Wise began trading on Nasdaq on Monday under the ticker WSE. Shares opened at 15.96 dollars. The London-founded fintech, which went public on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021 via a direct listing that valued it at 11 billion dollars, has moved its primary listing to New York while keeping a secondary listing in London. Nearly 91 per cent of class A shareholders voted in favour of the move. The company will now report in US dollars under US GAAP. It is not just changing exchanges. It is changing countries.

The Nasdaq listing is the most visible part of a broader American migration. Wise has applied for a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with the proposed entity, Wise National Trust, based in Austin, Texas. If approved, the company intends to seek a master account at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which would let Wise clear and settle US dollar payments directly through the Fed’s rails, including FedNow. A fintech that began by making international bank transfers cheaper is rebuilding itself as an American financial institution.

The numbers

For the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, Wise processed 243 billion dollars in cross-border volume, an increase of 31 per cent year over year. Net revenue was 2.5 billion dollars, up 19 per cent. Transaction revenue grew 22 per cent to 1.9 billion dollars, split between 1.3 billion in cross-border revenue and 600 million in card and other revenue. Card revenue grew 34 per cent, the fastest-growing segment.

Active customers reached 18.9 million, up 21 per cent. Customer holdings in Wise accounts climbed 40 per cent to 39 billion dollars. Seventy-five per cent of payments are now delivered instantly, up from 65 per cent a year ago. The company guided its income before tax margin toward the top of its 13 to 16 per cent target range, including the costs of the Nasdaq listing itself. Wise saved its customers more than 3.3 billion dollars in fees during the year, a figure the company uses to illustrate the pricing gap between its service and traditional bank transfers.

The market capitalisation is approximately 14 billion dollars. That is a premium to its 2021 direct listing price but below the levels implied by comparable US-listed fintechs. The move to Nasdaq is, in part, a bet that American investors will pay more for a company growing revenue at 19 per cent, processing a quarter of a trillion dollars annually, and expanding into banking.

The migration

CEO and co-founder Kristo Kaarmann was blunt about why Wise left London. “We have current shareholders who would like to own more, but they can’t, because there is not enough trading volume for them in our shares,” he said.

Major investors including Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Baillie Gifford had shown interest since the 2021 listing but were constrained by London’s liquidity. The US has the world’s deepest and most liquid capital markets. London does not.

The national trust bank charter application, filed in June 2025, is the more consequential move. A charter gives Wise a single federal regulator and federal legitimacy.

A Fed master account would give it direct access to the payment rails through which money actually moves in the American financial system, eliminating the need to route transactions through intermediary banks. Fed Governor Chris Waller has said publicly that he is exploring a streamlined account structure for newly chartered entities, but no formal framework exists. The charter is not guaranteed. The master account is even less so.

If both are approved, Wise would become one of the few fintechs with direct Fed access, a position that would fundamentally alter its cost structure for US dollar transactions and position it as a competitor not just to other fintechs but to the correspondent banking network that currently intermediates cross-border payments. The Austin hub is not a regional office. It is the foundation of a US banking operation.

The exodus

Tech companies have been snubbing the London Stock Exchange for years, but the pace has accelerated. Arm opted for a New York IPO in 2023. CRH, the building materials group, delisted from London entirely after switching its primary listing to New York. Flutter moved its primary listing to New York in 2024 and is now considering dropping London altogether. Darktrace left the London market after a 4.3 billion pound sale to Thoma Bravo. Just Eat quit for Amsterdam. Tui moved to Frankfurt. Ashtead and Indivior are gone or going.

More than 100 billion dollars in market capitalisation has migrated away from the LSE in the past five years. The pattern is consistent: companies list in London, grow, discover that London cannot provide the liquidity, analyst coverage, or valuation multiples they need, and leave. Wise is the latest. It will not be the last. Revolut, valued at 75 billion dollars after a 2025 secondary share sale, has confirmed that its IPO will be on Nasdaq, targeting a valuation of 150 to 200 billion dollars. Klarna listed on the NYSE last year.

McKinsey has warned that Europe’s software sector is at a critical inflection point, with the continent producing more than 280 software companies generating over 100 million euros in annual recurring revenue but struggling to retain them as public companies. The talent, the capital, and the customers are in the United States. The companies follow.

The counterargument

Monzo quit the US to focus on Europe ahead of a London IPO, a decision that suggests not every fintech concludes the American market is worth the cost of entry. Monzo’s board calculated that European expansion offered better unit economics than competing in a US market where customer acquisition costs are higher and regulatory complexity is deeper. The company is preparing to list in London, not New York, betting that a home-market focus is what investors will reward.

Wise is making the opposite bet. Its US business is its largest growth opportunity. The American cross-border payments market is the biggest in the world by volume. A banking charter and Fed access would give Wise structural advantages that no amount of London liquidity could replicate. The question is whether the regulatory path is as clear as the commercial one. Eleven companies filed for or received OCC national trust bank charter approvals in 83 days earlier this year, a wave that includes Circle and Ripple alongside Wise. The Fed’s master account process is slower, more discretionary, and less predictable.

The position

The argument that European startups need their own Nasdaq has been made for years. It has not happened. Instead, the companies that would anchor such an exchange keep leaving for the real one. Wise is now a Nasdaq-listed, Austin-headquartered, US GAAP-reporting company that happens to have been founded in London by two Estonians who were frustrated by the cost of sending money between the UK and Estonia.

The company processes a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. It has 18.9 million active customers. It is applying for a US banking charter. Its co-founder told investors that London could not provide enough liquidity for the shareholders who wanted to buy more. The Nasdaq listing is not the story. The banking charter is not the story. The story is that London built a fintech ecosystem, celebrated it, and is now watching it leave, one listing at a time, for markets that can price it properly.