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Welcome Wise, welcome to our Q1 FY 2027 results call. I'm Sarah Lewandowski, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined by our CFO, Emmanuel Thomassin. Emmanuel is going to run through our results before giving you the chance to ask questions. Before we start, we have a reminder that we'll be making forward-looking statements today, including statements regarding Wise's future performance. These statements are not guarantees and can involve risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information on these risk factors. All forward-looking statements made in this call are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates, and beliefs, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law. With that, I'll now hand over to Emmanuel.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Q1 results call. Well, I'm pleased to present our financial results for the first quarter of the financial year 2027. We've started the year with continued growth in customers and volumes. Today, I'm going to take you through, first, our financial highlights in the quarter. Second, the drivers of our revenue growth. Third, our approach to pricing. Lastly, I'll cover guidance for the year before handing over for Q&A. Now, starting with our financial highlights for Q1 2027. During the quarter, we continued to see significant growth in our performance metrics as our customers accelerate their usage of Wise for more, and not only for cross-border transactions, but also for everyday needs. Our active customers base increased by 21% year-on-year to almost 12 million.

Our cross-border volume increased by 26% year-on-year to $69 billion, with especially strong growth in Wise Business of 39% year-on-year. Customer holdings grew by 31% year-on-year, totaling $31 billion, including $10 billion held through Wise Assets. I will now take you through what this means for revenue growth in the quarter. In Q1, we generated $350 million in cross-border revenue from customers sending or converting currency. This represent a growth of 22% year-on-year. This increase is a little lower than the 26% growth in volume, reflecting a reduction of the average take rate from 52 basis points in Q1 2026 to 50 basis points in Q1 2027. We also generate $191 million in card and other revenues from customers using the Wise Card abroad and at home, but also investing in our Assets products and addition customer activity such as domestic transactions.

This represent a year-on-year increase of 38%, with the increase mainly due to card revenue, driven by the rise in business card spending in North America and growing personal card adoption in the U.S. and APAC. Taking together, transaction revenue total for $541 million, representing a year-on-year growth of 27%. As I highlighted in our full year results just a two weeks ago, customers are also trusting Wise more and more with their money. At the end of June 2026, customers held $31 billion on the Wise Account, up 24% compared to the previous year. As we invested these funds in liquid instruments, we generated $225 million in interest income during the quarter, up 15% year-on-year.

Growth in customer balance didn't fully translate to interest income growth, as we saw a reduction in gross yield from 3.3% in Q1 2026 to 2.9% in Q1 2027 as a consequence of the central bank decisions during 2026. I just covered different layers of our customer activities, including sending and converting money and growing with Wise Assets, but also holding balance with us. Together, with revenue from using the Wise Card and other revenue streams, including the fees from Assets, this drive our net revenue growth. In Q1, we delivered GBP 714 million in net revenue, up 25% year-on-year. With an increasingly diversified revenue base, with 51% of net revenue being driven by non-cross-border activities this quarter. Moving to a reminder of our investment framework. Overall, we believe in driving growth through continuous investment.

Our investment framework is a clear evidence of this, by targeting a major term 15%-20% Income Before Tax margins, assuming we are able to pay our target interest and income back to the customers, we are able to invest in our growth and into our pricing. This, in exchange, drives more scale and operational efficiencies, providing us with additional margin for capacity for reinvestment. With our investment framework alongside our direct investments in the business, we seek to invest into sustainable reductions in our prices. We do this always in a position of strength, intentionally. This remains a long-term goal, driving down prices for customers while building a sustainable, profitable business. In our full year 2026 results, I gave details on how we expect to reduce the take rate this year. We expect to continue sharing efficiency with customers as we generate extra capacity for investments.

This quarter, the take rate reduced to 50 basis points, down from 51 basis points last quarter, and down from 52 basis points a year ago. As I said a few weeks ago, for 2027, depending on the additional capacity that we can generate, we expect this to be reflected in a reduction of 1-2 basis points in each of the following quarters. Our investments into pricing are a core feature of our business model, which supports the long-term stability of our business. Finally, looking ahead. We expect to see a continuing trend of rapid growth, we'll continue to invest to achieve this. For this year, we continue to expect net revenue growth to be around the middle of a 15%-20% range on the constant currency basis.

Due to the phasing of our investments into pricing, we expect this growth to be more pronounced in the first half of the year. We have seen this in Q1 with growth of 25% in net revenue year-on-year. We also expect that the scheduling of our investments will drive a comparable trend in our Income Before Tax margin. While we expect full year margins to be around the high end of the 20%-25% range, we expect this to be front half weighted, delivering results slightly above this target in H1. Now, let's move to the Q&A session.

If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand in the Zoom webinar. Our first question is from Mohammed El-Aasar from Goldman Sachs. Can you hear us, Mo?

Are you maybe on mute?

Hi, can you hear me, Sarah and Emmanuel?

Sorry. Can you hear us?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. Hi, Emmanuel. Hey, Sarah.

Hi.

Thanks for taking the question. Well done on the results. I had two, if I may, Emmanuel. The first one, I know you sort of had flagged it, you'd be running kind of ahead of your annual guide in the first half of the year. When you look at the kind of the growth in Q1, was that sort of in line or above your expectations? If we sort of assume this robust trend in the first half, it would suggest that even for the nine months, your kind of implied growth rate is kind of more to the low end of your guide for the remaining quarters. Does that suggest that maybe the landing zone is more likely kind of not at the midpoint, but more in the kind of upper half or towards the upper end?

If it isn't, what are the kind of factors that we should consider? Secondly, I noticed Business had a pretty strong performance. Can you also give us a sense, I know you don't always give us quarterly breakdown of Platform volume, and kind of unpack the kind of drivers around the strength in Business, please? Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Mo. In terms of growth that we've seen in our Q1 2027, obviously, we are very pleased with what we see. This is in line with what we saw last year, and also confirmed our strategy to invest and reinvest the efficiency in our business. We think the growth that we saw in Q1 is in line with our expectations. Concerning the full year, as you know, we expect to continue to pass the efficiency that we get also into pricing. This quarter, in April, we lower our take rate by one basis point. We announced three weeks ago that we will do two basis points reduction in the second quarter, followed by probably one and one in Q3 and Q4.

The first part of the year is obviously not impacted, or not so much by the price reduction, while the rest of the second half of the year will be. On a projection, we guide you, or we guide the market, that we will be at the middle of the range for 15%-20%. It's fair to say that we always take a conservative view, and we feel comfortable with this guidance as of today. On Platform, as you can imagine, we're super excited. We leverage our infrastructure. This is the best way to acquire customers. We don't need to acquire them one by one, we provide this infrastructure to partners, which, in reverse, open again, indirectly, their customers are using us. We're extremely bullish. We have a nice pipeline.

I'm very happy to announce that today we're at 6%, roughly around 6% of our total cross-border volume generated by the partners. As also Crystal mentioned, three weeks ago, we have a nice pipeline, we're looking ahead with confidence.

Okay. That's great. Thank you, Emmanuel.

Thank you, Mo.

Thanks, Mo. Next we have Aditya from Bank of America. Over to you, Aditya.

Hey, Emmanuel. Sarah, can you hear me?

Yes. Good evening or good morning.

Good evening. Yeah, good evening, actually. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple. Customer growth was quite strong, up 21%. Could you just comment on how that maybe looked like by region? Are you starting to see some of the benefits of the marketing spend you've been doing across some of those markets? Second, you mentioned very strong spending on business cards in North America and growing adoption of the personal card in U.S. and APAC. Any color on that as well, in terms of what's driving that, and maybe is that more features or just part of the marketing push as well?

Yeah, thank you for your questions. Well, in general, we have growth across the regions. We invest in all regions, as you know, because you mentioned marketing last year, we've done campaign in all segments almost. We're very pleased with what we see the evolution in APAC, but especially in America. I mentioned businesses today, which grow very nicely, in terms of active customers and also volumes. That's fair to say that these regions is benefiting from our investments that we've done. We will disclose a bit more in half year in terms of region development, but APAC, as we mentioned before, and North America, especially U.S., are overperforming. In terms of APAC card revenues, this is in line with the customer activities, and I think you could expect that APAC and also Americas are performing extremely well here.

Thanks, Aditya.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. We have Justin Forsythe from UBS. Hi, Justin.

Sorry, that wasn't working. Good evening, Emmanuel and Sarah. Thank you so much for this. A couple questions, if I don't mind. The first one here, I just want to talk a little bit between the relationship between revenue growth and the IBT guidance. Both were confirmed here, and you're pointing everybody to the midpoint of the revenue guide, and reiterating the high end of the IBT guide. Should we think about it as the 17.5, let's say, the midpoint equals that, call it 24%-25% IBT margin? Meaning, if you were to overshoot and do, say, 20%, the high end of the revenue guide, how does the correlation with margins work there? Would you then invest down to the IBT margin, say, with price cuts, with additional headcount, or something of that nature?

Second question, you flagged personal Card adoption in the U.S., and that's really interesting because I feel like in the past, you've flagged, actually, challenges to winning in Card adoption in the U.S., given all of the rewards from interchange that customers can get and spend. I just wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on how you're winning in the U.S. Is that expats that are spending elsewhere? Is it people that are spending in the U.S.? I assume you mean U.S.-domiciled people spending elsewhere on the Wise Card. Maybe if you could just elaborate on that a little bit, if you don't mind. Thanks.

Absolutely. Yes, within the guidance on IBT that we give today, this is assuming that we will be at the middle of the range for our net revenue guidance. Between 15%-20%. You mentioned if we overperform, what will be our reaction or what will be the consequence on the IBT? We will first look at, do we have space to reinvest at good return? We will, as mentioned, invest, not spend. For us, we will consider to accelerate these investments. If we don't find room to invest, the consequence will be it could have an impact on our IBT. It's too early to say. I think today, we feel comfortable with this guidance, and we will always first look at reinvestment, because these reinvestments are paying off. We see the growth rate in all metrics, and we will continue.

As such, we feel like we have enough room to invest, and we are dedicated to gain more market share in terms of total TAM, that you know is really, really large. In terms of card adoptions, this is correlated to our business customer growth. Clearly, in America, we see a very acceleration of these business customers, and accordingly, you have a correlation to the card spending and card revenue that we generate from this.

Got it. Emmanuel, thank you so much for that.

Sure.

I thought you did also say personal card adoption in the U.S. was strong as well, but maybe I misinterpreted that. Thanks again for the questions, and congrats on a great quarter. Appreciate it.

No, thank you very much. This is both, but obviously business will have larger volumes and hence will generate more revenue per customer, if you will, if you look at the business revenue on Card.

Great. Thanks, Justin. Next question is from Cristopher Kennedy from William Blair. Hi, Chris.

All right. Thank you for taking the question and for the time. Historically, you've given some interesting statistics about the outcomes when you establish direct connections in certain countries. Can you provide any color on the benefits that you're seeing from Japan or Brazil, some of your more recent direct connections relative to history?

Yeah. Thank you, Chris. In general, as you know, this is core to our value proposition. This direct integration make us so unique. This is why we get partners joining us, that they're using our Platform, our direct integrations. In general, the direct integration are beneficial for our cost base. We generate efficiency with us. This is true with servicing. Instant payments, and we had 77% of instant payment in Q1, so we continue to increase this percentage from 75% to 77%, have not only satisfy our customers, but also reduce the numbers of contacts that we have with the servicing. So this is a direct cost savings. With that, also direct integrations, we are avoiding to work with partner banks for certain countries because then we can provide the liquidity faster. So that have also some savings on the cost of sales.

In general, direct connection, and we see that with all direct connection, are beneficial for efficiency. Efficiency that we can then decide to reinvest either in OPEX or in pricing.

Got it. Thank you for that. Just to follow up, are the benefits in Brazil and Japan in line with the other direct connections that you've had, or any observations within those two markets? Thank you for taking the question.

No, sure. Absolutely. I think I'm not able to tell you right now exactly the amplitude of the savings. As you know, in the past, we've seen the cost divided by nine times in the U.K. It's too early to say right now for this, but we will give you more colors as we go through, and then we can start with H1 results.

Great. Understood. Thank you.

Thanks, Chris.

Thanks, Chris. Now we have Sven from Barclays. Hi, Sven.

Good evening. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe first, can you comment what revenue growth was in the quarter on a constant FX basis, and if there was any change in the underlying trends from where you exited the year? Then, secondly, it's very encouraging to see that business active customer growth has accelerated again, and now accelerated for a few quarters. Would be interested if you could share any color on how you see this developing from here. Thank you.

Sure. Well, we don't give constant currency revenue, but what I can give you is basically the constant currency on volume. We were at 26% as we are defined today, and the constant currency growth rate for cross-border volume would have been at 24%. They give you a bit the direction of travel, the difference between reporting currency and constant currency. I must confess, I forgot the second question. If someone can help?

Yeah. Maybe I can quickly check.

Oh.

In principle, should the volume and the gap between the constant FX and reported volume growth be similar or, yeah, a good proxy for what net revenue was in the quarter?

Yeah, absolutely. It's a proxy, right? It gives you a very good direction of the difference that you will see between constant currency and reporting currency. Now on the business customer growth, because that was, I think, the second part of your question.

Exactly.

I think what you see is they're all investments that we've done in here. If I may highlight one in particular, this is the benefit of having a dedicated team in servicing, contacting the business customers proactively, and making sure that not only we react to their questions, but we also look at the business and provide services that they might be not aware of or functions that they should use in their workflows. More and more we see the benefits of being proactive, and the reward is the satisfaction of the businesses, and them grow the business with us.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thanks, Sven. We now have Pavan from Citi. Hi, Pavan.

Hi, Manuel and Sarah. Hopefully you can hear me. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, just on the elasticity of volumes, you reduced AP very slightly this quarter and plan to continue fee cuts through the year. Could you maybe talk about the timing of when you expect to see the benefits of these? For example, have you already started seeing a benefit of the recent fee reductions within the quarter itself? Secondly, volume per customer growth has slowed in Q1. Appreciate that VPC is more of an output and there's a mix effect there, but is there anything specific to kind of call out?

On elasticity volume, I think, clearly elasticity for us is a long-term game, if I may say so. We don't expect short-term benefit from this, especially when we reduce the take rate by one basis point. We know that on the long term, that is the reason why you or businesses or even partners are choosing to work with us. The combination of the infrastructure that we provide at the very low take rate will always be the reason why people at the end choose to work with us. That's why I will not expect a short-term positive impact or in terms of getting customers before because of their price reduction. This is a long-term game, and this is for us, part of our core of the mission.

We want to continue to reduce the take rate because we know that at the end, again, this is the reason why our customers use us. In terms of VPC, I will not read too much into that. This is not really due to the combination of retail, business, and partners. The VPC is less and less a KPI that we use also because of the diversification of our revenue structure. Yeah, indeed, there's also a volatility component to that.

Thanks, Pavan.

Thanks.

Thanks, Pavan.

Thank you. Next we have Hannes from Jefferies. Hi, Hannes.

Hello, good evening. I appreciate the details around the take rate declines expected for this year. Can you just a little bit help us how we should think of the moving parts from going from Q1 +25% growth to come to reach to the midpoint of the 15%-20%? If I'm thinking you had quite a nice, resilient gross yield, that was one part of it, then the take rate should decline. Should we expect card spend and other revenues to hold up? Thinking about the customer growth, do you think that can remain above 20%? Thank you.

Well, thank you, Hannes. In general, as you said, the take rate reduction will take part in Q2 with 2 basis points and then 1 basis point, most probably in Q3 and Q4. As I said, the vast majority still today or majority of our revenues is coming from cross-border volume. The impact on pricing will be perceived on our revenue, on the net revenue. That's why when we are forecast for the rest of the year, we think that the pricing impact will be on the growth rate, and that's why we guide between the 15%-20%. Yeah, that's basically the philosophy behind it.

Maybe you can comment on the other parts, like customer growth.

Oh, yeah. In terms of customer growth, I think you've seen that we still have a very high KPIs. We're very happy with the customer growth, especially in business. This is in line with what we saw last year. As we continue to invest in OPEX, in marketing, and increase the quality of our service, we expect basically this customer growth to continue. Hopefully, we're very happy with the return that we get in terms of customer growth, especially in business that we saw in Q1.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks, Hannes. We have Craig McDowell now from J.P. Morgan. Hi, Craig.

Hi. Good evening, Sarah. Good evening, Emmanuel. Thanks for this.

Good evening, Craig.

I just want to pick up on a point Pavan made on VPC, and in particular on personal VPC. I know a year or two ago you were talking about very deliberately targeting price reductions to generate higher VPC customers. It feels like that's run its course. Should we be thinking about stable VPC on the personal side of the business going forward? Even a decline if you're moving into perhaps APAC regions, perhaps? If you could comment on that would be helpful. The second question, just a brief tactical one. Any kind of benefit that we should sort of discount in the Q1 or maybe even Q2 performance just from World Cup? Presumably quite a lot of activity happening in the U.S. that you may well be benefiting from. Anything to comment there would be helpful. Thank you.

I start with the benefit of the World Cup. I think it's not that significant in our Q1 results. I will more looking at events that happened, more geographic or political events. I mentioned briefly the 26% cross-border volume growth, compared to last year, where we did have some political decisions around Liberation Day and so on and so forth. I don't think that we have a massive benefit from the World Cup compared to the entire business. In terms of VPC, indeed, the VPC per customers might be different from region to region, depending on the GDP of the countries or the region itself. Depending on where the volume will grow, we will see maybe VPC declining in a specific region. Overall, I think VPC is not the metrics that we use for the reasons that I explained before.

The customer mix make it very difficult to use this as a real KPI to measure the business. We prefer to look at the deposits of our customers, which is a very strong sign of the trust that they have in Wise, them growing their money. I think that's a very strong KPI. This is true for retail, this is true for businesses as well.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you, Craig.

Thanks, Craig. Now we have Alex from BNP. Can you hear us, Alex?

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Hi, Alex.

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for doing this. Just 2 questions. One is slightly technical, but just thinking of a share buyback program that you talked about a few weeks ago. Just curious if this has started already, and if you're buying back shares on the U.K. line or the U.S. line, how we should think of a cadence of a share buyback. That'd be my first question. Second question, because you alluded to it just now, Emmanuel, sort of customer deposit growth, which was quite healthy in the quarter. I think on the per customer basis, it slowed down a little bit. How should we think about that, sort of customer deposits on a per customer basis slowing down? Is it a function of, say, a fiscal Q1 that might be a bit travel heavy with people who might have lower current balances in their accounts?

Just curious how to think of that.

Thank you very much, Alex. In terms of buyback, we are in the execution mode. We do have, for the full year, the approval of our regulators, we are executing on this. Our aim is not to have any impact on the trading, in terms of volume that we will buy per month, nor on which market we'll buy. We aim to buy on both London market and New York market. We don't want to have any impact on liquidity or on the share price. That's a kind of philosophy. We will use, for example, ADTV as a metric. We will look at what is the average, and we will put a threshold so that we make sure that we don't influence the trading. We are in full execution mode, and that will last for the next 12 months.

In terms of customer deposit, and the growth of it, I will not read too much into it at this moment. We say this is a snapshot. I think I would like to wait until we have a 6-month view in the year to give you more detail and to comment a little bit more.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you, Alex.

Thanks, Alex. We don't have any more questions. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you for all your questions.

Thank you everyone for your support. Have a good evening.

Thank you.

Hello from Wise. welcome to our FY 2026 Results Call. Our first time presenting financial results since the completion of our dual listing. I'm Martin Adams, Head of Owner Relations. Joining us today are our Co-founder and CEO, Kristo Käärmann, and our CFO, Emmanuel Thomassin. We'll start with opening comments from the team, we'll be happy to answer your questions. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand in the Zoom webinar. Before we begin, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. During this call, we'll be making certain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. These factors are detailed in our results materials and our SEC filings.

All forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions, estimates, and beliefs, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Thank you. Now I'll turn it over to Kristo.

Thanks, Martin, and hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm going to start with financial and customer highlights from the year, I'll hand over to Emmanuel, who will go into the detail of the numbers. Starting with financials, our net revenue grew by 19% to $2.5 billion in financial year 2026. After allowing for the cost to serve our customers and the investments in future growth, the income before tax margin was 26%. These numbers are in line with the medium-term guidance ranges we set out ahead of the U.S. listing. Let's take a look into what's driving this growth. In FY 2026, we helped 19 million customers to move $243 billion internationally. This was 31% more cross-border volume than the year before. Our customers are using us for more than just cross-border transfers. Last year, they spent $44 billion on their Wise cards.

It's up 37% compared to the year before, they trusted Wise to hold $39 billion on their Wise accounts. That's 40% more than the end of the year before. Thanks to this unique and powerful financial infrastructure we're building around the world, now 75% of transfers are completed instantly. That is in less than 20 seconds. Our direct connections into domestic payment systems, in addition to our large payments network, help lower our unit costs over time so that we can price each cross-border transaction profitably, yet charging customers just 0.52% or 52 basis points on average over the year. We've also seen more customers trusting us with holding their money. Our Wise Assets product lets customers earn a return that closely matches the central bank rate for the currency they hold.

In US dollars, for example, customers can earn 3.4% on the dollars they hold with us. Our speed, price, and convenience are all thanks to the investments we've made and continue to make into our infrastructure and products. We build on our investments in the infrastructure. Over this last year, this allowed us to launch new features and partnerships. We went live with direct connections into the Japanese and Brazilian domestic payment systems. We also added multiple new financial services licenses. For example, in South Africa, the UAE, and Thailand. In servicing, AI automations are increasing our bandwidth. For example, 50% of support chats are now resolved without a human. On the product side, we made the Wise account more useful to people and businesses in many ways, including launching Wise assets in Brazil and making it easier for businesses to pay and get paid through new invoicing tools.

More banks and financial institutions also started using our infrastructure. We were excited to announce Raiffeisen, UniCredit, MBSB in Malaysia, and Capitec in South Africa are joining Wise platform in FY 2026. We will expand our infrastructure and build more products on it to create even better outcomes for larger numbers of customers over time. While we're really pleased to help 19 million customers in FY 2026, there are many more people and businesses around the world we still want to reach, as you can see on the next slide. Looking at our share of total cross-border payments, we moved around 5% of the world's money cross-border for individuals last year and just less than 1% of the small and medium businesses' volumes.

We have a huge opportunity ahead of us in this $43 trillion market. In just 15 years, we've grown from zero to now moving a quarter of a trillion across borders. We remain focused on this opportunity and our mission of building the network to move and manage the world's money. With that, Emmanuel, please take us through the numbers.

Hello, everyone, and thank you, Kristo. We appreciate you joining us for our first earnings call as a dual-listing company. I am pleased to present our financial report for financial year 2026. It has been a year defined by robust growth, which provides the opportunity to strategically reinvest back into the business. During my session today, I take you through, first, our growth and net revenue drivers. Second, our investment framework and how we are focused on creating investment capacity by driving efficiencies in key areas of investments. Third, our margin and outlook. Lastly, I'll provide an update on capital allocation. Starting with growth. During the year, we achieved significant growth in our main performance metrics as our customers are using Wise more, and not only for cross-border transactions but also for everyday needs.

Our active customer base increased by 21% year-on-year to reach 19 million, with over seven million new active customers joining Wise in 2026. Our cross-border volume increased by 31% year-on-year to $243 billion, with stronger growth from Wise business and Wise platform. The latter represents around 5% of volume for the year. Our customers spent $44 billion with a Wise card, a growth of 37% year-on-year, and customer holdings grew by 40% year-on-year, totaling $39 billion, including $9 billion held through Wise assets. I will now take you through the different drivers of our financial performance, starting with how customers' activity drives top-line growth. In 2026, we generated around $1.3 billion in cross-border revenue from customers sending or converting currency. This represents a growth of 17% year-on-year.

This increase is lower than the 31% growth in volume, reflecting a reduction in average take rate from 58 basis points in 2025 to 52 basis points in 2026, which I will cover in more detail later. We also generate $392 million in card revenue from customers using their card abroad and at home. This represent a year-on-year increase of 40%, mainly driven by strong adoption in the European Union, in Australia, and in the U.K. Lastly, additional customer activity, such as domestic transactions and investing in our asset products, generates $245 million in other revenue, up by 26% year-on-year. This increase was on the back of stellar growth in the full year 2025, where other revenue grew over 60% as a result of increased pricing for domestic transactions.

Taken together, these different streams of revenue from our customers total $1.9 billion in transaction revenue, representing a year-on-year growth of 22%. The increased adoption of the Wise Account has driven faster expansion in our non-cross-border revenue source. These now account for around one-third of our transaction revenue, which helps to further diversify our overall revenue profile. As I highlighted a few weeks ago at our listing presentation, customers are also trusting Wise more and more with their money. At the end of March 2026, customers held $30 billion on the Wise Account, up 36% compared to the previous year. As we invested these funds in liquid instruments, we generated $806 million in interest income during the year, up 6% year-on-year.

Growth in customer balance didn't fully translate to interest income growth, as we saw a reduction in gross yields from 3.9% in 2025 to 3% in 2026. I'd now like to remind you of our interest income framework under which we would seek to first use the first 1% yield to cover the cost of the Wise account. Second, to retain 20% above the first 1% yield as a profit. Third, we distribute 80% back to the customers. We've built this framework to avoid cyclical movements of the interest rate set by the central banks, like the Fed, while making the account interesting to customers. In our financial year 2026, we were able to pay $197 million out of the year and $806 million back to customers. Roughly half of the 80% target.

This is still below our target due to geographical restrictions, like in the U.K., which represents over 50% of interest income unpaid to customers and where, as of today, we are not able to pay interest on customer balances. Overall, I just covered the different layers of customer activity: sending and converting money, spending with a Wise card, growing with Wise assets, and holding balances with us. Together, these drive our net revenue growth. In the full year 2026, we delivered $2.5 billion in net revenue, up 19% year-on-year, with an increasingly diversified revenue base. Moving to our investment framework and the key areas of investments for long-term value generation. If you've been following Wise for a while, you will have seen a similar version of this slide. Overall, we believe in driving growth through continuous investment. Our investment framework is the clear evidence of this.

By targeting medium-term 15%-20% income before tax margins, assuming we are able to pay our target interest income back to the customers, we are able to invest in our growth and in our pricing. This, in exchange, drives more scale and operational efficiencies, providing us with additional margin capacity for reinvestments. In the full year 2026, we proved again that we can operate efficiently while simultaneously investing in the infrastructure that powers our future growth, redeploying profits into long-term capabilities and growing our teams. During the year, we increased our direct investments into the business through growth in operating expenses of 39% year-on-year to $1.9 billion. We were able to achieve this as we successfully recruited and onboarded over 2,000 new Wisers.

This is the result of a combination of lower attrition, which allows us to focus on resources into filling new roles, and refining our recruitment processes. For the coming year, we expect to continue investing back into the business, applied at a slightly lower pace as we aim to combine this with investments into our pricing. I would like now to cover the different areas of investments in more details. In 2026, our transaction expenses, as well as transaction and credit losses, were $527 million, up 35% year-on-year. This reflects the cost of providing our services. We are continuously seeking efficiencies in this area, making sure we get the best terms from our partners as we grow in scale, while also becoming more efficient in how we deliver our products to our customers.

Transaction expenses as a percentage of net revenue increased to 21%, mainly as a result of a one-off US GAAP adjustment in relation to FX on certain government bonds of around $70 million, which increased transaction expenses. This was offset in other comprehensive income. Excluding this impact, operating expenses increased by 17%, lower than transaction revenue growth. Going forward, we have changed our investment strategy to take into account the US GAAP implications. For the year 2027, so, 2027, we are expecting to see further efficiencies in transaction expenses during the year. This is part of our business model, which allows us to create increased capacities for investment. Moving on to our investments to acquire, onboard, and service our growing customer base. In 2026, we increased our marketing spend by over 60% to $172 million.

We are focused on new channels and increased brand marketing investments. We have also increased the size of our Wise platform and Wise business sales teams. We are pleased with the return that we are seeing from this effort as we continue to lean into marketing investments while targeting a minimum 20% return on this, also supported by a strong 70% customer acquisition through word of mouth. We are also investing in offering the best onboarding experience to our customers while complying with regulatory requirements around the globe. With around one-third of our employees in functions related to compliance, we invest in developing robust processes to drive customer trust. We are combining our efforts with increased automation as we seek to improve customers' outcomes. In the full year 2026, we increased our servicing spend by 38% to $397 million, mainly driven by our employee hires.

We believe these strategic investments are vital, especially considering the vast opportunities ahead as we focus on acquiring new customers, while we also foster deeper long-term loyalty with our existing base. In the full year 2026, more than seven million active customers completed their first cross-border transaction with Wise. This will present a growth rate of 20% year-on-year and give us confidence in the value of our investments. The increased adoption of our products is also a function of our investments in technology. In 2026, we invest $434 million, up 38% year-on-year, into tech and development to launch new products and also to maintain our existing products and roll them out in new regions. We are not just growing our tech teams to achieve this. We are also implementing AI tools to increase efficiency.

We now have over 1,000 engineers deploying code 6,000 times per month on average. Finally, we are also investing in our core functions. In 2026, we increase our spend by 40% year-on-year to $382 million, driven by our preparation for the dual listing and introduction on Nasdaq, with a one-off expense of $45 million, as well as growth in regulatory and hiring costs. Within our investment framework, alongside our direct investments into the business, we seek to invest in the sustainable reduction of our price. This remains long-term, driving down prices for customers while building a sustainable, profitable business. In 2026, while the average take rate reduced by six basis points from 58 to 52 basis points, this mostly reflects the price change implemented in the full year 2025.

We finished the year with a take rate of 51 basis points in Q4 2026 versus 53 in Q4 2025, reflecting a two-basis-point reduction during the year. Looking forward, we expect to continue sharing these efficiencies with customers as we generate extra capacities for investments. For the year 2027, depending on the additional capacity we can generate, we expect this to be reflected in a reduction of one to two basis points each quarter. Our investments into pricing are a core feature of our business model, which support the long-term sustainability of our business. I'd like now to cover our margin and outlook. We delivered strong margins alongside these strategic investments, including pricing. In the full year 2026, income before tax was $660 million, with a margin of 26%, as we seek to deliver a margin in line with our medium-term targets.

This margin demonstrates that we can offer customers the best price while investing in building a highly profitable business. The two objectives are complementary, not contradictory. Our investment framework is further demonstrated in our financial projections for the medium term and the upcoming fiscal year. Looking first at the medium term, we are maintaining our target of 15%-20% compound annual growth for net revenue using 2024 as our benchmark. We also target an income before tax margin of 15%-20%, assuming our goal of returning 80% of interest income to customers is met. Otherwise, we anticipate margins to range between 20% and 25%. This assumes no material changes to interest rates by the Central Bank. For 2027 specifically, we expect net revenue growth to be around the middle of our medium-term guidance of 15%-20%.

In terms of the shape of the year, due to the phasing of our investments into pricing, we expect this growth to be more pronounced in the first half of the year. Similarly, we expect that the scheduling of our reinvestments to the business will drive a comparable trend in our profitability. While we aim for full-year margins around the high-end of the 20%-25% range, we expect this to be front-half weighted, delivering results slightly above this target in H1. Our full-year 2027 guidance reflects the latest rates published by the Central Banks such as the Fed, the U.K. Central Bank, and the ECB. Before we conclude, I'd like to provide an update on our capital allocation framework. This is underpinned by our business strategy, which aims to deliver strong, profitable growth, which then translates to strong cash generation.

Under our framework, we seek to continue making prudent financial decisions in the best financial structure to deliver our long-term mission. This starts with prudent management of our strong level of cash. We maintain a strong capital and cash position to cover regulatory requirements but also to ensure resilience and flexibility for future plans. As such, we seek to maintain a buffer above regulatory requirements to allow for this flexibility, for example, for future product expansion or license applications. The next step is returning capital to you, our owners. To allow for the flexibility I just mentioned, we review our approach to shareholder return on a yearly basis. In 2026, we allocated over $450 million to the repurchase of nearly 36 million shares into our employee share trust program, including the purchase of around 25 million shares related to historical share options.

Today, we are announcing our intention to commence a new share purchase program, which we expect to be over half a billion dollars, of which around 40% will be allocated to a recurring employee share trust program, and the remaining 60% will be used to buy back shares into treasury. To conclude, we continue to execute on our strategy with discipline, and we are seeing strong results. We're growing our customer base, increasing customer engagement, diversifying revenue, and investing for the future. All of these while delivering on our growth and profit targets. The fundamentals of our business are very strong, and we believe that we are uniquely placed to tackle the huge opportunity in front of us that Kristo mentioned at the very start of the presentation. Now we move to Q&A. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Emmanuel. We'll now move to Q&A. Please do raise your hand in the Zoom webinar if you'd like to ask a question. Our first question in the list here is Cris Kennedy from William Blair. Over to you, Cris.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Can you just provide an update on some of the key initiatives and areas of investment as you focus more on the U.S. market? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Cris. I'll start. We are investing strongly in the U.S.; we've been doing this for the past few years. We are also seeing a great response from our customer base. Our growth in the U.S. has been really strong. The initiatives that we deploy into the U.S. are similar to the ones that we're rolling out in the rest of the world. We have a large customer base, both on personal and small business side, using Wise for transactional purposes, but also a growing customer base using the Wise account and the Wise business in the U.S. The story that we're seeing in the U.S. is relatively similar to the rest of the world, but the engagement has been fantastic.

If I may add on there. Similar to other offices in the world, we've been investing in our employees. We built a structure in the United States to support the growth that we anticipate. You've probably seen, hopefully, Cris, a marketing campaign in the U.S. this year. We've been a little bit more visible than in the past, and we're really pleased with it. We invest in servicing and sales. Sales in business. We see an acceleration of the growth of our small midsize businesses. On the platform, we think that we have a really good role to play here. We're excited. There are more than 4,000 banks in the U.S., and we think that our platform business can offer a very great solution for them and for the customers.

Great. Thank you for that. Just as a follow-up, Emmanuel, you mentioned the cadence for fiscal 2027. Can you make any comment on the first quarter of this year? Thanks for taking the questions.

We took the take rate by one basis point down in the first quarter. I think this is the cadence you should anticipate with a slight acceleration, maybe I mentioned one to two in the second quarter. Overall, we will do this quarter by quarter. That's what we expect for this year.

Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Justin Forsythe at UBS. Justin? Justin?

Sorry, guys. I didn't see the unmute there. Apologies. Thank you very much for having me on; it's good to chat with you again, Kristo, Emmanuel, and team. Wanted to ask a bit about the price cut. In a bear case, you consider it a bear case, but you'll be exiting the year with nearly 40 basis points. Could you just give more detail on where you're doing the price cuts? I would love, Emmanuel, if you could talk a little more about the evidence of the ROI. Are you guys doing stuff like A/B testing to determine instances where price cuts work, where they don't work, and where you're planning to lean in a bit there? Just in general, is there a point when you're going to hit diminishing marginal returns of price cuts? Is that at the longer-term 10 basis point target, or could it be before that?

Well, thank you. Thank you, Justin, for your questions. I think for us, price adjustments are a part of our reinvestment strategy. I highlight our investments that we've done this year into the business. We reduce only, if I may say, by two basis points in 2026 the take rate. In general, we think that price is the number one argument for customers to come to us and to use us. This is how we build the moat alongside our infrastructure and the quality of the service that we build, and that's why we put so much effort into that. It's fair to say that we don't put any floor or any limits, and we think that the price, if you want to talk about price elasticity, is a long-term game.

We don't expect an immediate return of a price reduction, but we know that in the end, in the long term, price matters for every single customer that is using us. That's probably where we stop now.

Got it. No, that's really helpful. Just one minor follow-up, if I might, on the Platform TPV. You said it was 5% for the full year. I think you were maybe a bit above that in Q3. Should we assume that the Q4 exit rate was above that 5%? Any further updates on the progress on Wise platform that you can give? Thanks.

Well, I can tell you on the progress: we signed Capitec, and Capitec went live. This is our first customer coming from the African continent, and this is the number one bank in South Africa. They are not part of this 5% that I mentioned before, but you can see the traction, and you can expect our pipeline to be attractive. I think the 5% is in line with what we guide at Investor Day on the midterm guidance to be at 10% midterm and long-term to be at 50% of the cross-border volume.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Maurer at FT Partners.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Could you talk about headcount additions going forward? Hiring has been elevated for some time now. Is there any sign of this slowing down, or is the plan to continue adding headcount at the current rate? Sorry. Thanks for taking the question.

No, thank you, Craig. I think we have been very pleased with adding these headcounts. You can see the reflection, let's say, in our growth rate. Last year, our cross-border volume grew by 31%. The revenues also grew like a percentage, and the numbers of customers grew, and so on and so forth. The combination of the investments and the headcount that we're adding is to serve this acceleration of customer growth that we see. I mentioned today seven million new customers made one cross-border transfer last year. We end up with 19 million active customers. To serve these customers, we're investing in servicing. Although we invest in artificial intelligence, we think that in order to make investments or have a good return on investment, we need to onboard customers in the best manner and to serve them in the best manner.

Assuming that we continue to have this return in terms of growth, and we're monitoring our investments very closely, I think it's fair to say that we will also continue to invest for this year.

Thank you. The next question comes from Mohammed Moawalla at Goldman Sachs. Over to you, Mo.

Great. Thank you, Martin. Hi, Kristo. Hey, Emmanuel. Couple from me. Emmanuel, just coming back on the sort of the pace of OpEx growth, because I know there was some sort of positive other income that helped you in the second half, which meant that the kind of OpEx run rate was quite elevated. How should we think very simplistically of the OpEx trajectory over the course of FY 2027? Secondly, on just the buyback, is this a one-time thing, or is it something that you're looking to perhaps revisit on an annual basis? Kristo, in terms of just the pipeline and the momentum around the sort of platform business, can you give us some color around the pipeline, where you are, and traction in the U.S.?

I know you've got Wise Connect coming up next week; I'm just curious to kind of get your perception around how that momentum and how the ramps are going from kind of prior wins. Thank you.

I'll start and take the easy one. As I will repeat to Emmanuel, we're very excited about the platform pipeline. You're going to be hearing about new names that will be coming out, and as you rightly pointed out, it's a combination of new names that join the Wise platform but also the deeper embedding of the expansion of the existing names. We love the customers that we have on Wise platform, and we love the new ones that are coming on board.

I would continue on your first question and what kind of trend we can see in the costs. You mentioned, rightly so, the one-off that we've seen due to our listing. If you exclude, if you adjust our transactional cost by the $70 million impact of the US GAAP, you will see that transactional costs grew by 17%, which is below cross-border volume and also below revenue. The year before, we had an increase of 12%. Basically, what you can expect is us to gain further efficiencies on transactional expenses. Other OpEx, as I mentioned before, we continue to invest in. We are excited about the return that we've seen on marketing but not the same on servicing. We invest in artificial intelligence, which improves our NPS score. We think that we will continue on that path. On buyback, we take an annual decision.

We will revisit this annually. This is the largest buyback that we have ever done. This is over half a billion dollars, the decision we make this year. We want to remain opportunistic with our cash in terms of which decision we can take and any opportunity that may come up in the future. Yes, we will revisit on an annual basis our buyback, but this is clearly a clear component of our capital allocation.

Now we go to Pavan at Citi. Pavan?

We don't hear you, Pavan, in case you are muted.

Sorry about that.

No worries.

Just trying to unmute. Hi, Kristo, Emmanuel, and Martin. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, could you maybe touch on some of the exit trends in Q4, and maybe trends so far in Q1, given the FX volatility that we've seen? Secondly, on the midterm guidance, appreciate the clarity on the net interest income assumptions for 2027. Could you outline the net interest income assumptions that are baked into your midterm growth guidance?

I will start with our midterm guidance and interest rates. We don't assume any kind of massive FX movement in our guidance, nor any interest rates. We are forecasting a stable interest rate environment, so no massive move from the Central Bank to be expected. That said, we already reflected on the decision, I think last week or two weeks ago, from the European Central Bank to move from 2% to 2.25%. I will need help on the first question. Martin, do you remember the first one?

He said trends on FX.

Trend on FX. Oh, I covered that. Okay. Sorry. Apologies, Pavan.

No, sorry. The first was on kind of exit trends in the cross-border business, trends so far in kind of Q1.

Yeah. As I said, our guidance is always based on constant currency.

Yeah.

We don't speculate on FX movement. It's all constant currency based.

Sorry. I meant more on the operational business and the cross-border transfer business trends.

FX volatility in the market.

Oh, okay. Sorry, my mistake. Sorry.

Yeah.

I misunderstood this. Usually, FX movement is beneficial for us. Any movement in FX will drive more cross-border volume, because our customers obviously will take advantage of the movement. In that case, FX is a driver for cross-border transactions.

In the three weeks since the Q1 results.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. Thank you, Martin. In three weeks, we're going to give maybe more color, as we will publish our Q1 results.

Thanks, Emmanuel. Now we go to Craig over at J.P. Morgan. Over to you, Craig.

Hey, good evening. Thanks for letting me on. Just on the first question on the platform business, can I ask whether money laundering allegations or newspaper headlines in Europe a couple of weeks ago have had any impact on your existing platform partnerships, perhaps slowing what's delaying new corridors being brought online? Similarly, if it's impacted at all, the funnel of opportunities, whether that's sort of come up in conversations. Secondly, just realizing you're now becoming sort of a quite meaningful sort of deposit taker in the U.K., whether there's been any development with the U.K. regulator, perhaps, talking about sort of changing how you might or could begin repaying interest to your customers. Now that it seems you're getting some material of meaningful size, whether that changes the sort of setting with the U.K. regulator at all. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Craig. I didn't maybe fully hear your second question, I'll start with the first one. We don't really have any new update from the prosecutor at all on the topic that was in the news. This is in line with the infrequent nature of the interaction with us. To your question, we don't have any detailed findings. We continue the business as usual, and we're focused on serving our direct customers and platform partners. If there's anything new, we will update you.

Thank you. Sorry, just to clarify my second question. Just any change at all from the U.K. regulator, as you become a more meaningful deposit taker, maybe in your regulatory change and maybe being asked by the regulator to begin paying back some kind of interest to your depositors. Thank you.

We are very much hoping that the U.K. regime would also allow the returning of interest to customers, which it currently doesn't. There hasn't been any news on the regulatory space from that perspective, as far as I'm aware.

Thanks, Kristo. The next question will come from Hannes at Jefferies. Over to you, Hannes.

Yes. Thanks for letting me on. I also got a couple of questions. Maybe the first one is around your recent acquisition of Expatica. Maybe you can talk a little bit about it, how much money you spent, what the contribution should be that we should put in. Then maybe around the direct connections. You have now reached 75% of almost instant settlement. Can you talk about the pipeline here and then also any of the recent announcements, like, for example, Japan? Are they already live, and is this the reason why the transaction costs should trend down as a percentage of net revenue? Thank you.

Thank you, Hannes. I'll start with the direct connections. Indeed, you're right. We generally expect to see the transaction expenses to come down. The direct connections cut out the middleman and cut out the cost from the payments. This is a very important strategy for us to keep adding the direct connections in all the countries where we operate. Indeed, we were very excited to connect to Pix in Brazil this last year. Pix is a very advanced, very new, and very well-adopted system in Brazil. That has been a great journey. In some ways, Japan is the opposite. Zengin is a 50-year-old system, and connecting to that was also a fascinating experience. We're happy that we can kind of connect the two worlds into our platform and deliver this amazing experience of near-instant payments at a lower and lower cost around the world.

This is definitely something you'll hear more about, hopefully in new countries as we go into this financial year.

Hannes, I will cover your first question, Expatica. Maybe to set the scene, we don't have a legacy of M&A transactions. We've done only one in our history that qualifies as an M&A. It was in India to get a license. This is not really our focus in the next few years, but we will also look at opportunities to tell it clearly. This one specifically, you might have seen the announcement, is not very material, but it's part of our marketing strategy as opposed to our operational M&A transaction, if you wish. Yeah, Expatica, well spotted, but it's more in our marketing strategy.

Thanks, Emmanuel. Our last question comes from Aditya at Bank of America. Over to you, Aditya.

Hey, Kristo, Emmanuel. Thanks for taking my questions. A few from my side. On going back to the question on pricing, could you maybe just give us a bit more color on the type of pricing changes you're making, maybe in which specific markets or corridors? More specifically, is it more targeted at maybe some higher-value transactions like you did, I think, in some of the previous price reduction cycles? Just a bit more color on exactly where that's coming. On the platform, you mentioned that Capitec is not in the 5%, and that actually it's already live. In general, are you seeing that the ramp-up of new logos once they sign up is taking place quicker than previously? Are you seeing more sort of traction in getting those volumes up, given you already have some large banks as maybe a reference point?

Finally, any update on the application for the U.S. banking charter, which happened previously, and any implications of that if that comes through?

I will start with the pricing. The pricing is, in general, you can assume that we are following the same logic as in the past. This is a cost-plus exercise. We look at every route and every service that we provide to businesses, platforms, or retail, and we target the same margin. We want to be agnostic. In that sense, I can't tell you, like, Oh, in one quarter, two quarters, we will target that specific route. It will be a result of the efficiency that we can gain in certain corridors. In general, the pricing is a reflection of efficiency and cost discipline. In the past, you're right, we've also done some efforts on the high-transaction customers. I don't want to disclose too much about our decision in the future for obvious reasons, but this is a kind of reflection that we will have.

On the platform, if I may continue, towards the second part of your question. The ramp-up of customers, new customers joining, you could assume that at the beginning, the ramp-up, you will have a similar reaction. Customers and platform partners will first test our product and test the quality, then over time add new routes. I think it's fair to say that those are the kinds of expectations that you should have. We mentioned in the past that we have one exception with one partner that we're ramping up faster than. Otherwise, usually you will expect the new partners joining to have a slow ramp-up.

You referred to our application with the OCC for a non-depository trust charter. As you know, the OCC has a well-established process for reviewing applications, and we're continuing to follow that process. In the meantime, and for a while, we've been operating in the U.S. with 48 money transmitter licenses in each of the states. As you hear, the U.S. business is growing really well. We're being opportunistic, adding more licenses around the world as we expand our product. Thank you for the questions.

Thanks, Kristo. That concludes our FY 2026 results call. Thank you very much for joining us.

Good morning. Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us this morning for our half-year FY 2026 results presentation. We have a short presentation from our CEO and founder, Kristo, followed by a presentation by our CFO, Emmanuel Thomassin, and then we will move on to Q&A. We'll start in the room, and then we'll jump over to Zoom. Thank you.

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Being here today with us again. About 70% of people discover Wise because their friends and family tell them about Wise. We've been really proud about this. I've just lost the notes on the back screen, which will come up in a second. Actually, making ads is quite fun in Wise because what we get to do is basically tell the stories that our customers tell their friends, their family, tell these stories again and amplify them with the ads. What you just saw now is a set of ads we're running in the U.S. on TV. They kind of follow the same narrative. This is what our customers are telling their friends. Our update today will show how Wise is yet again serving larger and larger groups of people and businesses, moving more and more.

Cross-border volume, and how we're fixing larger and larger use cases for that. Let's get started. We added 2 million active customers over the year, coming to 13 million people and businesses now using Wise in cross-currency transactions in the last six months. That is either moving or spending money across currencies. Our work on infrastructure and product, the service experience, has led to stronger recommendations. Assisted by advertising, it has led to more new customers, but also stronger affinity to Wise, which means more recommendations, but also staying for longer. These customers are transacting more, with cross-border volumes up 24% to almost GBP 85 billion for this half year. This is quite incredible. This time last year, we took pretty decisive action to reduce our average fees down by almost 15%.

We should not really be surprised that we saw customers react to that. They did not only increase their persistence to recommending Wise to others, but they also voted with their wallet, bringing us more transactions and larger use cases. The volume growth that we have been seeing is especially pronounced in this segment of larger transactions and larger use cases. You have heard us talk about customers shifting from transactions just using Wise transactionally to using the Wise Account for their international banking features. My team can be really proud of actually two things here. First, clearly, the features we have been adding are really resonating, so people and businesses are getting more out of their Wise Accounts. They are using it more. The other dynamic here is how fast the customer confidence is growing.

Our customers are now trusting us with over GBP 25 billion of their cash today, holding this as a deposit or as an investment through the Wise Account. Over this last year, I feel like we have pulled off a pretty incredible feat. We have taken down our price, a price point by about 15%, effectively expanding our economic moat quite incredibly. At the same time, we have boosted the growth of volumes and customer holdings. As a result, recording 13% growth in underlying income. This is really the result of the efficiencies we get from the infrastructure that we are building, but also the product that we are serving. In the last six months, we have been pretty busy shipping more. As we described on Owners' Day, you should expect progress coming to two main categories. One is the infrastructure side, where we go deep in the direct integrations and also in the regulatory infrastructure.

Then secondly, you'll see developments for international banking as our customers keep getting more and more out of their Wise Account. A good example maybe here is Brazil, because in the last six months, on the infrastructure side, we went direct really deep with PIX, brought PIX live to our customers and our bank partners. Separately, on the Wise Account, we added interest to both local currency and U.S. dollar holdings. In addition, on the Wise Platform, actually, we brought live this integration with Itaú that we were talking about earlier. We are seeing these investments pay off for our customers and platform clients and quite measurably. When we look at the payment speeds, things people really care about, how fast the money is going to get on the other side, 74% are now instant.

I need to remind you again what instant means. Instant means money leaving your bank in one country and arriving at the recipient's bank on the other side of the world, ready to use in less than 20 seconds. That is now 74% of the payments. After this large investment in our price moat, we have kept the average take rate stable at 52 basis points. Another highlight is coming from our fastest growing segment, Wise Platform, where we see the cross-border volumes now getting to 5% of our volumes. We are on track to get this to about 10% in the medium term. You have heard us recently talk about the really impressive brand names and big banks that we have signed on Wise Platform, but I am actually really excited seeing the volumes growing on integrations that we brought live years ago.

This is where this is the growth that we're enjoying today. Before I hand over to Emmanuel, I just wanted to remind you of the huge opportunity we have ahead of us. Because we're building Wise to move trillions. There is a huge, fast-growing market. The network we've created with our products that customers love. These have been made to build. These have been built to make money work across borders the same as it works at home. Emmanuel, please take us through.

Thank you, Kristo. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to share our financial performance for the first half year 2026. How our disciplined investments continue to drive sustainable and profitable growth. We're making progress across every single key metric. Our active customers are grown by 21% each year over the last two years to now over 13 million active customers for the first half year. The cross-border volume has grown at a similar pace to GBP 85 billion. The customer holdings have exceeded GBP 25 billion. This is growing by 34% each year. Underlying income growth has grown by 16% to annually GBP 750 million. We are delivering underlying profit before tax and at the top of the range. Our range is by 13%-16% of our target margin.

What I want to focus on today is how we achieve this through focus targeting investments that build our competitive moat, but also drive long-term growth. Let's start with our customers because clearly they are the heart of everything we do at Wise. In the first half of the year, over 13 million customers complete international transactions with Wise, experiencing the ease, the transparency, but also the affordability that defines us. Personal customers grew by 18% year-on-year to 12.8 million. Business customers grew by 17% to 613,000. We are particularly pleased to see the acceleration in this business segment. This is the strongest sequel growth in net addition that we have had. The cross-border volume increased by 24% year-on-year to GBP 85 billion. This is a growth of 26% even in custom currency.

This was mainly given by customer growth, but also in addition to that, our existing customers moving higher volumes, a sign of growing trust and deeper engagement. We saw the strong growth in business volumes. As Kristo mentioned before, the scaling of the Wise Platform, which is now 5% of the cross-border volume, means 1% more than in the previous year. In the first six months, we had the pleasure to have major partners like UniCredit or Raiffeisen Bank. We are seeing also strong growth from our existing partners. You surely noticed that the volume grew at a faster pace than our cross-border revenue. This is on purpose. Our cross-border take rate decreased by 10 basis points year on year to 52 basis points, the sharpest adjustments in the company historic, while our cross-border revenue increased by 5% compared to last year.

We are investing in pricing because we believe that the lowest cost, the lowest price, and the best infrastructure provider will win over the long term. The Wise Account is key to our strategy in increasing customer retention and broadening the product usage. The card usage has grown significantly, with card spend exceeding GBP 15 billion in the first half year of 2026, generating GBP 132 million in revenue. This is an increase of 28% year-on-year. The popularity of the Wise Account also means that customers are holding more money with us, nearly GBP 20 billion in Wise Account and another GBP 5.6 billion in assets. That totals customer holdings over GBP 25 billion at the end of the period. This balance obviously generates significant interest income in H1, even if slowing down year on year due to the lower yields in the market.

We have successfully shifted the mix of our revenue base, which makes our business more resilient, but also represents multiple engines for growth. The non-cross-border revenue now represents 41% of our total underlying income. We also have a diversified regional footprint as we continue to invest into growing across multiple markets. You have seen this investment framework before, but it is worth reinforcing it as we explain our financial strategy. This framework ensures a sustainable approach to investment and earnings growth over the long term. Once we achieve efficiencies, we consider investing back into the business. We also can invest in price reductions, which drive customer and volume growth. This leads to increased profitability, and then we can reinvest. Let me go through how we deliver on this.

Starting with our servicing function, as we build the right structure to onboard and provide a better service to a growing customer base. Our investments in servicing increased by 20% year-on-year to GBP 134 million. We are pleased with the benefit that we are seeing from AI and automation customer servicing, with big improvements here. A lot more is planned as we ramp up AI technology. We are also investing into our teams, including compliance, which is critical to the success of our business. Our historic investments in servicing are paying off. As you can see, some key examples here on the screen. In particular, we have been able to expand our Net Promoter Score to 69. The high levels of service we provide and our investments into price continue to help us to build a loyal customer base.

This is clearly highlighted by the 70% of customers that join Wise through word of mouth. We are also going beyond that. As we continue to increase our investments into marketing and sales, as we shared at our Owners Day in April this year, we are investing more strategically across diversified channels, increasing our brand marketing spend, and building awareness and driving more organic growth. In H1, our marketing and sales investments increased by 59% year over year to GBP 57 million. We invest as much as possible within our targets, and this is evident with our payback period remaining strong at six months. In H1, we run brand campaigns in regions like Australia, Canada, and the U.S. You saw some examples from Australia at our Owners Day in April. Today, we also played an ad of the U.S. earlier today.

That is not all what we are doing. Here you can see some examples on how we brought the Wise brand to our Canadian customers' daily commute. Through these investments, we have continued to drive a constant increase in new customer acquisitions. Importantly, we add 3.5 million new active customers in H1 2026. This is a result of our strategic investments to attract and retain our customers, including investments into pricing. Next, on tech and development, we invest GBP 144 million in H1, and this is up by 18% year-on-year across multiple teams. A significant portion of this spend goes to maintaining our existing and available products. For the rest, we continue to invest in launching new features, but also rolling out the existing features into a new market.

Kristo shared an earlier example of many launches and improvements that the team is working on. Finally, we're also investing in corporate function and infrastructure. These teams might not be customer-facing, but they are essential for sustainable growth. The spend here increased by 35% to GBP 131 million, supporting areas like compliance, risk, people operations. This is also including one-off investments related to our dual listing project. We expect this investment base to continue in H2 with administrative expense to offer around GBP 1 billion for the full year. This includes investments in our people across the area that I just covered. In H1, we welcome over 1,000 additional colleagues at Wise, and we plan to keep on hiring in H2. These investments, together with the top-line growth we delivered in the period, clearly highlight how we are delivering on our strategy.

As you can see clearly in our margin progression over the past two years, the increased profitability we generate in H1 2025 has been reinvested, taking us back to our underlying profit before tax margin target range of 13%-16%. This is exactly the model that we promise here, and it is working. As you know, we only use the first 1% yield we receive of interest income within our underlying profit before tax, because we are committed to building a business that is sustainable without relying on cyclical forms of income such as interest. Including additional interest income beyond the first 1%, we reported a profit before tax for the period of GBP 255 million. Now I would like to cover our expectations for the rest of the year, and we are reiterating our previous guidance.

For the full year 2026, we continue to expect underlying income growth to be within our midterm range of 15%-20% on the custom currency basis. Based on the phasing of our investments, we continue to expect underlying VPT of around 16% for 2026, excluding the one-off listing expense of circa GBP 35 million. On our capital allocation framework, as we continue to make prudent decisions to deliver on our long-term mission, our business strategy aims to deliver strong profitable growth so that we can generate strong cash in the future. This means that we can sustain a strong level of cash, maintaining a strong capital to ensure resilience and flexibility. On the return of capital, I wanted to share an update on the share repurchase program we announced earlier this year.

From the incremental 25 million shares into our employee benefit trust to fund historic options, we have already repurchased half of it. We are executing our strategy with discipline and seeing strong results across every single metric that matters. We are growing our customer base, we are deepening our engagement, diversifying our revenue, and investing for the future. All this while maintaining our target profitability range. The fundamentals of our business have never been so strong, and we are just getting started. I will leave you with another ad as we set it up for questions. Thank you so much.

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Right. Okay, we're just going to take any questions that you have. What we'll do is we'll start in the room, and then we'll jump over to Zoom. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand as some of you are ready. Do introduce yourself, ask your question, and do hand back the mic so that we can get it to the next person that would like to ask a question. If you could just start over to the right here.

Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my questions, Josef Goleman. Firstly, platforms demonstrated a strong inflection in the half, now 5% of volumes going around three times than the total volume. Can you talk to us about some of the momentum and ramp you're seeing within this segment and talk us through that midterm guide of 10% of volumes in terms of the growth you need to get there? Secondly, one for Kristo, please. Stablecoins are certainly gaining traction within the payment ecosystem. Can you talk to us about where you see Wise positioned with respect to stablecoins and what are some of the opportunities and potential challenges given you built one of the lowest cross-border payment infrastructures?

I'll start with the platform. Thank you very much. Yeah, you're right. I mean, we have a very good momentum. I mean, every time we meet, we are pleased to announce new names, new partners joining the platform. That is also driving inbound calls, so we are really, really pleased with that. You see basically new names coming, and we are integrating them. Also, as I mentioned in the presentation, you see the ramp-up of names that we mentioned before, where we see the volume increasing over time. Today, we are at 5%, a little bit more than 5%. This is 1% more than our last meeting that we had in April. Yes, we are on track for delivering the 10% midterm and the 50% long-term. Yes, we have good momentum here. We see interest from new partners or potential new partners.

Thanks, Josef. On the stablecoin question, indeed, you are right. We've built the world's fastest, most efficient, lowest-cost way of moving money between countries and currencies. When we talk about this, we often talk about the direct integrations and how we link together the local payment networks. In fact, WiseNetwork also comes with this regulatory infrastructure that allows us to do this in each of the jurisdictions around the world. If we ask about stablecoins in that context of money transfers that go just beyond moving U.S,. dollars between wallets, it's these regulated on-and-off ramps into those local currencies. How do you get the money into the USD stablecoin and out of that USD stablecoin? That's actually the hardest thing to achieve reliably, which is exactly what we built Wise Network, this Wise infrastructure for. If we want to think about Wise in that context, then.

As these legitimate use cases of USD clearing outside of the Federal Reserve and outside of the main banks emerge, we're starting to see reliable anti-fraud, anti-bribery, anti-tax evasion, anti-money laundering mechanics come live on the stablecoin environments. Of course, we have the best on-and-off ramps to make use of this new technology across the world. Furthermore, if these challenges improve, I'm actually personally quite excited if we can add something like this to move U.S. dollars next to Fedwire and Zelle and Venmo and other options that are there today for our own customers.

Thanks. It's Adam from Morgan Stanley. I've got two questions for you. First of all, on the pricing, obviously a big reduction over the last 12 months. The policy in the past has always been to cut pricing as you engineer cost out of the platform.Could you just give us any change to that, first of all, and then any visibility insight you could give to how you're thinking about that over the next 12 months? Secondly, on the investment side of things, obviously a big investment gone in already and more in the second half. Do you see any change in the payback metrics that you're getting? Would you be more comfortable with maybe moving those payback periods out a little bit? Critically, in some of the new markets you're in, there's a big flywheel effect with Wise in terms of getting people on and getting volumes up to bring the cost down. We know how that works. Are you seeing that this advertising is accelerating that flywheel in some of these newer markets you're going into?

Would that push you to do a little bit more to accelerate how you get to more of those instant transactions and so on? Thank you.

Let me try to respond more principally. We are keeping our investments. We aim to keep our investments really balanced and steady. We saw, as we are describing, we did a pretty decisive move about a year ago and now have been kind of stable. Going forward, we try to avoid big swings, but definitely the strategy has not changed because we amazingly see this working. We see more volume even coming up in the short term, let alone this economic mode that we are building. This is definitely going to continue, but we are going to try and avoid big swings. That will be kind of a steady expectation.

The other question that you had around, do we see the market marketing working? For sure. I think we're one of, potentially our marketing team is one of the world's most disciplined when it comes to payback. I don't. I think the magic still is if you can reach more people with the same investment return, because at the end of the day, we're investing our shareholders' money, and that has to have a return.

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Kristo, first of all, looking at that photograph, I wanted to ask you which shampoo do you use? The real two questions really are, one is in terms of margins going ahead. Are we kind of, sorry, let me answer the margin question second. The first question really being, you obviously currently Wise transfers kind of charges per transfer. Are you thinking of something like an Amazon Prime model where somebody pays in, let's say, GBP 10 or whatever in whichever currency, and then they kind of monthly, they can have so many transfers? Are you thinking about that? Have you already tried that in any particular market? That was my first question. My second question was about basically margins. Obviously, it's a huge, huge market out there. Are you also thinking of kind of saying willing to kind of take lower, lower digs and lower margins? Because obviously the volumes that we're talking about are like 100,000x potential. Thanks.

I'll take the first one. Maybe Emmanuel will take the second.

Yeah. I won't talk about shampoo, but on the margin, look, I mean, we guide the market to 13%-16%, and we are really serious about this.I mean, we want to grow because there's a massive opportunity out there, as you know. Kristo mentioned just now how we reinvest in pricing, but this is one of the options that we have. This year, we are investing in marketing, we're investing in servicing, we're investing in product and development, we're investing in people. Basically, to offer the best service we can. We anticipate, obviously, the growth. We have the strongest ad customers in the history of Wise and basically for customers and businesses. We know this is working. While we still guide the market at the 13%-16%. This is a massive investment that we're doing. We're delivering not only on these fields that I mentioned, but also all the features, the direct integration. We're really, really busy.

We still deliver on this margin at the top of the range right now. I think in terms of margin, we are really disciplined. I mean, the money we win, we do not spend, we invest. We want to have a return. That helps us, this discipline, to guide the market to the 13%-16%. As long as we get room to invest and we get a good return and the time is so fantastic, I think it would be silly not to do this. We can expect us to be disciplined.

Your other question on the different charging models or bulking together, of course, we play to a reasonable extent with all of those, and you might see some evolution there. I think principally, we really value this loyalty that comes with our strings attached. This is quite amazing if your customers do not come back to you because they bought a subscription, but they come back to you because they want to come back to you. That is kind of something that, however we end up pricing, I do not want to lose or trade away.

Good morning. This is Aditya from Bank of America. Three questions from my side. Firstly, on the platform volumes, could you just talk about how much of the growth came from the, as you said, customers who have been live for a long time versus the ones who have been onboarded over the last year or so? Second, on the hiring, you have hired 1,000 people just in the first half versus the initial expectations of, I think, hiring 700 people for the full year. There has been an acceleration.

Could you talk about why you decided to step up the pace of that, which areas you've been hiring in, and then how should you think about that for H2 and then for next year as well? The last one, on $35 million one-off, should we think about that? As you think about the next year, does that one-off, I guess, get reinvested back into other areas, or should you think about that just again, flowing back into the profitability?

I'll take the easy one if you don't mind. Let's go. Your question on investment and how were we able to invest so much in this first six months. I'm actually really, really, really pleased with that. It seems like it's a fantastic time to invest. If you look at all of those categories that Emmanuel went through.Starting with servicing, the payback that we get from an instant service and the confidence that customers then bring. GBP 25 billion of their money to hold with you, that's amazing. There's still room to invest there, let alone the rate of the growth that we're now seeing. We need to be ready. There's going to be a lot more customers to serve going forward. We talked about marketing already. That has a very direct, very clear payback. Has a very, very good ROI to use money. On engineering, if you look at the numbers, we're actually investing not as fast as our volumes are growing. We're investing in lower. I wish we could go faster there. That will take a bit of ramp-up. I'm actually pretty proud that we wanted to invest.

We talked to you about this at the Owners' Day, that this is a fantastic time to invest now. Feel like we made kind of more progress in the first six months than we hoped for. Leave the heart of it.

Because your first question was on platform. Actually, what we see is that we have a ramp-up of new customers, like basically volume coming from new customers, but also customer partners that have been there before that are extending the contract with us. We are in a very comfortable position where basically, as we told you, usually we start with one route, and then all of the time they extend the contracts. This is what we see. Clearly, there are new customers that we signed last year. On top of that, the former ones are extending the contracts.

This is really a mix of both, which is very, very healthy. That is driving this 1% increase, or a little bit more than 1% increase.

Yeah, on the hiring, just like as Kristo said, I mean, Wise is a brand that people are attracting, and then basically we are in a position where we can scale and anticipate the growth rate that we see on the customers. That is very good. I think on the last question was the reinvesting capacities, or?

I think one of the issues that I am going to screen back into the next year is reinvesting by the day.

Yeah, I mean, this is clearly a one-off due to the dual listing. That is why when we guide right now on the margin, we clearly exclude basically the one-off. We're going to have a small part of recurrent cost, but this one is a one-off by nature. You should not forget the left side.

Hey, Pavan from Citi here. I've also got a couple of questions. Firstly, on instant payments, good to see the step up to 74% from 63% last year. What's really driving that? Is that mainly from the go-live with PIX in Brazil? Should we expect that to step up again when you go live in Japan? Secondly, on the elasticity of pricing, you've reduced pricing by 15% over the last year. Has that really translated into the volume uptake that you've seen so far, or is that really a multi-year payoff?

I'll take the first one. You're directionally correct that these instant payment rates are basically a reflection to large parts of how good our local connectivity is, how fast we can get Australian dollars to the end recipient. Given the timings, I would probably attribute this more to our Australian integration that went live about a year ago or about six months ago. It kind of ramped up. It's probably more of that than PIX. We'll see some from PIX as well going forward. I'm definitely looking forward to this number going up further.

On the price elasticity, it's clearly for us like a long-term strategy. We know that price matters to every single customer. That's the first maybe statement. We know long-term price will matter, and it will position us at the number one option. Last year, as we did the price adjustments, we also increased some price. I mean, it was not only going down, and it was by design. Basically, what we've seen is that the larger transfer is becoming cheaper and more attractive for customers. That was an immediate reaction. We saw that people are reacting to our offering as we decrease the take rate for the larger transaction. There is an immediate reaction, but we think that price is anyway a long-term game. That is why we want to push on the efficiency so that we can pass this back to the customers.

Thank you. I'm really interested in the decline in take rate that you're reporting. Can you just help me understand and unpick that a bit and the difference between changing mix in the business and like-for-like price cuts on your kind of rate card? What's the balance between those drivers of a decline in the reported take rate?

I can take that. This is very much driven by us setting the fees and setting the fees lower than we did before. It does bring about a secondary effect of a bit of a mix shift. For example, I'm kind of coming up with an example. If in a country we used to be, we discovered that one payment method, say people paying in with cards, is particularly more expensive, and we raised the fees on cards, lowered it on bank transactions, then what you do see is the shift from people who used to use cards before because they were kind of subsidized, moving into bank transfers, bringing down the take rate. For them, this is actually a benefit. You get these little secondary mix shifts, but generally, it is. We set the prices.

Hi, Annie Hall. I'm Rothschild & Co Redburn. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just wanted to follow up a little bit more on the stablecoin question from earlier. I know earlier on in the quarter, there was some news around you potentially exploring hiring in the digital asset space. I know you've been speaking to customers in terms of, is it something they'd be interested in? I'm just wondering if you could comment on the outcome of those discussions or any kind of further updates on things that you're looking at internally to do with stablecoins. Thank you.

Thank you. As I already covered, the investments that we're making are quite general in terms of we're building the network that will be useful in the context of stablecoins or without the context of stablecoins. We're not making a bet on one payment scheme over another, one transaction method over another. There is a lot of. We are going to be very deliberate on what kind of use cases we are going to accept and where it is actually going to be useful. Going forward, I think you should expect us to be very deliberate about that.

Vineet is here, please.

Hi, thank you. Vineet from Autonomous Research. Just two questions. What other countries do you see? Do you need to do direct integrations that will complete your overall infrastructure build? Any thoughts on rumors about Wise exploring a banking license?

I think on direct integration, we are not done yet, right? I mean, there are so many payment systems that we think we should integrate in order to be even increasing the instant payment. I mean, we have done the tremendous jump. If you remember, we had 64% last year. We are now 74%. We want to integrate more systems. I mean, we want to make sure that we come to the highest number as possible in terms of instant payment. There are plenty of payment systems, and you can imagine that our team is working actively on that to add more in the future in terms of having the license and then the technical integration. It's not over yet. I mean, we have eight today. We will continue to integrate more payment systems.

On the comment of rumors, just the fact is the OCC in the U.S. has reported that we're in the process of a license application for a trust license, which is a form of banking charter. It's not quite a banking charter, but it's a trust charter. That is indeed true. In the U.K.? Sorry? In the U.K.? In the U.K., there have not been any announcements. Of course, we have licensing procedures or processes ongoing in probably 20 countries in parallel for different things that we could do for our customers.

Simon Young, could you just help us understand what the correlation between your direct payments and, sorry, instant payments and the ones that are direct, and therefore also the impact on the gross margin? As I understand it, the gross margin is very high on stuff that goes through the direct payments. If it goes higher, obviously gross margin should go up. Yet gross margins in the first half were flat. Can you just help me understand what is going on, please?

I will try. Yeah, I will try a little bit. Just to build your intuition about this a little bit, I think if you look at mechanically on the cost base. You maybe see less of an impact going direct or having a very good indirect clearing mechanism. However, the cost benefit does come through quite a lot in the reliability that you get being direct and also the customer experience that you get. It's not as direct as what I think you had in mind, but indirectly, indeed, we should see benefits operationally, benefits from customers and customer affinity and so on. It's definitely very worthwhile investments, but I'm not sure you can translate this as directly into the gross margin increase.

Culture is a massive issue. Simon, sorry. Culture is a massive issue for any company. How do you embed successfully 1,000 people in a half and keep the culture that Wise has obviously developed so successfully in the last 12 years?

I'm glad you asked this question because I'm here for a year, but I can tell you basically the onboarding is very successful. I mean, you really quickly understand the culture of Wise. It's a developing culture, and you get the support of your colleagues. I mean, so I think Wise is a brand that is really highly seen by candidates, but the way we integrate people is really like supporting the team are supporting and managing to onboard newcomers like me very, very quickly. Last year, I had the pleasure to be here after four weeks. It was because basically my colleagues also in this room were helping me a lot to onboard. I think this is the culture that we have. We have one mission. We repeat this mission. We want to move to Indians, and everyone is working every day on that path.

I would amplify that the job of onboarding the 1,000 people has solved the 6,000 that are already here. It is not that hard if you take it this way. Six to one.

Thank you. Moving over to Zoom, Justin Forsythe from UBS,, over to you.

Thank you very much, Kristo, Emmanuel, and thank you, Martin, for letting me on here. I want to hit a couple of questions on my side. First, Kristo, the 4A and the stablecoins, maybe you could just talk a little bit. It felt like six months ago, it was a bit of an afterthought for you guys. Clearly, quite an evolution there. Maybe you could just talk through a little bit your evolutions personally in coming to an understanding with this aspect of the market. It does seem like there is a lot of players in this on-and-off ramp business within stablecoins.

How do you expect to differentiate there? Is it simply because of your connection to local faster payment schemes? Is it fair to assume that a lot of those providers, those competitors, if you will, do not have the same level of licensure and local scheme connectivity that Wise has? Question number two. Emmanuel, around the PBT margin. I think first half was excluding listing costs around 17.5%-ish. You effectively reiterated the full-year guide, but excluding listing costs. To me, that implies second half margin down quite a bit sequentially, I think around 14.5%. If you include listing costs, I think you are down at like 11.5%.

I just want to understand, one, if that's the correct math and maybe a little bit more detail on what's driving it and what that also implies for the cost base going forward in the beginning parts of the next fiscal year. On top of that, thinking about underlying income growth, because it seems to imply that there's quite a large acceleration, could you be doing 20% plus in 2H as the take rate comparison eases? Thank you very much.

Thanks, Justin. You were slightly tricky to hear in the room for the audio. It's probably an issue on our side. Let me try and respond to the first part, which was imagining the Stablecoin ecosystem improving, then how are we competitive in these on-and-off ramps? I think you're spot on there that the qualities that make these on-and-off ramps. Amazing in the fiat world of going from Australian dollar to U.S. dollar or to euro, that's exactly the same. Cost, speed, regulatory reliability, the same things that will matter in the Stablecoin world. You're spot on that this does work exactly the same way.

I mean, I start with the margin evolution. The guidance that we give for the full year, excluding our one-off expense for the listing, and we want to be at the top of the range, we rated this at 16%, around 16%. What we would see basically in H2 is that we're driving this investment in Q in the first half year, and we will also continue to invest in H2. This is basically our promises that we give in honesty.

I mean, we're going to invest where we can, where we get a good return, and still guide the market to the 13%-16%. That is without at-class or the dual listing cost. Bear in mind that this is one-off by nature. I mean, for next year, we will have some recurrent cost, but nothing compared to the $35 million that we're expecting for this year. When it comes to underlying income growth, I hope I understood the question rightly. Yes, you have a kind of disconnect between the volume growth that you see, the cross-border volume, and the underlying income or the revenue that you generate out of this volume, cross-border volume. This is basically a like-for-like issue. We're comparing basically two periods of time where we had the price adjustments last year in the first half year that is coming to play.

The comparison like-for-like is very difficult. You will see this. We will see the real growth, I would say the real growth in brackets in the second half year when this pricing adjustment is not affecting anymore the comparison for a year-on-year comparison. I hope I answered your questions. If not, please just let me know.

We'll now move over to Bharath. Over to you, Bharath.

Hi, thank you. Thanks for taking my questions, Bharath from Cantor Fitzgerald. Could you highlight some of the logos that you signed previously within the platform's business where you're now seeing volumes ramp up? Is there any kind of a case study with regards to how long it normally takes to ramp up volumes materially here? What are the conversations that you're having with these kinds of customers?

Is it to do with lower take rates for these businesses or anything else? That's the first question. The second one, could you speak about your investments, the marketing investments across the U.S., Australia, and Canada? Which ones are faring better? Are you seeing any regions with better ROI, relatively speaking, and has there been any change in this ROI coming from these investments given the macro worries? Thank you.

I'll try to take the first one. Bharath, unfortunately, I think if we did a case study, it would be misleading because each of the, we're onboarding the world's largest financial institutions often, and each of them is so different. It's going to be really hard to average those. We're very happy, actually, with our past announcement, past logos that have gone live, and you see that in the results. It's something where it's very early to start singling anyone out. We're very happy with the onboarding progress here, and that gives us confidence. We mentioned today where you kind of can see getting to 10% in the medium term with platform volumes.

To your question on marketing and ROI, comparing Australia and the U.S., maybe I should start that we're using the same discipline and the same KPIs, and we have the same expectation on return no matter which campaign we started in which country. However, comparing Australia and the U.S. is difficult at this time because Australia's campaign is running for one and a half years, where the U.S. is basically starting, I think, two months ago or so. We are very pleased with the return that we see, and that's why we continue to invest in Australia.

We see also that the campaign in the U.S. is quite successful. We invest also in three further countries, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.K. We are monitoring the progress in every single country, but it's really, really difficult. It's challenging, but let's put it this way—to compare Australia, where we have this campaign running out for a year and a half, and we continue to invest because we see the result. The result is our CPA is going down, so the cost per acquisition is going down as longer we take the campaign. We're monitoring. We're also adjusting. To be quite frank, we do sometimes adjustment and tricks. We say, "Oh, this creative that you see today, we have to adapt this for this country." We start a campaign again.

What I can tell you is that we're looking at this with the same lens. Basically, we want to have the same return no matter what. If a campaign is not as successful as we expect, either we do the creative again, we change the campaign, or we stop the campaign and come with a better idea.

That's right.

Thank you very much for joining us today. That concludes our presentation and Q&A for our half-year results for FY2026. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Thanks, everyone.