Wise and Deel Team to Offer Easier Cross-Border Payments

Money transfer service Wise has teamed up with human resources (HR) and payroll firm Deel to let customers send money through Deel with just an email address.

The partnership comes as many companies run into difficulties when paying overseas employees, according to a Monday (Nov. 14) news release. the collaboration opens 10 new currencies in Deel’s payments infrastructure while also “further simplifying global payroll for over 10,000 Deel customers” from small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to publicly traded companies.

Before now, customers using Deel in some markets would need to fund payroll via a U.S. dollar or euro international SWIFT bank transfer, a process the release stated is “expensive, slow and inefficient.”

It involved inputting a great deal of employee information to initiate their payments, including choosing a currency, providing account details, account type and address information. With the new collaboration, customers can eliminate 80% of those steps, according to the release.

“With this new feature, Deel’s customers will be able to fund payments using 19 local currencies through their linked Wise account, meaning that more people can get paid in the currency that works best for them,” the release stated. “In turn, customers will benefit from a faster, cheaper and more efficient service.”

As PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, the challenges of paying overseas workers can seem daunting, although there are many tools designed to reduce the friction of this process.

PYMNTS examimed this topic in “Meeting the Demand for Cross-Border Hiring: Challenges in International Workforce Payment and Management,” a PYMNTS and Nium collaboration based on a survey of 250 executives in accounts payable, payroll or payments at American and British companies.

The study found that just 20% of companies have not run into challenges when paying or managing overseas workers. For companies with more than 50% share of international payroll, that number was 26%.

The share of organizations that reported no challenges when paying or managing international workers fell to 14% and 13%, respectively, for companies taking in $500 million to $1 billion with less than a 25% share in international payroll.

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