UK-based fintech Wise has announced plans to introduce India’s first-ever ‘travel card’, marking a major step in its expansion across the country’s rapidly growing outbound travel market. The money transfer platform has opened a waitlist for the new product, designed to offer low-cost, transparent foreign spending for Indians travelling abroad.
According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Indian travellers spent nearly $17 billion overseas in 2024, reflecting the country’s surging appetite for international travel. However, Wise claims that travellers often lose over $200 on a $5,000 trip when using conventional bank cards due to hidden exchange rate fees and high transaction charges.
Taneia Bhardwaj, Wise’s South Asia Expansion Lead, said the launch aims to modernize how Indians pay abroad, noting that “India is growing incredibly fast as a travel market, but the products we use when we’re abroad haven’t kept up with the needs of today’s savvy Indian travellers.”
The announcement, made during the Global Fintech Festival 2025 in Mumbai, follows Wise’s recent in-principle approval from the RBI to operate as a cross-border payment aggregator for export transactions, and the establishment of a full-stack hub in Hyderabad, its second in the Asia-Pacific region.
The move positions Wise ahead of global competitors like Revolut, which recently revealed its own plans to enter the Indian payments space. With this launch, Wise aims to strengthen its foothold in one of the world’s fastest-growing travel and remittance markets, offering simpler, fairer, and faster cross-border financial solutions.
