According to Wise’s calculations, its customers saved roughly HUF 1,000 billion in 2025 by using Wise for cross‑border transfers instead of traditional banks. Kristo Käärmann, Wise’s co‑founder and CEO, and product lead Gergő Horányi discussed the company’s Hungarian presence, the Budapest development centre, potential effects of euro adoption, AI usage, and hidden bank FX charges.
Budapest hub: over 1,000 employees and product decision‑making
Wise opened its Budapest office ten years ago and now employs more than 1,000 people there, including around 100 engineers. The company stresses that the Budapest team works on global products rather than only support functions: engineering, product development, marketing and data science teams based in Budapest influence product decisions and build features used worldwide. Examples of local work include improving account registration UX, mobile interfaces, integrating with the Hungarian payments infrastructure and solutions that help North American customers move US dollars.
Since 2020 Wise has supported the Hungarian forint via direct integration with the national payment system, which the company says made transfers faster and cheaper for customers; globally, in the previous quarter about 77 percent of their transfers were instant (from start to finish in under 20 seconds).
Local features: QR payments, instant payment requests and Product Academy
For Hungarian users Wise has rolled out QR‑based payments and an instant payment‑request solution that allows fast, free top‑ups to Wise accounts—alongside card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank transfer options. The company reports positive feedback from Hungarian customers on these features.
Wise also runs a Product Academy in Budapest and Tallinn to train product managers. The programme recruits people from engineering, project management, design and other backgrounds and converts them into product managers; Wise said it hires roughly six people a year through this scheme.
What euro adoption could change
Käärmann noted that switching to the euro would remove many forint–euro conversions, eliminating a range of hidden banking costs and transactional frictions. While governments and central banks often emphasise macroeconomic issues like interest rates and exchange‑rate stability, he argued there is a practical efficiency gain from losing local‑currency conversion costs—citing Latvia as an example where switching to the euro produced measurable annual benefits. He described the operational changes required for euro adoption (adjusting systems, automatic conversions, account balances and pricing) as manageable.
Hidden bank fees: mechanics and transparency
Wise has analysed how Hungarian banks price forint–euro transactions and finds that banks frequently embed a margin in the exchange rate rather than showing an explicit fee. The market (interbank) exchange rate sits close to mid‑market levels, but consumer bank rates often include a spread. When the fee is hidden in the rate, the customer can believe there is no or a small fee while in reality paying a higher implicit cost.
Wise’s view is that regulators should require banks to display fees transparently. European Union rules have moved partway in this direction, but national supervisors must enforce them. The company named Gránit Bank as an example of relatively more transparent practice within Hungary.
AI at Wise
Wise uses artificial intelligence on multiple layers. On the development side, engineers employ AI tools for coding, debugging, documentation and testing; with over 1,000 engineers globally, these tools can materially accelerate work. Operational uses include supporting customer answers, fraud detection, reviewing suspicious activity and speeding back‑office processes. These AI applications aim to make service faster, cheaper and better while freeing staff to focus on cases requiring human judgement.
Wise also runs a Wise Assistant chatbot. It was introduced cautiously: the company’s criterion is whether the bot actually solves customers’ problems quickly and well. Where it performs reliably, customer acceptance improves; customers always have the option to speak with a human agent.
Many of the AI features and automation tools are developed in Budapest and deployed globally.
Market share, volumes and growth ambitions
Wise says it currently handles about 5 percent of private cross‑border payments globally. Last year the company moved roughly EUR 210 billion in cross‑border flows, and it estimates the total addressable market at EUR 36 trillion. In its most recent financial year nearly 19 million customers used Wise’s services worldwide. Among small and medium businesses Wise’s penetration is lower (under 1 percent) but growing.
Käärmann framed the 5 percent figure as both a significant achievement and a reminder of the opportunity still ahead: the remaining 95 percent of cross‑border flows are largely processed through traditional systems. Wise aims to reach more of those flows in two ways: by making Wise useful in more contexts (travel, multi‑currency holding, business payments and receivables) and by partnering with banks as a backend infrastructure provider. The company already works with challenger banks such as Monzo and Starling, and has partnerships with larger banking groups including UniCredit, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered.
Other items
The interview touched briefly on Wise’s May 11 move to list on Nasdaq, which company leaders described as a long‑term step to increase liquidity and accessibility of Wise shares for a global investor base. Kristo Käärmann said his personal investment focus remains on Wise.
The article notes that the reporting was supported by an Alrite online dictation and captioning tool and that an AI assistant helped prepare the piece, with final editing and verification done by a journalist.
Tags: Budapest, fintech, artificial intelligence, transfers, euro adoption, bank fees, currency exchange, hidden fees, Wise, qvik
