Dear all, I signed up for Wise yesterday. Been a long time user of Bigpay but recent changes make it necessary to switch to Wise.

1) With the physical card, I chose my name to be written as Tan Ah Beng (example), but the digital card is written as Ah Beng Tan by default.
I can't find any way to change it to Tan Ah Beng. Is this the default and not customisable?

2) if I intend to link my Wise to say, Paypal, or shop at overseas online stores, which card should I use - digital or physical or it doesn't matter? I'm currently using Bigpay and it only has one card so this digital vs physical cards is something new to me.

3) If I intend to use the physical card for my holiday, say in Japan, do I need to convert to Yen or I can just top up with RM and it will auto convert when debiting my account?

4) assume I have RM5000 and 10,000 Yen in my account after partially converting some Yen. When I use the card in Japan to pay 9000 Yen, then another 2000 Yen in separate transactions, will it deduct the first 9k yen in my yen balance first, then another 1k yen+ RM for the second transaction?

TIA. I will still read through this thread for better understanding.

This post has been edited by mushigen: Sep 23 2023, 11:32 AM

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Your reasonings for choosing digital card in Q2 certainly makes a lot of sense.

If you don't mind my further asking, let's say I managed to lock in a good rate, say I converted 100,000 yen. Now, if I swipe the card in Jpn, will it automatically deduct from the Yen balance first, or Ringgit balance first? The reason for converting is getting a good rate, but it defeats the purpose if the Yen is not utilised first imo.

Thank you so much. I'll really need to read the FAQs first.

Dear all,
I am new to Wise.

I had RM200+ and SGD10 in my WISE account. I used the virtual card to pay for a USD27 online transaction.

I realised WISE debited SGD10 and RM90+ to pay for this USD27 transaction. The SGD was in the form of (SGD0.50 in normal account and SGD9.50 in jar or vice-versa).

I expected WISE to deduct whatever RM balance first by default before touching the SGD since the transaction wasn't even in SGD in the first place?
Is this normal and is there any way I can set it to deduct RM first before touching other currency?

Thank you for your patience and reply. My bad. I thought the previous point was for physically swiping the card in say Jpn and so it deducts the Yen balance first, and not also for using the card online.

Again I assumed it will always deduct my "home currency". This is because I learned from some forumners here about using Wise to "hedge" a currency.

For example, Yen is low now and I intend to save up in Yen for my travel to Jpn next year. Kind of hard to do if Wise chooses by itself which currency to deduct first.

Thanks for the confirmation. Looks like I have to look for another way to store forex.

Need to pay conversion fee twice? RM to Yen, then Yen to settle amount that I spend?

Dear All,
Anyone knows whether it's possible to open two WISE accounts (using dual apps in phone) per person?

Reason for doing so is:
I have a few monthly online transactions in USD and SGD through WISE. At the moment, WISE auto converts the transaction amounts to RM, which suits me well due to accounting purpose (I don't keep USD and SGD in this account as I don't want it to deduct these currencies first which makes accountability a headache).

However, I would like to have a second account just for forex "tikam game" - change MYR to SGD when SGD drops and change back this SGD to MYR if SGD strenghtens. Hence, it's important that these SGD or USD jars don't get spent automatically whenever I have an SGD or USD online transactions.

Hi, thank you for your reply.

I don't think it works like that, or at least this was what I experienced: if my online transaction is in SGD, for example, it will deduct from the SGD jar first and if it is not enough, it will convert the balance from MYR. That was how my SGD jar balance became zero the first time I tried topping up some SGD inside the SGD jar.

I had a look at my account and there are indeed two SGD accounts, one of it being jar. I think the money that was deducted in the past should be in the SGD account and not jar.
I've put in some money in this jar and I'll see if it gets deducted first when my SGD online payment is made.

Thank you once again.