PayPal vs Wise

PayPal provides different services for personal customers from a number of countries. However, the services on offer vary from one region to another. PayPal's consumer product is a digital wallet where the customer's ID can be their email address and phone number. PayPal customers can send money to each other's digital wallets quickly and easily. The PayPal digital wallet can be connected to a bank account and debit or credit cards. This allows customers to withdraw available funds to their bank accounts. Connecting their bank cards allows customers to buy goods and services on e-commerce stores where PayPal is accepted as a payment method. 

What PayPal does

• International money transfers.
• Debit and prepaid cards.
• PayPal Credit.
• Links multiple payment methods to your account to shop online.
• Digital wallet to hold funds in multiple currencies.

What PayPal doesn’t do

• Dedicated account managers.
• Risk management tools.
• Cash pickup.

Wise provides a simple easy to use international money transfer service with digital wallet capabilities. Their digital wallet, or Borderless account also gives the individual local banking details in 6+ currencies including, EUR, SGD, NZD, USD, GBP and AUD. Their Wise Borderless debit card backs on to their Borderless digital wallet allowing you to spend directly out of your multi-currency account balances.

What Wise offers individuals

• International money transfers
• Borderless multi-currency receiving accounts
• Borderless Debit Card - FX optimised debit card
• Android and Apple apps
• Send money to email address
• Scheduled and recurring transfers - sufficiently funded Borderless account required for this to work.

What Wise does not offer individuals

• Personal account management
• Full support for regular transfers. Currently regular transfers or ‘scheduled transfers’ need to have a Borderless multi-currency account balance. Find out which countries support Wise Borderless account.
• Cash pick up or international bill payments

PayPal for business provides a range of specialized services for businesses from different countries. Businesses can use PayPal to create and send invoices and receive payments. PayPal's merchant solution allows online sellers to accept PayPal as a payment method. Customers can use the PayPal payment gateway to buy goods or services using their PayPal account or directly with credit or debit cards. PayPal has more solutions for business accepting micro payments which may be quite useful when selling low cost products.

What PayPal for business offers

• Make and accept international payments.
• Solutions for online sellers.
• Digital wallet to hold funds and transact in multiple currencies.
• Payment gateway to accept card payments.
• Accepts in-store payments with a card reader and a smartphone or tablet.
• Easy accounting integration through APIs, SDKs, code samples and pre-integrated solutions.
• Risk management through fraud and seller protection.
• Mass payments.

What PayPal for business doesn’t do

• Account managers.
• Currency hedging tools.

In addition to the services Wise offers the individual, there are some features only available for a business. Unfortunately, as Wise is online only, a business customer does not have support with currency fluctuations and trends. Wise does however offer easy to use transactional foreign currency receipts and payments.

Scheduled transfers is a recently added feature. This can reduce admin for those standard monthly, weekly payments to suppliers and staff. A sufficient balance in the Business Borderless account is required. Wise will remind the account owner to make sure there is sufficient funds in the multi-current account. What is not supported is standing orders from a business bank account through Wise. This may mean that businesses need to alter their business structure to ensure continuous sufficent Borderless account funding.

What Wise offers businesses

• Batch payments
• Xero and Quickbook integration
• FX optimised business debit card
• Multi-user account access
• Regular and scheduled transfers

What Wise for business doesn’t offer

• Business account management
• Risk management tools

PayPal fees vary based on where you live and the services on offer. Below we show sample fees for the USA. For more detailed information on fees for PayPal merchant solution, iCompareFX has created an interactive payment gateway fees comparison tool and more detailed breakdown of merchant variable and fixed fees by region.

Fees for sending money within the US

Fees for sending money overseas

Fees for selling

PayPal exchange rates

PayPal adds a margin of up to 3% on existing mid-market rates when carrying out currency conversion. Combined with the fees you need to pay, the cost of sending money overseas through PayPal becomes rather prohibitive.

Wise offers the real time exchange rate at the time of your transfer. Therefore fees are visible in addition to the transfer amount. The fee structure is complex as it differs depending on the currencies you are sending from and to. Fees also apply to the type of Borderless account transaction. Fees can also apply on the use of the Wise Borderless debit card. Fees are briefly summarised below. Read the detailed Wise review for more details on Wise fees.

What PayPal does well

Sign up - Signing up takes little time, and you may do so by using the PayPal website or app.

Payment options - You can fund your account and transfers in different ways such as bank transfers, debit cards and credit cards.

PayPal app - The PayPal app is available for iOS and Android.
 

Where PayPal could improve

Phone transfers - PayPal customers can not send money over the phone.

The Wise app design and user experience of their technology is great with simple, intuitive processes.

Registration - Fast and easy account creation

ID verification - Instant in some countries

Transfer speed - It can be instantaneous in some countries. Fast payments to Wise comes at an additional cost.

Minimum transfer amount - $1

Mobile app - Simple and easy to use. Probably the best designed app of the international money transfer companies.

Payment options - Wise has the broadest range of payment options. Local bank transfer, debit / credit card and country specific solutions such as POLi.

What PayPal does well

Supported countries - PayPal provides its services in more than 200 countries and territories.

Multilingual website - You can use the PayPal website in different languages.
 

Where PayPal could improve

Local phone support - PayPal could do better by providing local phone support in countries with large customer bases.

Wise’s supported countries vary with different services having different supported customer countries and destination countries. These are detailed in the Wise Countries and Currencies article and is summarized below.

Send from - 23 countries plus the Europe SEPA countries

Send to - Over 60 currencies

Borderless account and debit card - Over 6 countries can sign up to their Borderless services.

What PayPal does well

• PayPal is licensed to provide its services in all the regions in which it operates.
• Dispute resolution and purchase protection for buyers.

Where PayPal could improve

Customer rating - PayPal gets a rating of Bad on Trustpilot. Several PayPal reviews written by customers highlight the company's poor customer service. None of the recent reviews have been answered by PayPal. Regular PayPal complaints are related to business accounts being suspended during disputes with no notice or follow up by PayPal. This has lead to a large number of unanswered complaints on Twitter, TrustPilot and Google reviews.

Exchange rate transparency - The non-transparent exchange rate margin leaves many customers wondering about the true cost of their transfers.

Wise is fully regulated by the FCA and their customer funds are segregated from their business banking activities.

Wise is rated on TrustPilot as Excellent. Unfortunately there have been some poor reviews on TrustPilot indicating sudden account closures with funds being returned with no explanation.

Wise continues to raise capital through private funding. This could be a concern for the future when the shareholders are looking for aggressive growth and / or a return on their investment.