The money transfer service Wise sent out an email to customers with registered Indonesian addresses on their accounts telling them that they must empty their accounts before 23 May 2024.
From then on, Wise customers in Indonesia will not be able to store, receive, or send money from their Wise accounts. They will be limited to using Wise only as a wire transfer service and nothing else due to local regulations governing financial transactions.
The company is advising customers with Indonesian addresses to inform their benefactors or clients that they can use Wise to arrange transfers to their bank accounts instead.
While fund transfer is the core of the service and Wise is a licensed remittance facilitator, it offers a wider range of services including an account that people can use to store balance and internationally send and receive money, international remittance, and issuing debit cards for international transactions.
In a lot of ways Wise is similar to PayPal as they allow customers to receive, send, and store funds on their accounts but in Indonesia Wise doesn’t appear to have a license to operate as a bank or digital wallet provider which means they’re not permitted to allow customers to store funds in a Wise account.
It would be … wise for the company to acquire the wallet license if they wish to offer their full services in Indonesia. Until they manage to secure that license, their services will remain limited to remittances, just like Western Union.
AuliaSays 