2Europe conducted a two-stage study of remittance platforms in the US and Europe, with a particular focus on Wise and its competitive position. In-depth interviews first explored how consumers and businesses choose and use cross-border payment services. A subsequent survey tested those themes at scale across six countries. The combined approach gave the project both the detail needed to understand decisions and the breadth needed to compare audiences and markets.
Project Overview
The remittance market serves people making very different transactions: occasional personal transfers, card spending abroad and regular international business payments. Platform choice can involve fees and exchange rates, but also trust, speed, convenience, available features and previous experience. The research needed to understand how these factors worked together for Wise and competing services, and where experiences differed between the US and European markets.
2Europe designed the project as a sequence. The qualitative stage would uncover the language, experiences and decision processes behind platform use. Those findings would then inform a structured quantitative survey to measure how widely the themes applied and where meaningful differences appeared.
Project Objectives
The study set out to:
- Understand how personal and business users discover, compare and select remittance platforms
- Explore the needs behind different transfer types, card use and cross-border payments
- Examine perceptions of Wise alongside competing platforms
- Measure awareness, use, decision factors and platform performance across markets and user groups
- Identify differences that could inform positioning, product and communications decisions
Methodology
The study combined exploratory qualitative research with a follow-on quantitative survey. The stages were deliberately connected: interview findings helped define the questions to measure, while the survey showed how the themes varied across a larger and more geographically diverse sample.
1. Recruit distinct user profiles
For the first stage, local consumer and business recruiters screened participants in the UK and US. The 40 interviews included 20 personal users and 20 business users, split equally between the two countries. Consumer profiles covered typical remittance users, people using travel or cross-border spending cards, and users making higher-value transfers. Business interviewees had experience with international payment platforms, including Wise. This range brought different transaction needs and levels of platform familiarity into the discussion.
2. Explore decisions in depth
Professional moderators conducted individual online interviews lasting about 45 minutes. A shared discussion guide covered discovery, platform selection, use cases, comparison habits, trust, costs, service experiences and perceptions of Wise and alternatives. The open format allowed moderators to follow unexpected points and ask why a participant had made a particular choice. Interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis.
3. Turn qualitative themes into survey measures
2Europe reviewed the interview evidence to identify recurring questions and hypotheses. Working with the commissioning team, it developed a structured survey that revisited those themes in a form that could be measured consistently. The questionnaire was programmed, hosted and translated for the participating markets. It mainly used closed and rating questions, with a limited number of open responses, and took around 19 minutes to complete.
4. Survey users across six markets
The quantitative stage gathered 1,019 completed surveys in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Screening covered three profiles: recent remittance users, people using cross-border spending cards, and users of higher-value international transfers. Respondents were assigned a primary profile for sampling, while the analysis also considered their actual behaviours because some people met more than one profile.
5. Compare patterns and reconnect them to the interviews
After quality checks and cleaning, 2Europe analysed awareness, platform use, transfer activity, card behaviour, selection factors and brand ratings. Comparisons by country and respondent characteristics showed where findings were shared and where they differed. The team then read the quantitative results alongside the interview accounts, using the latter to explain possible reasons behind patterns rather than treating individual comments as representative statistics.
Outcomes
The project produced a detailed picture of how different users approach cross-border payments and how Wise sits within their set of options. It identified themes in discovery, choice and use, then measured awareness, behaviour and perceptions across six markets. The research also showed which questions required a market-specific or audience-specific interpretation rather than a single overall answer.
Benefits to the Client
- A fuller explanation of user decisions than a survey alone could provide
- Quantitative evidence to test the reach of themes raised in interviews
- Comparable measures across the US and five European markets
- Coverage of personal transfers, card use and business payment needs
- A grounded basis for considering positioning, communications and service priorities
Conclusion
This project demonstrates how 2Europe connects qualitative and quantitative methods within one research programme. Interviews revealed the reasons behind platform choices and shaped the next stage; the multilingual survey established how those themes appeared across a wider audience. For a market with varied users and transaction types, the combination created evidence that was both explanatory and comparable.
