Send money

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All Wise Platform partners can use our API to send money to recipients around the world, leveraging Wise's global network and local payout speeds. Additionally, licensed banks and financial institutions with an active BIC can integrate with Wise Platform as a correspondent partner over the Swift network instead of, or in addition to, integrating the Wise Platform API.

This guide describes the resources you'll interact with and supported send flow patterns you can build, as well as explains some foundational concepts you should understand before getting started. It also provides links to step-by-step guides to help you build a reliable and performant integration.

Before you begin

• Complete your account setup and onboarding.
• Make sure you have access to Developer Hub to access client credentials and manage security certificates (sandbox for initial build and production when you are ready to go live).
• Understand the scope of your integration. You'll work with your Wise implementation team to agree on supported currency corridors, payment rails, and funding and settlement methods.

Send via API

Sending money via API consists of the same core steps, regardless of your integration model

Each of these steps is represented by a resource:

• The recipient account defines who is receiving the money and how.
• The quote defines the currencies and amounts involved in the transfer, along with pricing (exchange rate and fees) and delivery estimates.
• The transfer combines the quote and recipient resources into a set of instructions for moving the money to the recipient.
• The funding request triggers the actual movement of funds (note that funding relies on your funding/settlement model; not all funding models use an API request).

Standard vs third-party transfers

Embedded Solution and Enterprise partners create transfers using the standard Create transfer endpoint.

Correspondent partners must use the Create third party transfer endpoint instead. This request includes an originator object that identifies the true sender of the funds (that is, the originator

Recipient and transfer requirements

Recipient and transfer requirements vary by corridor

Rather than relying on hardcoded field lists that risk becoming outdated, use Wise's requirements endpoints to retrieve the exact requirements for a payment scenario at the time of the request:

• The retrieve recipient account requirements GET and POST operations work together to ensure you collect the complete set of recipient details before you create a recipient account.
• The Validate transfer requirements endpoint surfaces any additional transfer-level details, such as transfer purpose, source of funds, or payment references, based on the combination of sender, quote, and recipient.

Both sets of requirements are dynamic: when the refreshRequirementsOnChange field is true, the value selected for that field results in additional requirements. In such cases, you send another request with the updated data to retrieve the updated requirements.

Send flow patterns

Wise supports two patterns for sending money: recipient-first and quote-first.

Both flows are valid and have different advantages. Your choice depends on your business context and the user experience you want to create.

Recipient-first

The recipient-first flow creates (or selects) the recipient account

Recipient → Quote → Transfer → Fund (RQTF)

Benefits and considerations:

• The fees/ETA are precise for the exact recipient from the start.
• No separate update quote step required when the recipient account ID is included in the quote request.
• You will not have a quoteId when retrieving recipient requirements, so you must enter the source and target currencies and amounts as query parameters (certain corridors have limitations around this method).

When building the recipient-first flow, follow the send guides in this order:

1. List or create recipients
2. Create a quote
3. Create a standard transfer (for Embedded Solution or Enterprise integrations) or create a third party transfer (for Correspondent partners)
4. Fund the transfer

Quote-first

The quote-first flow creates the quote resource before creating (or selecting) the recipient.

Quote → Recipient → Transfer → Fund (QRTF)

Benefits and considerations:

• Starts with an early price signal before the recipient is finalized.
• Useful when your system prioritizes cost preview up-front.
• You will not have a targetAccount value when creating the quote, so you must update the quote once the recipient is known (can change pricing and delivery estimates).
• If the quote changes, you must check if the recipient requirements have changed (if so, you may need to provide additional data points in your requests).

When building the quote-first flow, follow the send guides in this order:

1. Create a quote
2. List or create recipients
3. Update the quote
4. Create a standard transfer (for Embedded Solution or Enterprise integrations) or create a third party transfer (for Correspondent partners)
5. Fund the transfer

Tracking transfers

Once a transfer is created and funded, webhooks provide visibility into its lifecycle. Webhooks are the foundation of a responsive, operationally sound integration. Without them, you must resort to repeatedly polling the API, which introduces latency and risks missing time-sensitive events. Rather than polling the API for status updates, subscribe to webhooks for real-time event payloads as key state changes occur.

Subscribing to the appropriate set of webhook events lets you build event-driven workflows that react to transfer and funding state changes as they happen. Automatically update internal records, trigger downstream processes, surface real-time status to end users, and flag exceptions for review.

See the Track transfers guide for details about the required and recommended webhooks.

Send via Swift

In addition to sending via API, Correspondent partners can send money with Wise Platform over the Swift network. Instead of calling the Wise Platform API, you send Swift payment messages to Wise, and Wise handles the transfer processing behind the scenes.

Because most banks and financial institutions already send Swift messages as part of their existing operations, sending via Swift is a simpler integration path that can help you go live sooner, with little or no API development required.

A hybrid Swift + API option is also available for Correspondent partners who want to combine Swift messaging with Wise Platform API capabilities. Talk to your Wise implementation team to determine which approach best fits your needs.

Get started

The following sequence diagram illustrates the requests your system makes to Wise and the responses Wise returns at each stage of the transfer flow, from creating the quote and recipient through to funding the transfer.

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