Wise Guided Transfers

Someone you trust prepares the hard transfer form; you keep the final say. A helper role for Wise that lets family help older customers without sharing passwords or control.

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Inspiration

Many older people use Wise for small transfers, but freeze when a transfer gets complicated: a new recipient, an IBAN, a currency, a fee. Their family often lives in another city. Today the only options are a long phone call, sharing a password (which breaks Wise's terms and is exactly how many scams work), or giving up. We asked "why?" five times and found the root cause: account permissions are all or nothing. Whoever gets in can do everything.

What it does

Wise Guided Transfers adds one new role to a Wise account: a trusted helper who can prepare a transfer but can never send it.

  • Setup: the owner (Tiiu) sees the helper's rights in plain language, chooses when she wants help (for every transfer, or above an amount she picks), and invites her granddaughter Mari by email, phone or Wisetag. Mari has to accept the invite herself.
  • Asking for help: Tiiu taps Prepare it for me, or a transfer above her threshold becomes a help request automatically.
  • Preparing: Mari fills in the transfer like any Wise transfer (amount, recipient, IBAN) and writes one plain sentence describing it.
  • Deciding: Tiiu gets a notification and one clear summary: who prepared it, who receives the money, how much, the fee and Mari's sentence. She approves, then confirms once more with the three key facts.
  • Done: both phones update in real time: sent, declined or failed.

The helper only sees transfers made together, and the balance only while preparing one that Tiiu asked for. Tiiu can remove or change her helper at any time.

How we built it

A React + Vite + Tailwind web app with two roles (owner and helper) and a Node.js + Express + Socket.IO server for real-time notifications. The rules are enforced on the server, not only in the UI: only the owner can approve, her confirmation is bound to the exact recipient and amount (any change means a fresh review), confirmation is idempotent, and the helper has no send endpoint at all. Payments are simulated for this prototype; in production this would call Wise's transfer API (quote → recipient → transfer).

We used AI tools throughout: ChatGPT for research and ideas, Claude Code for scaffolding and much of the code, Google AI Studio for prototyping, and Claude for slides.

Challenges we ran into

Balancing ease and safety. Mentors told us not to add friction, but also not to hide anything critical. Our answer: below her own limit Tiiu transfers privately; above it, one clear screen and one extra confirmation. We also had to design a role that fits existing rules: PSD2 dynamic linking, Wise's terms against sharing access, and GDPR data minimisation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A full end-to-end flow (invite, consent, prepare, approve, confirm, sent) working live in two windows within 24 hours, with the trust rules enforced on the server.

What we learned

The hardest part of "Max Ease" isn't removing steps. It's removing the right steps, so the person still understands and controls what's happening.

What's next for Wise Guided Transfers

Real Wise sandbox integration, voice read-out and native-language summaries for the owner, and an EU pilot in one country. One regulatory framework (PSD2, GDPR, the European Accessibility Act) covers many markets.

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