Half the profit is interest income, and rates are turning

• The float, not the fees. $27.8B of customer balances earned $770M of interest in FY25 — about $575M of that, 78% of the $732M reported PBT, was yield earned above the first 1% policy rate. Strip that slice out and the 35% operating margin halves toward management's own 13–16% guidance band.
• Already breaking in real time. H1 FY26 PBT fell 13% YoY even as cross-border volume grew 24% and customer holdings grew 33%. The operating engine accelerated; the rate engine dragged.
• The variant. Bear math holds balances static; they aren't. At 25% balance growth and a 3% UK base rate by end-FY27, the above-1% line stays $460–530M, not $200–265M. The fight is balance compounding versus rate-cut speed.

Operating margin tripled in two years — and not from operating leverage

The 16% to 35% margin jump in two years is not organic operating leverage — Wise actually cut its take rate from 67bps to 52bps over the same period. The lift came from interest income on a customer-deposit float that ballooned with rates. Reported revenue growth has decelerated five halves running, from +82% (H2 FY23) to +9% (H1 FY26). The next twelve months test whether take-rate compression keeps producing volume response while the rate windfall unwinds.

Nasdaq debut on 11 May, then the FY26 print three weeks later

• Listing day, 11 May 2026. Court approval landed 27 April; LSE moves to secondary, Nasdaq Composite inclusion is automatic. ADV at $21M today caps how big a position any fund can build — first-month US flow is the cleanest empirical test of whether this name re-rates toward Adyen-class multiples or stays a UK specialist holding.
• FY26 results, ~4 June. First print under US GAAP; first full year of Mission Zero pricing; first margin read with $46M of dual-listing one-offs absorbed. Underlying PBT margin guide is 13–16% — a print outside that band, in either direction, settles the rate-cycle debate.
• Then OCC, then H1 FY27. A US national trust-bank charter decision in H2 2026 would lift the 1%-yield ceiling on US-held balances. November's interim is the first clean read of margin under falling rates with no one-off cover.

$4.6B of skin in the game, and a voting bloc just locked in to 2035

• Cleanest founder economics in listed fintech. CEO Kristo Käärmann holds $4.6B of stock, takes $270k in cash compensation, has never accepted an LTIP grant, and sits at 26× the shareholding requirement. Every basis point of efficiency goes back to customers as lower prices.
• And a deliberate concentration of control. 18% economic stake converts to 49.3% voting power via 9-vote Class B shares. The July 2025 US-listing vote bundled a 10-year extension of that structure to 2035 — proxy advisers ISS and Glass Lewis publicly admitted they 'initially failed to identify' the extension. Co-founder Hinrikus opposed publicly.
• Compliance is not keeping pace. CFO, Chief Compliance Officer, and Head of Internal Audit all turned over inside twelve months. Three live regulator settlements: CFPB, a $4.2M six-state US AML order with a two-year independent monitor, and ADGM. The CEO himself was personally fined by HMRC ($490k, 2021) and the FCA ($470k, 2024).