UK fintech Wise continues hiring spree as rivals reduce | Payment source

As dozens of fintechs cut staff, Wise is among a handful of payments companies gobbling up the wealth of talented workers suddenly available.

“There are a lot of people who want to work in this space,” said Harsh Sinha, chief technology officer at Wise. “And when there’s a shock in the economy, it causes people to lose their jobs.”

More than 90,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2022 as the economy has cooled, according to Crunchbase. That includes employees at a number of fintechs, including Stripe, Klarna, Brex and dozens of others.

But London-based Wise, whose revenue has increased this year, plans to hire 250 people by 2023 in New York, Tampa, Florida, and Austin, Texas, which could help accelerate its North American expansion plans. Wise has 4,300 employees across 18 global offices, up from around 3,000 at the start of 2020.

“It’s a good time now for us to invest in our business and fortunately it’s gotten easier to hire,” Sinha said.

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Wise will double its Austin workforce by 2023 to more than 200 employees and is recruiting people with expertise in engineering, product development, operations and sales. Additional hires will go to Wise’s other North American offices.

In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Wise reported a profit of about $63 million, up 173% from a year earlier. The company also said that active customers had risen 30% in the same time period to 5.5 million.

Wise went public in 2021 shortly after changing its name from TransferWise to signal that it is moving beyond transfers into a more diverse range of payments and financial services. At the time, investors were already starting to worry about the underlying financial performance of fast-growing fintechs, Sinha argues.

“When we did our roadshow ahead of [initial public offering]investors were already starting to value fintech based on profitability,” Sinha said.

The new staff will be needed to support the company’s geographical and product expansion. It includes the development of a debit card linked to an account that offers banking services in several countries. An August partnership with data aggregator Plaid allows Wise to work with Plaid’s network of more than 6,000 fintechs, allowing Wise’s customers to connect with Venmo, Chime and other challenger banks.

Wise also recently partnered with AvidXchange, which sells accounts payable software for mid-market companies and their suppliers. AvidXchange and Wise manage a cross-border payment gateway that combines Wise’s international payment system and AvidXchange’s invoicing automation.

The combination enables businesses to pay domestic and international suppliers through a single user experience, eliminating the need to navigate to other websites to complete payment and reducing paperwork.

Other updates include automatic conversions – which allow businesses to automatically convert currencies when a desired exchange rate is met – as well as improvements to how businesses view unpaid bills in Quickbooks and pay directly from a Wise account.

Wise competes with banks that offer international business payments, cross-border payment technology firms like Ripple, and small business payment companies like Stripe. It also competes with UK digital payment companies which is adding financial services to drive a US expansion, such as challenger bank Revolut and payment processor Adyen.

“AvidXchange already knows who you want to pay and what the payment is for, so it makes it easier for a company to manage their finances while paying their bills,” said Steve Naude, a product manager for the Wise platform.

Payments technology executives say the industry’s layoffs are part of a cyclical pattern and set the stage for a movement of programmers, engineers and other experts who can drive innovation at other companies.

“Much of the innovation we have in financial services, and specifically payments, is a result of the economic uncertainty and layoffs that took place in the 2000s,” said Charles Rosenblatt, president of PayQuicker, a payments technology company, adding his firm . also plans to add employees. “This current wave will create a new era of innovation for the companies that have the opportunity to hire.”

Wise also faces competition for that talent.

Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover have also reported strong earnings and have claimed that payment volume and revenue have held up well. The card companies are jointly plans to hire thousands of workers with fintech experience. These hires will support growth and development initiatives, such as Mastercard’s expansion of its Development hub in New York and Amex’s Enterprise Innovation Partners push, which closely aligns with various technology development teams to drive innovation.

“Those firms hiring specialized talent will benefit from developers who can advise and help implement new and existing payment methods,” said John Lunn, CEO of Gr4vy, a cloud technology firm serving the payments industry. “They will have experts on staff who understand upcoming regulations, can lay out strategic action plans and look ahead to which regions to target and scale the business in the face of economic problems.”