Managing international business payments is a taxing affair for finance teams. Whether you’re paying overseas suppliers or collecting payments from global customers, the process often involves hidden fees, long delays, and mountains of manual data entry. It’s no wonder then, a recent survey with Gartner found that digital innovation across finance teams has been a top priority for CFOs. Two platforms leading the way in the fintech space: Wise and Finofo - promise to make international payments easier. Which is the best fit for your business operations? Here’s a comparison look at costs, features, integrations, and best-use cases:  

What are the challenges in global payments?

Real-time global payments, totalling trillions of dollars annually, have become table stakes for moving business at scale in today’s rapidly shifting market. Still, there are numerous challenges associated with cross-border real-time payments, creating friction and frustration for business finance, and their customers: 

• High FX exchange rates: Many businesses end up overpaying when converting currencies. With worse-than-market exchange rates, these costs quietly erode profit margins and negatively impact your bottom line. 
• Payment delays: International wire transfers often take several days, creating inefficiencies for accounts payable (AP) teams and delays in receiving funds, especially from cross-border customers. 
• Manual workload: Processing payments, entering data, and reconciling financial records takes significant time for accounts teams. These repetitive tasks add to workload pressures during weekly or monthly AP runs. 
• Hidden costs: Traditional banks and FX brokers have long capitalized on businesses across North America by charging hidden fees and inflated exchange rates, profiting at the expense of efficiency and transparency.

Both Wise and Finofo tackle these challenges, though the best approach for your financial efficiency will depend wholly on your global business strategies. 

Wise vs Finofo: Multi-currency capabilities 

Multi-currency accounts are essential for smooth international payments. Here’s how Wise and Finofo compare:

• Wise: Offers account details in 19 currencies, but setting one up costs $42 CAD for Canadian businesses or $31 USD for U.S. businesses.
• Finofo: Effortlessly lets you open 22 multi-currency accounts - for free. This makes it easy for finance teams to send and receive payments worldwide, just like a local business.

For businesses handling multiple currencies, global suppliers, and cross-border customers, Finofo’s subscription free setup and easy platform make it a better option.

Wise vs Finofo: Adding and receiving funds

Managing funds, whether adding money to your account or receiving payments, is an operations-critical function. Let’s take a closer look at how Wise and Finofo compare in terms of fees, limits, and overall experience.

Wise: adding and receiving funds

Adding funds

For Canadian Businesses: When funding CAD accounts, Wise supports Interac e-Transfer, Wire Transfers, and Direct Debit as funding options, but does not offer EFT. For instance, a $25,000 CAD Interac e-Transfer (the maximum limit) incurs a fee of approximately $30 CAD (14 basis points average), while Wire Transfers cost $1 per transaction. Direct Debit is available for transactions up to $9,500 CAD.

For US Businesses: When funding USD accounts, Wise provides options including ACH, Wire Transfers, International Wire Transfers, Debit, and Credit Cards. Wire Transfers and International Wire Transfers cost an average of $7 USD per transaction, while ACH transfers are limited to up to $50,000 USD per transaction.

Receiving funds

Wise applies a fee for every transaction, whether you are adding funds to your account or receiving payments from customers. These fees are universal and apply to all currencies and payment sources.

Finofo: Adding and receiving funds

Adding funds

Finofo makes funding accounts simple and fee-free, offering flexible methods with high limits that cater to the needs of mid-market and enterprise businesses.

For Canadian businesses:

Finofo supports the following methods for funding CAD accounts:

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For US businesses:

Finofo provides the following options for funding USD accounts:

Receiving funds

Finofo allows you to receive payments in any supported currency without charging any fees, regardless of the source-be it customer transactions or business deposits.

Wise charges fees for every transaction, whether you’re adding funds to your account or receiving payments, and imposes limitations on transfer amounts and methods. In contrast, Finofo offers a completely fee-free experience for both adding and receiving funds, with higher transaction limits and no hidden charges, making it a cost-effective and flexible solution.

For mid-market or large businesses, Finofo is ideal for high volume global payments. For solo entrepreneurs or small teams, Wise works well for simpler setups and smaller transaction numbers.

Wise vs Finofo: Accounts payable automations

With Wise, you can make one-time payments or schedule them in advance. Similarly, Finofo enables instant payments to suppliers, streamlining the process by eliminating the need to add a bill.

Wise vs Finofo: Bulk payments

Both Finofo and Wise offer bulk payment features, but their ease of use and efficiency differ significantly.

Wise bulk payments

Wise supports bulk payment functionality, its approach has notable limitations:

• Users must manually select a specific template for each batch, such as sending payments to saved recipients or creating a new batch with new recipients and bills.
• Templates must be built from scratch every time, as Wise does not allow direct CSV imports from ERP systems. This process adds significant manual work, especially if you're dealing with a large list of unpaid bills and beneficiaries.
• Bulk payments on Wise are restricted to a single source currency, meaning all payments in a batch must be funded from one account.

Finofo bulk payments

Finofo simplifies bulk payments with smart CSV import capabilities for both unpaid bills and beneficiaries. You can export data directly from your ERP system, import it into Finofo, and process payments in multiple global currencies—all with fewer clicks. This seamless integration and smart mapping technology automatically aligns the column fields of your imported document, making it incredibly efficient for accounts payable (AP) teams. What used to take hours can now be completed in minutes, streamlining your weekly AP run.

Finofo is the more efficient solution for bulk payments, particularly for businesses with high AP workloads. Its smart CSV import and seamless integration with ERP systems save time and reduce manual effort.

Wise vs Finofo: Corporate FX cards

Wise provides FX cards, but does not offer cashback on transactions. Finofo allows businesses to issue unlimited virtual FX cards and offers unlimited 0.75% cashback on every dollar spent. 

Wise vs Finofo: Wise ID vs. Finofo tag

Wise IDs are only available for personal accounts, meaning businesses cannot use them to share or move money between Wise customers.

Finofo Tags, however, provide a more versatile solution. They allow users to send real-time payments across any currency pair without additional fees. Businesses can also use Finofo Tags to receive payments from customers, or transfer funds seamlessly between their own US and Canadian entities.

Wise vs Finofo: Multi-entity management

A feature available on both Wise and Finofo. 

With one unified account and a single login, you can seamlessly switch between entities and manage the financial operations of all your businesses with ease.

Wise vs Finofo: ERP integrations

For finance leaders managing growing businesses, seamless integration with existing tools is crucial for efficiency and scalability.

Wise ERP integrations

Wise integrates with popular accounting software like Xero, QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Sage, Wave, and FreeAgent. However, the integration is limited. It primarily pushes transaction data to these platforms, with QuickBooks being the only software that allows pulling data from your ERP. This incomplete integration leaves room for manual work and inefficiencies

Finofo ERP integrations

Finofo is tailored for mid-market businesses, offering more robust and comprehensive integrations. In addition to connecting with accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks Online, Finofo integrates with enterprise-grade ERPs such as NetSuite, Sage, and Microsoft Dynamics. Finofo can pull unpaid bills directly from ERPs for processing, eliminating manual imports. It also seamlessly pushes processed transactions back to the ERP, creating a true two-way integration that significantly reduces manual workload

While Wise provides basic integrations, Finofo’s advanced and bidirectional capabilities make it the better choice for large-scale businesses looking to streamline and automate their finance operations.

Wise vs Finofo: Exchange rates and account opening pricing

Finofo has no account opening fees. It’s a free platform with a transparent pay-as-you-go pricing model. Finofo offers a fixed FX spread with no hidden costs, ensuring complete clarity and predictability for your transactions.

Wise charges an account opening fee of $42 CAD for businesses in Canada and $31 USD for businesses in the US. While Wise promotes competitive FX rates, its fees can include account funding fees and other costs that split the overall FX spread into multiple components - some of which might go unnoticed.

Finofo’s simple pricing structure and fixed FX spread make it a more straightforward and cost-effective choice compared to Wise's fragmented fee model.

Support

Both platforms provide extensive customer support. However, Wise, a well-established UK company, operates globally, while Finofo is proudly built by North Americans, for North Americans, offering tailored solutions that understand local business needs.

What businesses would benefit from Wise?

Wise is ideal for small businesses, freelancers, or solo entrepreneurs managing personal transactions or low-volume, straightforward international payments. It’s simple to use and cost-effective for B2C payments. Companies with fewer than 10 employees and minimal global payment exposure will find Wise a suitable choice.

What businesses would benefit from Finofo?

Finofo is designed for mid-market and growing businesses with more complex needs. It’s perfect for companies managing high transaction volumes, intricate payables and receivables, and requiring advanced ERP integration. For CFOs at companies handling global operations, Finofo offers significant time and cost savings, making it the go-to solution for scaling businesses.

Propel your global payments strategies with the right technology

Every business working across borders needs a reliable, and fast global payments solution. While Wise is a great starting technology for smaller businesses, Finofo excels at meeting the demands of larger, fast-growing companies with more complex global payment needs. 

Get started with Finofo today!