Case Studied
Turning a customer complaint into a policy fight

Successful campaigns aren’t always measured by purchases, sign-ups, or views. Sometimes, brands develop platforms for causes, and ask customers to use their voice rather than their wallets. 

Patagonia is known for rallying customers around environmental causes. Ben & Jerry’s built countless campaigns around social justice issues and integrated activism directly into their business model. And Wise recently took a similar approach to tackle the issue of hidden fees. 

This week, Case Studied explores how Wise built a 13,000-person movement to fight hidden fees in international payments.

The Brief

Wise, formerly TransferWise, was founded in 2010 on the idea that moving money internationally should be cheaper, faster, and more transparent. 

Beyond its transfer product, the company built out a dedicated Government Relations and Policy team focused on driving legislative change around payment transparency.

The team was aware that banks and other transfer providers were routinely advertising "no fee" transfers while quietly setting their own exchange rate and keeping the difference. According to the World Bank, the average cost of sending remittances abroad sits at 6.04%, more than double the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of under 3% by 2030. 

Wise estimated that hidden, inflated exchange rates cost people and businesses around the world $187 billion in a single year. So it built a campaign to try and change that.

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The Execution

Wise worked with NationBuilder and its partner New/Mode to build “Nothing To Hide.” It’s a standalone advocacy campaign and website that’s separate from Wise's core product pages. 

The campaign asks “business, government and civil society to demand an end to the lack of transparency that keeps remittance prices artificially high.” It calls on policymakers to close loopholes that let providers advertise "no fee" transfers while hiding costs in the exchange rate. Visitors are invited to sign a petition and join a mailing list. 

The campaign focuses on three demands: stop misleading consumers, make hiding charges illegal, and require providers to show the true cost of sending money abroad. Wise framed the effort around the UN's Sustainable Development Goal of reducing remittance costs below 3% by 2030. 

That infrastructure came from Wise's earlier advocacy work, namely a price transparency petition, "Know What You Pay," and a campaign against IBAN discrimination called "Accept My IBAN." 

Using NationBuilder's tools, the Government Relations team was able to segment supporters, identify top campaigners by location, and coordinate targeted actions (think: pre-written emails that supporters could send to bodies such as the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). 

Joshua Contreras, Wise's Global Community and Digital Campaigns Manager, said the platform let the team "gather insights, make sure everything is anonymous, and really create the movement around this."

The Results

Nothing To Hide's supporter base grew to over 13,000 people across 82 countries. That included 7,700 petition signatures across 14 campaign sites. The campaign is still ongoing as of this writing. 

As for Wise’s previous efforts, Know What You Pay's petition drew 47,000 signatures. It also contributed to the UK's Cross-Border Payments Regulation, a law that now requires providers to disclose their fees more clearly.

Meanwhile, Accept My IBAN logged 2,000 discrimination complaints in its first year. The European Commission now cites the site as a trusted source for tracking the issue. 

The Takeaways

1) Anchor the campaign to an external, measurable goal.

Rather than framing the campaign around Wise's own business metrics, the team tied Nothing To Hide to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of reducing remittance costs below 3% by 2030. This gave the campaign a benchmark that existed independent of Wise and made it easier for outside organizations, regulators, and other companies to rally around.

Consider whether your cause-driven campaigns can be tied to an existing, externally recognized standard rather than an internal target. A third-party benchmark lends credibility to the campaign and makes it easier for others to join.

2) Give supporters something concrete to do. 

Wise's campaigns consistently asked people to take a specific action: sign a petition, file an anonymous report, send a pre-written email to a regulator. That specificity helped campaigns like Accept My IBAN generate thousands of individual reports instead of just passive engagement.

When building an advocacy or cause campaign, define the smallest possible action a supporter can take. Make it fast and low-friction. A clear, specific ask tends to convert into participation and make the audience feel more connected to the cause. 

3) Build coalitions with companies facing the same problem.

Accept My IBAN wasn't built for Wise's customers alone. It recruited other companies whose customers ran into the same discrimination and featured them as partners on the site. It even gave them reports and toolkits to share with their own audiences. 

If your company is campaigning on an issue that affects other businesses in your space, look for opportunities to bring them in as partners. A shared coalition can extend a campaign's reach and lend it more legitimacy than a single company advocating alone.

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