be necessary for on and off-ramping from stablecoins. Potentially it could even provide services to these new stablecoin payment firms.
Despite these emerging threats, Wise’s current offering is pretty competitive. Last year the company processed £145 billion ($194 billion) in cross border payments, with a take rate of just 0.58%. In other words, the cost of cross border transfers is 0.58%. That resulted in cross border revenues of £840 million ($1.12billion). From a cost perspective, it’s doubtful that stablecoins are going to beat that significantly.
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