Wise

The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency denied Wise National Trust's application to establish a national trust bank in Austin, Texas, citing 'significant supervisory and compliance concerns.' The OCC found the proposed organizers demonstrated a 'persistent inability to sufficiently manage' money-laundering and illicit-finance risk, lacked sufficient familiarity with federal banking law, and had no historical experience with fiduciary activities. The denial followed a July 2025 multistate consent order in which Wise US paid $4.2 million over deficiencies in suspicious-activity investigation and reporting, transaction-monitoring data integrity, and untimely correction of prior AML/BSA deficiencies. Wise said it has since strengthened its US compliance program and plans to reapply.

Wise US, Inc. agreed to pay $4.2 million under a multistate settlement with California, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Texas, and one other state for serious shortcomings in Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering compliance. The Multi-State MSB Examination Taskforce found suspicious activity reporting deficiencies, transaction monitoring data integrity issues, and failure to timely correct past deficiencies detected in prior examinations.

While many tech companies rolled back DEI under Trump pressure, Wise implemented stronger governance structure across all 13 global DEI communities in 2025. Programs include Women Circles (speaker-led networking), Women in Product events, and investment in senior women and non-binary external community. Gender pay gap reduced from 19.54% to 14.54% mean, 18.4% to 12.67% median.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Wise to pay approximately $2.5 million for alleged illegal remittance practices, including advertising inaccurate fees and failing to properly disclose exchange rates. The consent order requires approximately $450,000 for consumer redress and a $44,955 civil penalty.

UK FCA fined Wise CEO Kristo Käärmann £350,000 for failing to disclose his inclusion on HMRC's deliberate tax defaulters list. Käärmann failed to pay £720,495 in capital gains tax from a 2017 share sale and was separately fined £365,651 by HMRC. The FCA found his approach 'careless rather than deliberate' but his failure to disclose prevented assessment of his fitness for senior management roles.

On 31 August 2023, UK's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) issued a disclosure against Wise Payments Limited for breaching Russia sanctions regulations. On 30 June 2022, the day after a person was added to the UK Sanctions List, a company employee made a £250 cash withdrawal from a Wise business account using a company debit card in the Designated Person's name. This was the first instance of OFSI using its disclosure powers. Wise self-reported the breach on 20 July 2022 but no fine was imposed due to the moderate severity.