Wise faces a Belgian money-laundering investigation that has pushed its London-listed shares (WISE) from nearly £11 in mid-April to below £8, raising questions about the risk profile of one of the UK’s fastest-growing fintech companies.
The Brussels prosecutor’s office is examining approximately €500 million in suspicious transactions linked to Wise accounts, according to American Banker. The office said it is finalising a direct summons, a charge that would send the case straight to criminal court, and plans to pass its findings to the National Bank of Belgium, which licenses and supervises Wise’s European operations.
The Belgian Money-Laundering Investigation
The inquiry grew from Wise’s repeated appearance across hundreds of criminal files received in Belgium, with alleged uses including drug trafficking, fraud, and corruption, according to American Banker citing the Brussels prosecutor’s office.
BBC News reported the Belgian prosecutor told press agency AFP the investigation is ‘nearing its conclusion’ and is focused on Wise’s European operations rather than its UK business. Wise told the BBC it was working with the Brussels prosecutor’s office but that ‘no specific findings have been shared with us to date.’
Wise says roughly a third of its staff is dedicated to stopping financial crime. The company verifies customers before account opening, monitors hundreds of data points in real time, proactively reports suspicious activity to law enforcement, and offboards customers when needed.
Whether those controls satisfy Belgian authorities remains the central question. A direct summons, if issued, would represent a material escalation and adds a layer of regulatory uncertainty the share price now reflects.
Financials Behind the Share Price Fall
Strip out the legal risk and the underlying business looks different. For the year ended 31 March 2025, Wise reported underlying income of £1.4bn, up 19% year-on-year and 3.2 times the figure generated in FY2021, according to Wise’s FY2025 preliminary results.
Free cash flow for FY2025 came in at £615.4m, up from £486.6m in FY2024. Corporate cash at year-end stood at £1,430.2m, against £1,061.1m a year earlier.
The year ended 31 March 2024 offers further context. Wise’s FY2024 preliminary results show the company moved £118.5bn for 12.8 million customers, with underlying income of £1.2bn (31% growth) and underlying profit before tax of £242m, up 226% year-on-year at a 21% margin.
Over the medium term, Wise expects to operate at an underlying profit before tax margin of 13–16%, per its FY2024 results disclosure. That guidance implies some margin normalisation from the 21% reported in FY2024, and the company has said it does so deliberately, continuing to reinvest in product and infrastructure as part of a scale-economies model that lowers fees as volumes grow.
In its Q3 FY2025 filing with the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Wise said it continued to expect underlying income growth of 15–20% for the full year on a constant currency basis, with reported growth expected at the lower end of that range. The LSE filing confirmed the European operations remained the operational focus of the period.
Despite that growth trajectory, Wise’s market position remains far from saturated. Its share of personal international payments is around 5%; in small business transfers, it is under 1%. The B2B segment and product expansion offer scope for further growth that neither figure captures.
The forward price-to-earnings ratio, at around 20 times, prices in a degree of risk. How much of that reflects the Belgian investigation specifically will become clearer once the prosecutor concludes its work. Wise’s FY2025 annual report gives a fuller picture of governance and risk disclosures for investors weighing those two sides.
The Belgian probe’s conclusion, and whether the National Bank of Belgium takes supervisory action alongside any criminal referral, is the event that will most directly shape where WISE shares trade next.
