Wise LifeSwitch

Wise LifeSwitch Platform

Moving abroad is complicated enough. Managing money & family across borders shouldn't be.

When you move abroad, you carry two things that don't fit in a suitcase: your payments and your people. LifeSwitch carries both for you.

Inspiration

We have friends who are international students, and one of our teammates made the move from India to London. We saw how offer letters, tenancy agreements and fee invoices arrive together, each hiding different amounts, currencies and deadlines creates a friction. We were inspired to fix it!

The stress doesn't stop with the student. Families back home often help manage large payments without being familiar with the destination country's banking system or payment instructions.

The problem is real. In a 2021 Flywire survey of 1,010 students, 72% said tuition payments were a significant source of stress, and 28% cited unclear processes from their institution.

We were also struck by a Mastercard feature produced with the Financial Times, which described parents having to pay a £60,000 tuition bill from their savings, using instructions in a language they did not speak.

This led us to one insight: paying for a move abroad is both a financial challenge and a family challenge, but these are usually handled separately.

We built Wise LifeSwitch to bring them together.

What is Wise LifeSwitch?

LifeSwitch is a mobile-first & web platform that helps international students organise relocation payments, understand unfamiliar paperwork and keep their families informed.

Instead of switching between documents, calendars, banking apps and family chats, students can manage their move through one connected journey.

What you can do

1. Organise your move Set up where you're moving from and to, and why, then view upcoming payments and deadlines on a single roadmap.

2. Turn paperwork into a payment plan Upload an offer letter, tenancy agreement or invoice. Gemini extracts payment details such as the payee, amount, currency, due date and reference, alongside the original sentence for verification. You review the results before using them.

3. Understand what you're paying for Get plain-language explanations of unfamiliar terms such as CAS, guarantor, IBAN and sort code, with multilingual support.

4. Prepare payments more safely LifeSwitch prepares a guided payment journey around Wise. Scam Shield applies rules to flag suspicious messages, including requests to use new bank details. Payments in the current demo are mocked; no real Wise transfers are sent.

5. Keep family in the loop The LifeSwitch Circle gives families a private space for chat, milestones such as "Landed in London" and city-level location sharing. Sharing is optional and can be paused.

6. Share everyday costs Group Split turns receipt information into suggested shares, helping groups work out who owes what. The demo uses Stripe test mode for its payment flow.

7. Support someone you care about The Care Card supports a daily spending limit and alerts for gambling, large cash withdrawals and doorstep sales, set up together with the cardholder, with every change visible to them.

8. Never miss a deadline Get reminders before every due date, with one tap to the payment.

LifeSwitch also includes multilingual interfaces and voice support to make the experience more accessible.

See it in action

Meet Tara, moving from Chennai to London to study Computer Science.

She starts by setting up her move and uploading her tuition invoice. LifeSwitch extracts the payment details and shows where they came from. She checks the information, reviews her roadmap and prepares the tuition deposit.

Later, a message asks her to send the deposit to new bank details. Scam Shield flags the suspicious request for review. Once Tara has verified the payment information, she can proceed through the demo payment flow. Her family can follow her milestones in the Circle without needing to manage every step themselves.

The goal is simple: help students stay in control of their money without leaving their families out of the journey.

How we built it

Frontend: Next.js and TypeScript, with a responsive, mobile-first interface.
Document and message analysis: Gemini returns structured information from documents, receipts and suspicious messages.
Data storage: Postgres, using Tiger Data for Circle and Group Split data.
Payments: Wise transfers are mocked behind a dedicated payment service. Stripe test mode supports the Group Split demo.
Voice: ElevenLabs supports multilingual voice functionality.
Safety: Scam Shield and Care Card checks use explicit rules, making their warnings easier to explain.

We designed the main experience around one connected flow:

Document → Roadmap → Payment → Family Circle

Every extracted payment detail can be checked against its source, and the demo does not automatically send money.

How we used AI

Gemini powers document, receipt and message analysis inside the product. Users review extracted information before acting on it.

We used Claude and Claude Code to explore designs and generate the framework for our application from our mock-ups and instructions. Team members directed changes, integrated features, tested flows and made implementation decisions.

Our AI usage disclosure is available in AI_USAGE.md.

Challenges we faced

Bringing separate problems into one product. We had to narrow several ideas into one coherent journey connecting relocation paperwork, payments and family communication.

Collaborating across branches. We divided ownership by user flow, developed features on separate branches and integrated them into the main application.

Building for trust. Financial mistakes and unnecessary family monitoring were concerns from the beginning. We used source references, payment confirmation and optional sharing to keep users in control.

Working with different experience levels. Clear feature ownership helped the team contribute and gave each member a part of the product to demonstrate.

What we learnt

A useful financial product needs more than automation. It needs to make information understandable, show users where important details came from and let them decide what happens next.

We also learnt how to combine different skills, integrate AI into a working application and collaborate under hackathon time constraints.

What's next?

Our next step is to integrate the Wise API for real transfers, subject to the necessary access and safeguards. We also want to explore Wise eSIM integration, broader multilingual voice guidance and support for relocating professionals and expats. Making sure its accessible for everyone at MAX EASE.